Green means go! (Or rather stop, but only for 5 minutes)

I saw this sign at the Broadway and Cambie SkyTrain (Vancouver) station yesterday. I'm interested in colour and how marketers can use colour as a branding device. In the traffic world there are well-established meanings of various colours. (As any small child will tell you, "green means go".)

You more frequently see red on parking signs as a warning to drivers not to infringe on the rules and run the risk of getting towed. But here green is used to indicate that a certain course of action, parking for up to five minutes, is permitted.

Of course this makes perfect sense and by itself does not really call for any comment from me. But the use of green is in contrast with how it was used on the golf prohibition sign that I wrote about previously.

And while the two signs were not put up by the same municipal department, there are somewhat related. So why can't they use colour more consistently? Maybe the golfers never take the SkyTrain.