Piscataway, NJ Outdoor Lighting: Billboard Lighting (2026)

Section 21-1017.2g requires every billboard along Interstate 287 to be designed and constructed so its lines of sight are confined to I-287 itself, keeping the sign out of view from surrounding streets and neighborhoods. Site plan applications for a billboard, reviewed under Section 21-1017.2h, must address lighting alongside traffic safety, landscaping, visual impact and drainage, and the reviewing board, either the Planning Board or the Zoning Board of Adjustment, must specifically weigh the visual impact on any residential property within 1,000 feet. Section 21-1017.2h.2 sets the operative lighting standard: illumination must be designed to avoid glare and spillover and to confine the illuminated area to the sign face itself, not the surrounding lot or sky.

Section 21-1017.2j goes further on sign content and lighting behavior: a billboard's copy or face cannot mimic an official traffic sign or signal, and the sign cannot use flashing, intermittent or moving lights, or reflectorized materials that emit or reflect colors such as red, amber or green, the colors used for traffic signals. Digital and variable multi-message billboards are permitted under Section 21-1017.2k, but they remain subject to the same glare, spillover and traffic-signal-mimicry limits. Any billboard sited between 500 and 1,000 feet of a residential zone carries an added requirement under Section 21-1017.2f: it must use stealth coloring on its supporting members, as approved by the reviewing board, on top of the glare and spillover controls that apply to every billboard along the highway.