Agreed. Of course, we can now argue whether this level of granularity is unnecessarily complicated.
However: it's hard to argue that the three cases that I listed are too many rules, yet it's easy to see that they can cause too many signs using the OP's design. Such a simplification made the point much clearer, but I should have made that explicit.
Of course, that has its own problems, (Power, vandalism, bugs ...) but it would help drivers a LOT. As the article said, no one cares about WHY they can't park, usually. It's only "can I park here right now?" that matters in most cases.
While true, the second most important thing is "can I park here for as long as I need?"
"Free parking (1h 45m remaining)" doesn't help if you want to park for 2 hours and don't know if the next time period is "no parking" or "max 1 hour parking".
The third most important thing is likely knowing about some time in the future, like "will my visiting friend be able to park here on Saturday evening?"
However: it's hard to argue that the three cases that I listed are too many rules, yet it's easy to see that they can cause too many signs using the OP's design. Such a simplification made the point much clearer, but I should have made that explicit.