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PostPosted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 6:16 pm 
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Has anyone else ever seen this happen?

New columns and lanterns installed, but never either switched on or maintained.

In Consett, the council built a new road a few years back to a proposed shopping area and spent millions building main roads, with lighting, illuminated bollards drainage everything, and then for all work to stop and nothing more to happen. Well now they have sold one section of the land for housing and development is started.The brand new, never used  Alpha 8 lanterns, which have been left unmaintained for so long there canopies are literally black and several have been ripped off columns by strong winds, so rather than use them the council come along CUT the bracket to about a foot from the column and install Iridiums. A complete waste of money I think. The installations also look horrible, they would have been better fitting post top adapters to the columns, that would of looked better.


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PostPosted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 1:07 am 
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It almost happeend in the Middlehaven area of Middlesbrough... new columns with Urbis Saturns were installed and never used. Then the land got sold off for redevelopment. part of the land is used by the new college, and the other part is for some trendy development... and during development these Urbis Saturns have finally been lit, as the road is being used to go to the site office.


In York, another close one recently has been Thorn jets that were installed on concrete columns to replace mercury lanterns... only for new columns with WRTL Stela's to be installed about 6-8 weeks later.
There is also a column in Haxby that got a Jet fitted on the top, even though the column has no supply and a new column with Hollophane QSS about 2m away was the replacement installation!

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PostPosted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 1:09 am 
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I'm sure this has happened in Leeds too.


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PostPosted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 1:51 am 
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mazeteam wrote:
There is also a column in Haxby that got a Jet fitted on the top, even though the column has no supply and a new column with Hollophane QSS about 2m away was the replacement installation!


:lol: Oh dear, how stupid! Obviously a classic case of contractors following what they were told by a computer rather than using their eyes!  :roll:

With regards to the unused Alpha 8s and Saturns, isn't it a bit stupid to fit the lighting before the buildings are even built? I don't think that's ever happened in my area. The ducts for the columns are usually dug out as the buildings are being built and when they are finished externally but still not ready to be opened the lighting is then installed. This seems like a more sensible approach to me as new developments have often fallen through before they've been built.


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PostPosted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 7:04 am 
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I just hope the new Iridiums are cosmo or metal halide otherwise its just a complete waste of money. I wonder if they are even power the iridiums up, as I cant havent seent them lit yet.

Yes, they should put the lighting up after the developments are built, I also remember the feeder pillar door has been ripped open and stripped for copper, and a few column bases too. So this means half of the columns doors will be secured by steel bands they might of well of just replaced the lot!


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PostPosted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 1:36 am 
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One can only hope they learn their lesson next time!

I was thinking earlier about how some dirt tracks were laid around here in the 60s and 70s and weren't even surfaced until several years later when the areas finally became developed. If they had surfaced them and laid them out complete with drainage and lighting etc the lighting would have been in a really sorry state by the time the roads were finally developed in the 2000s!


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PostPosted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 6:58 am 
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I thought the council must of been short of money as they have recently been cleaning and repairing some of that damaged lanterns, whereas in the past they would have been replaced.  They have also been installing second hand lanterns for replacements as well. Another thing they often do is if a column is damaged or corroded and the lantern still works, they will fit it onto the new column; this could be caused by the proposed PFI and not wanting to install new equipment.


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PostPosted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 11:15 pm 
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A pity more councils don't take that approach, PFI or not, it avoids wasting unnecessary money to reuse perfectly good lanterns and repair those which are damaged rather than just replacing them like they do in my area.


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PostPosted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 12:43 am 
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York would do that too... though it was easier with the depot at poppleton. In the new depot that the council has shoehorned them into, there is hardly any room for the new stuff, nevermind reusing old lanterns!
Before the depot moved, there ended up being massive piles of WRTL Arcs and WRTL 2000 post tops, and a considerable number of ZX3's and Hollophane QSM's that were awaiting reassignment. A lot of them were sent across to Wakefield, so if you're driving around there and spot a black QSM then you know where it's come from!

The other issue is man hours - whoever is in charge has to weigh up if it is worthwhile paying a crew to sit at a work bench and screw in new ballasts (or other equipment) onto the control gear mounting plats for lanterns as opposed to being out in the van installing lanterns or fixing ones with dud lamps. Some come down in favour of repairing, as generally it is cheaper, whilst others would go for buying in new stuff instead.

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PostPosted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 7:52 am 
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Out of all the countys round Newcastle,Gateshead has one of the worst streetlighting systems, they take ages to carrry out repairs, half of the columns dont even numbers on and they never apply paint to any of the columns, if any one could do with a pfi its them.


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