shouldn't flap around in wind too much,i've seen thick signal poles and often wondered why they do it.

Cat3 Hurricane resistance......and just cause it looks rediculous......

Some newer pols here are like that. These look rediculous with a treetlight arm, but we use galvanized steel ones without the streetlight arm and it looks pretty good. The ones here aren't round though. The poles here are more of an octagon shape.

This is just ridiculous. The poles we use here are simply standard street light poles and they do fine. Where is the cobra here anyway?

That's cuz Ontario uses wimpy signal arms. This pole is actually bigger than the ones here. I just checked..... This pole is beefy enough to be a highmast pole if it were taller.

They are hardly wimpy, they do just fine. We only have two signals per pole at most though, we use a lot of poles at our intersections.

The most poles I've seen here are four.

Well just at that intersection I linked to there are eight poles, I have seen 12 and sometimes even more!

It probably is the bottom half of a highmast unit, used as they most likely wanted to commonise on the requirements for both stock and for casting foundationing. Also allows you to place the top on and install a camera setup to provide surveillance. It is more likely to survive car impact than a street light pole, as these are designed to break away. I have seen these get hit by a big rig and survive ( the rig did too, except for the cab and driver of course).

The street light poles here aren't designed to breakaway, but they will break off if they are hit hard enough. A good example here! They are pretty strong! The cop that was in that car died...

The MTO type signal poles that my area uses are designed to be breakaway or at least crumple on light impacts.

When I first saw this, I thought that the pole could also be a disguised cell-phone/4G tower. The diameter is certainly big enough to conceal antennas in the upper section (noticed the slightly darker section beginning about 2/3rds up and ending just under the light arm) and I've seen cell sites like this in thick poles before although the antennas would be housed in a taller section above the light arm.

Other than the signal control box, I don't see any additional equipment cabinets (unless they are in an underground vault) near the base of the pole that would indicate a possible cell site.

There IS a cell-phone tower Right Next Door to this signal pole On the other traffic signal on this intersection.

I understand break away street lgith poles, but for traffic lights that's a bit dangerous. i mean, the long masts and heavy aluminum signals we use here would cause more destruction than help. You guys use smaller masts and some signals are poly, so breakaway signal poles probably doesn't pose as much of a threat.

We used to use aluminium signals some even with heavy glass lenses back in the incandescent days on those poles. I really don't want something like that falling down.

All new signals here are poly now (aside from Oakville) but some older aluminium heads that were retrofitted to LED are still in use.

Heavier poles like the ones for cantilever sign structures are non breakaway and protected by guardrails.

All breakaway poles can cause a lot of damage, that is one reason I don't like them.

Unless you use a fiberglass pole with a low wattage durastar and a poly sag lens. That's very ligthweight.

The MTO and York Region likes them since they can just replace the base or bottom section and reuse the old pole.

And I think they do improve safety on the freeways since the pole usually ends up in the ditch, but for the city breakaway isn't that good since the speeds are lower and there's always the risk of the falling pole striking a pedestrian or another car.

Yeah. for freeways, breakaway poles are great. RIDOT has ben using them for a long, long time.