You guys use the same arms (if not almost the same) for wood poles and metal poles so it blows my mind that they don't just transfer the arms from the metal poles to the wood ones! Here the arm mounting plates are either wood-only or metal-only so they can't transfer the lights. But they don't even install temporary lighting here anyway. They either leave the old lights up or just leave no lighting until they get the new lights installed.

At least you said they'll probably transfer the old fixtures over. I know in the past they've used new fixtures for temporary lighting!

Yeah very wasteful over here when it comes to temporary lighting. This is also an MTO project. Typically MTO seems to reuse fixtures for temporary, unlike my city. All these lights will probably be kept up during the whole operation. The signals wont be reused

Cool that the street lights will likely be kept. Around here, they'll reuse poles sometimes for spot replacements or whatever but once the fixture is removed from the pole, the fixture is scrap. With wood pole lights, they'll transfer a light-and-arm over to the new pole unless the existing light fixture is damaged. Then the arm and light are left on the old pole and the new pole gets a new arm and light. While the old arm is still good, it's too much work for them to remove the bad light off the old arm, remove the old arm off the pole, install the new light on the arm, and install the old arm on the new pole. They'd rather just use a new arm lol.

The cool thing about wood pole transfers though is that when a mercury vapor is on the arm, it will get transferred as long as it still works (and even sometimes if it doesn't as long as it's not visibly damaged; they do pole changeouts during the day so they don't know if the light is junk or not).

Yeah, I've noticed that MTO uses old M-400R2s and OV-25s sometimes for temporary lighting while the city likes to use new OVFs and 125s. I've even seen LED temporary lights pop up on streets that were previously lit with HPS. (See Don Mills and Eglinton) Over here the common practice was to replace the arm and fixture when the pole was replaced although they stopped doing that and reused the fixture the last few months that they has HPS.

Yeah they used a lot of the GE fixtures on the QEW before too. @ Don mills and Eglinton, look at the HUGE metal pole in the corner for the temporary traffic lights. What even is that

When NGrid did voltage upgrades on the distribution lines on some roads they would use new everything. New poles, new wires, new transformers (those three are all obvious) but they'd also install all new street lights and arms, which I never got. They'd always use the same number of new lights and same wattage as the old lights but they didn't want to transfer anything over for some reason. I guess in some ways it might just be quicker to install new-everything. Those lag bolts are a PITA to remove from an old pole. They don't screw them in though; they POUND them in with a small hammer-sized sledgehammer!


BTW, are those "up" green arrows a recent thing up there? I noticed when RIDOT spot-replaced a lot of failing LED modules (going on 15+ years now; quite impressive actually) they used "up" arrows when the only way to go was straight. MassDOT has always done that. In fact, they'll even use "up" arrows at 4-way intersections when there's more than one lane and one lane is straight-only. The far right lane will have a ball if you can go straight or right and a right arrow if you can only go right. See here. You can also see the ReStore I got the 6ft F30T12 tandem light from...

This is RIDOT's current set-up. Note one green "up" and one ball. They were both balls when installed but one ball was defective so they spot replaced it with an arrow. It's similar to a MassDOT install but since there's no way to turn right, MassDOT would have used two arrows.

Anyway, that mast is the only new piece at the intersection. It's got a flashing yellow turn light, replacing the bi-color arrow. Not sure why they replaced the whole mast though since at other intersections they just upgraded the signals. Note RIDOT now uses the special tunnel visors with the "thing" on top for snow purposes. Somehow it prevents snow build-up. Not sure how it works but from a side profile, you can see the design better.

Also this streetview from 2015 is now incorrect since the M-400 FCOs on the ramp to the left have all been LED'ed with Leotek GreenCobras, 133W replacing 250W HPS. The light levels are great too. RIDOT actually did a brightness match, though the listed lumens on Leotek's site are far less than 250W HPS. But visually it really appears just as bright. Same for the 280W LED replacing 400W HPS.

Update: These lights at the intersection have come down today. The pole in the photo leaning backwards got a R37 refurb added to it meanwhile all the other temporary lights are new AE 125's.

Glad to hear they're using refurb lights and not wasting new lights (or even worse wasting new LED lights, since some places are doing just that!)

I don't think they're changing the configuration of the roads and ramps in any way. So I guess the only reason for the temp signals is they will be shifting traffic to one side of the road for major bridge rehabilitation over the freeway.