Scranton, PA Sign Regulations: Digital Billboards (2026)

Scranton's sign chapter does not use the phrase 'digital billboard,' but it directly addresses the technology through its illumination rules. City Code § 445-52C states that permitted signs may include an electrically changing message, except for signs the chapter separately prohibits, which extends the allowance to any sign category that is otherwise lawful, including the off-premises signs and billboards governed by § 445-57. The limiting language sits in § 445-54B, the chapter's prohibited-signs list: it bars flashing, blinking, twinkling, animated or moving signs of any type, a restriction the text says applies specifically to window signs too, but it carves out two exceptions, time-and-temperature signs and signs that carry a non-flashing electrically changing message.

Read together, the two sections permit a digital sign face that changes its message in static transitions but forbid one that flashes, scrolls with visible motion, or animates. For a digital sign used as an off-premises billboard, § 445-57's separate location and size rules still apply on top of the illumination standard: the sign is only allowed in the CI and LI Districts, or a defined strip of the N District near Interstate 81 and the North Scranton Expressway, capped at 672 square feet per face within 250 feet of an expressway or 300 square feet per face elsewhere, with a maximum total height of 40 feet.