Ukastle forums :: View topic - Motorway Lighting

Moffat01 wrote:

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!

Author:	sotonsteve [ Tue Dec 15, 2020 4:22 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Motorway Lighting
There is an "idea" that lighting columns only have an expected design life of 20 years. There is also a belief that if the cabling feeding the lighting columns is life expired, if the columns are near or beyond 20 years of age, they should be considered for replacement too. Having said that, I can think of lots of locations where columns have been replaced that are less than 20 years old, and I don't mean individual columns here and there, I mean whole "schemes" that have been replaced by new "schemes".

Author:	deadendwaterfall [ Wed Dec 23, 2020 11:25 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Motorway Lighting
Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures for comparison, but in Hull, on the A63, near to the Mytongate junction, something has happened. Previously, there were SONs on twin brackets in the center of the carriageway, now those twin brackets have disappeared and new single bracket columns with LED lighting of some kind have been installed, but currently only on the 'William Booth House' side of the road. Surely they'll later install lighting columns on the opposite side of the road too to make up for the twin bracket columns going? Or is it the norm for Highways England to install single bracket columns only on one side of a road? Why would they remove the twin bracket installations in favor of single bracket ones? Also, I noticed that the new columns were of the hexagonal based variety rather than of the tubular based type which I found rather surprising considering what I've read on here about the tubular based columns being more commonly installed now due to being cheaper. Are these new columns I spotted likely to be of the 'crash safe' type? I'm not sure if Highways England has any sort of policy where all new lighting columns installed are to be 'crash safe'. Further up, beyond Mytongate where a new footbridge has been installed, there's still the old SON installations.

Author:	Moffat01 [ Thu Dec 24, 2020 12:02 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Motorway Lighting
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!

Author:	deadendwaterfall [ Thu Dec 24, 2020 9:10 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Motorway Lighting
Moffat01 wrote: 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-lighting Note 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.

Author:	SpeedStar [ Fri Feb 05, 2021 5:15 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Motorway Lighting
A13James wrote: Noticed today that on the M1 between J6A and 9, all the Sapphires have been replaced by LED lanterns. Not sure what type, or when it was done, but nice to see 600W SON being replaced. The catenary lighting to the South of J6A lives on into 2018! Also, some of the Iridiums at J11 have been replaced by what looks like Amperas. They are actually DW Windsor Kirium Pros and the LED lanterns replacing the Sapphires from J6a-10 are Phosco P860s. Plus the Sapphires from J25-28 are gone replaced by Philips Lumas, good riddance 600 W SON

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Author:	SpeedStar [ Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:16 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Motorway Lighting
The A1 at Colsterworth, Grantham, Lincolnshire MA60s previously lit this stretch of the A1, then they widened it and replaced them with verge mounted Sapphires and now Evolos light this stretch.

Author:	Paianni [ Mon Feb 08, 2021 5:44 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Motorway Lighting
Several readers may have seen the sped-up footage below several years ago, of the M1 J1-J7 at night time, but if they try to find my old posts they'll discover I've deleted the old uploads. I wasn't satisfied with the lack of colour grading (2013) and poor colour grading (2015) the videos had in the past and wanted to address it more thoroughly. I've also chosen to use a version of the soundtrack without stolen audio samples. https://vimeo.com/509736851 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AxhbAilHsE

Author:	SpeedStar [ Tue Feb 09, 2021 10:51 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Motorway Lighting
Paianni wrote: Several readers may have seen the sped-up footage below several years ago, of the M1 J1-J7 at night time, but if they try to find my old posts they'll discover I've deleted the old uploads. I wasn't satisfied with the lack of colour grading (2013) and poor colour grading (2015) the videos had in the past and wanted to address it more thoroughly. I've also chosen to use a version of the soundtrack without stolen audio samples. https://vimeo.com/509736851 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AxhbAilHsE And now the wear-your-sunglasses Sapphires now only exist on the M25 due to the stretch of them on the M1 from J25-28 having been replaced by LED a few months back.

Author:	Stickhead [ Fri Feb 12, 2021 9:39 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Motorway Lighting
On the topic of the catenery lighting on the southern end of the M1 just south of the M25 previously discussed here. I contacted Highways England on the subject recently out of personal interest but came back with some potentially valuable info referring to the SOX lighting still on the southern end of the M1 which some people here might find interesting or helpful. They don't have a specific date for removal but they say they plan to remove the catenery lighting and the rest of the SOX installations in that area of motorway by the end of this year, so some time before 2022. So if anyone wants to get pictures of it etc, I recommend doing so soon.

Author:	Leds are alright [ Sat May 08, 2021 4:36 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Motorway Lighting
The M25's Sapphires will need a definite replacement or relamp. It's annoying to see it all lit up in a patchy manner. At junction 30 a small section is also out. I hope it gets replaced or removed in favour or LED street lighting in the future. Highways England needs to connect their street lights with smart sensors or something better to make them more reliable. Why don't they just install 2700K LED street lights than those 4000K ones that every council seems to be using at the moment? My favourite colour temperature is 3000K. I want to see this colour being used on the M25 especially those parts which are already widened.

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