Bright idea for savings on highways Reader to Reader
Q: With all the push to reduce hydro consumption and convert to LED. Many cities have converted their street lights to LED. Why has the province not taken this step on any 400 series highways or other provincial highways? The energy used for all those lights must be massive.
A: The province is retrofitting provincially-owned traffic signals with LED in the signal heads.
Ministry of Transportation spokeswoman Astrid Poei said the MTO has been installing the LEDS in new conventional lighting systems since 2012.
The newer high mast lighting systems — the really tall ones with multiple lights at the top — all have LED luminaires.
Poei said the move to LED is reducing energy consumption in those light fixtures by 80 per cent.
Q: While travelling through southern Ontario recently, I noticed that many municipalities have their traffic lights timed to facilitate non stop traffic flows — you may have to stop at one but the others are timed to turn green. Here in Niagara we have to stop at every light. Why can’t we do what the other municipalities do?
A: Some of Niagara’s streets have coordinated signals, but not all. “We have a mystery on our hands and I’m wondering whether Search Engine can help. Two paintings were dropped off at St. Catharines City Hall earlier this year that have no markings to denote who the artist was. In order for us to consider accepting them into the Civic Art Collection we need to know the artist!
The paintings are both watercolours – one is of the Old Lincoln County Courthouse, the other is of the former Carnegie Library in downtown St. Catharines.
We’d be very interested if (Search Engine) readers were able to identify the artist!”
— Rebecca Cann, St. Catharines cultural services supervisor
It has to do with communication between intersections, the spacing of traffic signals along a corridor and the speed the traffic travels at, said Nick Rosati, Niagara Region traffic systems program manager.
Rosati said coordinating signals on a one-way street such as Main Street or Division Street in Welland is much easier than on a
Fact finder!
In 2011, prior to LED retrofitting on provincial highways, there were 38,900 lights in use on provinciallyowned highways, roads and bridges. Their energy consumption was approximately 62.4 million kilowatt hours, based on lights being on an average of 12 hours a day, every day of the year. All that energy cost approximately $6.8 million annually based on a price of $0.11 per kilowatt hour.
two-way system.
That’s because traffic signals along a road typically have different spacing between them. That means the two directions of traffic east and west have to cover different distances between the traffic signals.
Other factors also come into play such as the number of driveways between intersections. They don’t allow for a steady speed of traffic because drivers are slowing down to turn in and out of residences or businesses.
Bus stops also throw a wrench in things.
“It’s a very simple calculation, speed and distance. How long does it take cars to get from this point to that point?” Rosati said. “But if you throw all these factors in like bus stops and driveways, they’re not driving 48 kilometres an hour from this signal to that signal, and they’re not all travelling the same distance.”
The ideal situation, he said, is close intersections and traffic moving tightly together.
Where there are clusters of signals closer than 500 metres apart, the region tries to coordinate them. But when distances are further than that, Rosati said traffic spreads out too much
The Region has synchronization in place on Main and Division Streets in Welland and in Niagara Falls on Thorold Stone Road and parts of Lundy’s Lane and Stanley Avenue. In St. Catharines, it’s in place on Fourth Avenue, parts of Welland Avenue and on Sir Isaac Brock Parkway, formerly St. Davids Road.