Updated at 2:37 p.m.

Maneuvering around Minneapolis would be quite frustrating without the 100,000 traffic signs that help residents and visitors reach their destinations every day.

But who makes them all?

The Star Tribune recently visited the city's traffic operations center, beside the farmers market sheds, to learn more about the process. Here are some fast facts about signs in Minneapolis, derived from a conversation with public works employees Steve Mosing, Doug Maday and Joe Casey:

• The city is in the second year of a 10-year initiative to replace every street sign in Minneapolis over five years old. They are nearing completion in Northeast and will soon move to north Minneapolis. Ten thousand North Side signs have been ordered from an Alabama contractor, which the city will install.

• The Border Avenue facility keeps up with the array of sign changes and replacements throughout the city. Road reconstructions, reconfigured bike lanes and vandalism could all necessitate new signs. The facility can produce more than 100 signs a day, depending on the needs and availability of materials.

• The same crew that makes traffic signs also paints the city's crosswalks at night during the warmer months.

• There are two primary methods of sign-making. One involves using a printer to etch letters into a plastic material, then "weeding" the unneeded parts and applying it to a metal backing. Silk-screening is used for mass production, which is advantageous for duplicative parking signs, for example.

• Parking signs are the most common type in the city. There are also about 7,000 stop signs.

• Blue street name signs indicate a snow emergency route, while green street name signs are used on non-snow emergency roads.

• Increased focused on non-motorized transportation, such as walking and bicycling, has increased the number of signs in the city.

• The average cost to install a typical sign, including labor, is approximately $50. That does not include the pipes they are affixed to. The city reuses the metal blanks when it creates new signs.

Above: Joe Casey poses with a custom sign used to demonstrate the process. The height signs will replace stolen signs at a bicycle and pedestrian path near 49th Avenue North.