Gallery of Lights

Sweet! you have one of these RI signals?!

Yes.

is it functional? Hopefully I'll get one of these someday. Maybe a yellow Eagle/Siemens model or an ALLU-SIG.

I've not seen one of these before. What's the bottom lamp for?

The bottom lamp is an 8" yellow. (it's supposed to have a visor) It flashes yellow by default (the flashing yellow is preferred over a steady green at crosswalks, RR crossings, or fire stations since yellow signifies caution). When the crosswalk button is pressed, a train is coming, or a fire truck is exiting the station, the 12" steady yellow comes on in the middle and the 12" red atop the signal comes on. After a delay, it returns to flashing yellow mode.

Oh cool. We don't really have anything like that out here. Most of the emergency/RR/crosswalk setups use either standard signals, the 12/8/8 signals, or for crosswalks a special crosswalk sign outfitted with very bright amber flashers (I've mostly found these in Boulder City, near the University of Colorado campus). Every once in awhile I'll see something different, but nothing like this. Our signals out here in Colorado can get so boring sometimes.

LOL yeah this seems to be a unique design that the Rhode Island DOT likes to use. There are some older 12-12-12 versions of this as well as older 12-12-12 standard R-Y-G signals. The 12-12-8 R-Y-Y signals like this are the main thing here though. I'd love to eventually get a yellow version of this and a fiber-optic halogen pedestrian signal with a crosswalk button and find someone who can make a custom controller for it to work like it does normally!

That would be pretty cool. I'm currently in the process of obtaining the proper housing units for a signal I only ever found in the Tulsa, OK metro. (A R-Y-G-GA signal with the Y lamp being a 3M PV lamp). Would be nice to get some of these less common signals, but Colorado DOT likes to keep things pretty bland, though I've seen some odd ones pop up around Fort Collins recently.

why was the yellow programmed visability?

Not sure, but only a small number of intersections had this light as far as I know. The sequence that it followed was unusual but I never thought it warranted a yellow PV lamp.

I know of some intersections with a PV green in Toronto. They do that in closer spaced intersections so drivers are not confused from seeing the farther green light.

Oh and Ontario usually uses a standard 12-8-8 head with a steady green for their pedestrian signals.

Interesting. Usually the intersections that had the yellow PV signals were larger/busier, but other than that they didn't really stand out.

There's a couple places in Lakewood, Colorado that do the opposite, where the red is PV. Don't have pics but I might grab a few the next time I'm down there.

I think somewhere in Mass, they used louvers on the ball for left turn signals and standard unrestricted/uncontrolled yellow balls and green arrows with older installations but when they converted to LED, they used all arrows and removed the louvers on most. The earliest retrofits kept the red and yellow balls and louvers for the red and used LED green arrows. i've only seen in a couple times though, as doghouses are the most common type of left turn signal in southeastern mass. RIDOT uses the in-line bi-color arrow for protected left turns and arrows for all three colors for standard left turn intersections where the turning traffic is crossing more than one lane of oncoming traffic.

Things sure are different out there. The most common form of turn signals out here are doghouses and 'staggered/slanted' doghouses with the occasional dedicated turn signal for larger intersections. Though recently we've been getting a lot of those in-line 4 lamp signals with the second yellow lamp (forget the term for it at the moment) in this part of the state, and I hear those got real popular in the Northwest after they stole the idea from the Dallas/Fort Worth protected turn signals, which I actually spotted one of those right here in Denver not too long ago.