I feel there must be a reason for these tall poles, maybe they will put an emergency vehicle detector up high or a camera-sensor for traffic detection. Or they just re-used the old pole, if it's shiny now, I have a theory they re-treat the old poles which makes them look new.

Bringing this up and thinking of other projects, I can see Region of peel actually has a history of reusing parts. Bovaird between 410 and kennedy used old streelight arms on the concrete poles. Bovaird intersection projects between Dixie and Torbram re-used the median streetlight poles. And Queen between McLaughlin and Chinguacousy reused many types of old signal heads on new plumbizer arms. what else....

It would really surprise me if they go through all the trouble to refinish the poles and reuse them. The expenses involved in doing that would cost more than just getting new poles. These poles look like they're galvanized steel, and if so, it's a project to re-galvanize. The metal would have to be sandblasted and dipped and go through the whole process, which has to be done in a factory (it can't be done by the average joe like painting). So you'd pay to have the poles removed, leave them in a yard, taking up space (thus costing money) and then pay to have them transported to a place that does galvanizing, then pay for the galvanization, and pay to transport them back to the yard where they will sit until ready to be used.

It could be that they're going to install something or possibly just variation in parts. In Rhode Island all the signals are installed and maintained by RIDOT, yet there's a lot of variety, even between intersections completed around the same time. Some of our signals use spanwire and some are on masts (though all the recent ones have been masts AFAIK) and the poles/masts they use can vary significantly as well. Could just be that they used what they had, unless these poles are only used for specific locations within the intersections.

@Mike: It's great how we get into some educational knowledge stemming from the little things we observe in projects! You're right, these poles are galvanized steel. Nice, I like your cost analysis, but I think I have a fair counter argument to make for it being economical to re-galvanize over buying new poles . First, the contractor is doing the work to replace all the signal sets on this widening project (removal $ saved - part of contract), they have their own storage yard (storage $ saved), and they're not local, so they're commuting which means a re-galvanizing plant can be along their route (transport $ saved). So I see it's just paying to have poles re-galvanized, which seems should be less than buying new steel as well. Environmentally good choice as new steel doesn't need to be mined, smelted and heated in manufacturing.

Hmm yeah I guess if they're finding it hard to come across poles cheaply they might find it cheaper to regalvanize the poles. Now, the contractor just installs the stuff, right? Or do they make the actual purchase as well and then charge the city/town for it? I think RIDOT (our signals are all state-owned) probably contracts out the labor of the installation but RIDOT certainly oversees it all and they do the service work later on. We're such a small state that it's just more economical for all the signals to be state-owned lol. I'm sure you have counties up in Ontario that are larger than RI.

RIDOT reuses aluminum davit poles on the freeways to replace knockdowns. I've seen poles get reinstalled with a replacement davit section (the davit poles consist of a straight section of pole and a second curved piece interlocks with it, making a curved pole) that's older than the pole itself. You can usually tell if the aluminum pole is older or not because the new ones are always shiny and the old ones take a darker appearance, almost like they're painted. After years they tarnish and the salt spray from the freeway probably doesn't help any.

These poles were only a month or two old in this streetview. Look at how shiny and light-colored they are. (personally I don't like them when they're brand-new; I like the look after they've been broken in a little.

these poles were installed in 2004, so they're 11 years old in the street view. You can see they still have a shine to them but they've dulled just a little. I personally consider aluminum poles to look their best around this stage.

These davits here are from 1957; original to this section of Interstate 95. The poles in the median (except for the ones with a tighter curve radius) are all original but a lot of the shoulder-mounted poles have been replaced or are missing entirely.

These poles are also from the 50s, and their shine is gone but they're not all that dark. This expressway doesn't support as heavy of a traffic load and the environment likely isn't as corrosive or industrious as an interstate so the poles haven't gotten dark. These poles are also not davits, as you likely noticed. These poles are underbraced arms and are actually owned and maintained by National Grid (the electric company) and leased to RIDOT just like how our wood pole lights are owned by NGrid and leased to the city/town. So RIDOT pays an annual rental charge on these lights just like cities and downs do on wood poles lights. These fancy poles used to hold remote ballast 400W MV clamshell lights. In the 60s they changed all the remote ballast clamshell lights to integral ballast 400W MV GE cobraheads. The new lights were 400W MV just like the old ones so the only savings was probably just ballast losses. the remote ballasts had mounted up on top of the poles and the little brown rectangle about 2-3ft from the top of the pole is some form of access to pull the wires for the splices between the pole, ballast, and light. Looks like a regular outdoor electrical box worked into the wall of the pole. Here's one that they kept the ballast on. I'm assuming the ballast was probably stuck in place since it's in a spot that makes it unlikely that they forgot about it. there's some longer double-guy armed poles too that were installed at the beginning (they look to have had remote ballasts originally so I'd say they're original like the underbraced poles) and there are newer poles with 10ft truss arms used as spot replacements for knockdowns. They've also used 8ft tapered elliptical poles as spot replacements (as well as 6ft arms too). There's no rhyme or reason to what style pole NGrid uses on the freeways, in fact I've seen them use used poles too, which is fine by be; less waste. On downtown streets or residential neighborhoods they stay pretty consistent with the poles they use and don't reuse used poles.

The contractor takes care of supplying all goods for projects, within city specified standards. In this case it's region standards, some main roads here like this project are owned by Region of Peel. The region a spans 3 cities, and it's main purpose is to provide one police force/ambulance system for all the cities to save money. It is kind of silly to have a regional government body as there can be duplication of public services, like I don't see the point of why they have regional roads for cities within that have their own road-works departments. The region pretty much makes their roads to the standards for the city it's for, but manage their roads' signals like RIDOT. They do seem to have their own standards on some things, such as all regional roads use the same pedestrian countdown modules. What's more, up the chain we have provincial roads, which is for freeways and highways in rural areas.

I like a certain age of aluminum pole. I remember seeing poles that looked like grey fiberglass but were just dirty aluminum. I liked the light grey look lol.

The elevated gardener expressway in Toronto had the same 50's davits you share, origionally LPS. Then they were AE125'd in HPS. Now the bridge is being refurbished and they are replacing all the davits with new repo's, currently mounting an assortment of 80's 90's cobras!

Ah I see. I *think* RIDOT does all the purchasing, since the brands used are generally the same (or at least similar) no matter the job site. I have no proof though. We just have local roads (owned by the city/town) and state roads (owned and maintained by the state; including state routes/highways/freeways too). The Interstates are owned and maintained by the state as well, though back in the day, the federal government provided a lot of the cash needed to build our Interstate Highway System.

Yeah over here since are owned either by the municipality, regional municipality, or the MTO there's a fairly wide variation in what gets installed. The poles a fairly standard with either galvanized steel octagonal poles or Pole fab style round poles being the most common but the signal heads seem to vary on the contractor.

The aluminium davits on the Gardiner were originally equipped with 6' Powerlite HO fluorescent fixtures but got replaced with Philips LPS fixtures sometime in the 70s. The section west of Stratchan got HPS OVZs in the late 90s while other section got AE 125s in 2006. Some of the the original poles got replaced over the years due to knockdowns but a few original poles remained until they started refurbishing the bridge a couple of years ago. You could tell which poles were original since they have a extended slipfitter area to fit the original 6' fluorescent fixtures. Interestingly on the refurbished sections, they replaced the poles but for the most part reused the existing HPS fixtures. The Gardiner is owned and maintained by the City of Toronto so it differs a lot from a standard MTO freeway.