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Tall pole comeback?
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For the first time im seeing these tall signal median poles making a comeback here. In the first picture is 2009 streetview. In 2011 the pole was replaced by a smaller GTA standard sized height and the Eagle Mark IV was moved onto it. I know toronto uses a few too I believe. Now that the new permanent signals are almost all up, 2 intersections on this road have the taller poles for a total of 4 of these installed. All 4 are only on median Dixie poles that have 12-8-8-12 signals on them. The protected left turn being installed at another intersection here is getting thicker poles. The 12-8-8 poles are on standard sized poles. I wonder if this is going to be the new norm here for peel region construction projects . Sorry about the quality, my phone camera is shattered :/
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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 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.
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.
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!
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.