Tuscaloosa, AL Sign Regulations: Digital Billboards (2026)

Tuscaloosa's 2024 zoning ordinance (Ord. No. 9572) treats digital billboards as a subset of the city's billboard rules in Division 10 of Chapter 25. Under Sec. 25-182(h)(3), an existing billboard may be dismantled, moved, or converted to add an electronic, digital, video, or tri-vision display, but the conversion cannot increase the billboard's height or the display area of any sign face. Once converted, the board must meet the same picture-quality standards that apply to every electronic sign in the city under Sec. 25-179(d): the image can change no more than once every eight seconds, and the code bars movement, blinking, animation, scrolling, flashing, or scintillation effects, with changes required to appear instantaneous to the human eye rather than fading, rolling, or dissolving.

Every electronic sign, billboards included, must carry an ambient light monitor that automatically dims or brightens the display with outdoor light conditions. If a digital sign malfunctions and starts flashing or moving on its own, the owner has 48 hours to restore normal operation; if the city engineer decides the malfunction is a hazard, the sign can be ordered shut off immediately. Digital billboards keep the same 672-square-foot maximum display area as standard billboards under Sec. 25-182(h)(5), but carry an extra spacing rule found nowhere else in the sign code: Sec.

25-182(h)(8)(iv) requires at least 2,000 feet between any two billboards that use electronic, digital, video, or tri-vision technology, measured along the street centerline or radially from a corner intersection. That gap can shrink to the ordinary 750-foot (interstate) or 1,000-foot (other streets) spacing only if the new digital board's owner first removes two existing, non-digital billboards that are each more than 15 years old and within 4,000 feet of the new sign. The director of planning and the director of codes and development services enforce these standards.