I remember those poles!!! Those are STILL being installed in Northbrook, Ill! I remember those laying on the ground in the yard of Public Works....saw 3 of the arms alone with GE M-400A......2 of them had a GE shorting cap on the PC socket and one had astrodome PC....

The older poles had straighter arm instead of upwards...the the EVEN older ones has curved upsweep mounted on the side instead of the top....I have seen other types of concrete poles like taller davit arm attachment to the top...and a few different weird ones....

Yup, some of these poles were installed in Barrington a couple years ago, with AE 113 FCO's. The problem with the concrete poles is that after many years, they start to crumble and erode. The village of Hoffman Estates has been the in the process of replacing their concrete poles with aluminum ones for many years now...

nice. The GE M-250A is my favoite GE powr/door light.

I personally think concrete poles are much better than aluminum ones, they are cheaper and tend to last longer.

Argeed

Concrete poles are indeed durable, but maybe they are a problem in the very cold winters Chicago gets. Here in Southern California at least 75% of freestanding light poles are concrete, the poles are made locally here too.

They seem to have no real problems here, I believe different concrete mixes are used depending on where the pole will be installed. Our poles are also made locally, mostly by StressCrete as well as Utility Structures and Sky Cast. Actually it seems that Sky Cast was just bough out by StressCrete, now there are two.

I think Dave brings up a good point. We have some very harsh weather around here. Most of the concrete poles throughout the area are over 30 years old and are rapidly deteriorating. They are being replaced with steel and aluminum poles. Even some 50 year old wood poles are in better condition than the concrete ones.

Well you guys must just use low quality poles then, ours take about 50 years to get to this and that is directly in the middle of the busiest freeway in North America, nowhere gets as much salt and slush as that during the winter. There are many concrete poles here that look like they where installed yesterday, even though the date says 1960.

Yeah our concrete poles seem to last fairly long, here's an old one from the 50s thats still up and is still in fairly good condition.

Our aluminum poles here last very long too given the fact that they're not roadkill. Some of the really old ones aren't breakaway either so they'll last a few more years. A lot of poles here once held Form 109 and OV20 and before that may have even held incandescent teardrops and those poles are fine. I think aluminum poles last just as long as concrete poles. Plus, they're not as heavy as concrete poles so if a pole was hit and fell, aluminum would be better. All poles have their use.