I may be wrong but I do not think those installations are owned by the Highways England. In this case if I am right the method of installation will be decided by the council or contractor.
Did you see the other side of the road? Sometimes one side of the road will be crash safe, while the other conventional columns; Due to exposure to slip roads etc. Or it could be just a case of the conventional columns were ‘in stock’ and in use for the Christmas break, while crash safe needed to be ordered in as they are manufactured in Holland(?).
If this is not the case I guarantee why would be these days nearly everything is decided by cost. To light the whole carriageway by one installation is not uncommon (A174 Wilton) and frankly the reason of this has happened is 1) time saved is money saved to the installers and future replacement by closing only one lane of the carriageway. 2) one lantern replacing two will cut electrical usage, probably not significantly but “enough”.
To further answer your question, Highways England do not really have a standard in my opinion, tubular, hexagonal and crash safe are all commonly used today still. Crash safe where barriers are not in place (M1 Jct 23a), conventional both central reservation and side mounted. The newest example of either tubular or hexagonal (I can not tell as I have used highways England live cameras) would be the A282 approach to the dartford tunnel (anti-clockwise) and the M23/M25 interchange. Hope this rather bloated response helps answer some questions!Not at all bloated and a rather interesting response! As I said before, there were columns on one side only.
The streetlighting information page on the Hull City Council website features a disclaimer that the A63 is the responsibility of Highways England, although the road names it mentions, none of them are the Hessle Road/Mytongate part of the A63.
http://www.hull.gov.uk/roads-and-paveme ... t-lightingNote as well there is a local main road within the Hull boundary also called Hessle Road, although the lighting for that is obviously their responsibility, not Highways England's responsibility.