Temporary traffic lights still there after roadworks finished

cheesefest

cheesefest

cheesefest

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I have noticed this a few times. When there’s been roadworks which requires temporary traffic lights. How come these traffic lights are still operational when the roadworks and contractors have cleared?

Last night as I was driving home, there was some temporary lights where there was a burst pipe under the pavement and the whole width had to be dug up. The barriers were removed and yet the lights were still there!

These traffic lights are causing long tailbacks. Monday afternoon there were about 40 cars in every direction.
 
Two different contractors, one won’t tell the other to collect til they are completely complete then they may need 24hrs to collect.

Temporary lights are usually a specialist contractor who has to design the system so your average digging tarmac contractor will use an external contractor.
 
This kind of thing is mega frustrating. We recently had 3 way traffic lights at the bottom of our road in order for the council (or their contractor of choice) to repair a small hole in the road, which incidentally had already had cones placed around it for months beforehand. The lights were put up several weeks before any actual work went ahead causing absolute chaos, why do they do this? How hard would it be to actually get roadworks planned to cause the least amount of disruption possible?
 
Standard procedure. Poor H&S choices and poor management.

If you were to be given a map of the routes where the contractors come and go you'd laugh. Highly inefficient planning, or lack of it.
 
Another Cheesefest whinge.

I was told on a speed awareness course (someone asked why motorways have lanes closed with no one working on them) that to have roadworks, closures etc. the Highways Agency have to apply to the courts (or somewhere similar) and pay a fee so they always overestimate the time it's going to take as it costs again to extend and if they want to bring the date forward after the work has completed it costs again so many don't bother if it's a couple of days.
 
cheesefest said:
I have noticed this a few times. When there’s been roadworks which requires temporary traffic lights. How come these traffic lights are still operational when the roadworks and contractors have cleared?

Last night as I was driving home, there was some temporary lights where there was a burst pipe under the pavement and the whole width had to be dug up. The barriers were removed and yet the lights were still there!

These traffic lights are causing long tailbacks. Monday afternoon there were about 40 cars in every direction.
Click to expand...

Probably to let the fresh tarmac cool else traffic will damage it.
 
coupe69 said:
This kind of thing is mega frustrating. We recently had 3 way traffic lights at the bottom of our road in order for the council (or their contractor of choice) to repair a small hole in the road, which incidentally had already had cones placed around it for months beforehand. The lights were put up several weeks before any actual work went ahead causing absolute chaos, why do they do this? How hard would it be to actually get roadworks planned to cause the least amount of disruption possible?
Click to expand...
A similar thing happened with the main road (dual carriageway) between two towns. Both ways had one lane coned off a month before work started with temp traffic lights. It was quicker to drive the long way round - an extra 2 miles each way than queue
 
ALD said:
Probably to let the fresh tarmac cool else traffic will damage it.
Click to expand...
Most likely this, you can drive a car over freshly laid tarmac without causing any damage, not a 44t truck.

Don’t ask how I know this…. :o :D
 
Useless contractors doing crap jobs everywhere. Welcome to Britain.

They are all over my town as well at the moment and they seem to like setting the cycle time to be as slow as possible, so the maximum amount of traffic builds up in all directions.
 
Another thing which I have mentioned in GD. I do litter picking both solo and in groups. When doing in a group, we often find temporary road signs, many of them could have been used again as universal. Such as roadworks 1/4 mile ahead, diversions- which have a moveable arrow. These cost money. When we find them, they are in a state that unable to reuse again- rusty, bent etc.

Why can’t the contractors go and collect these signs once the work has been completed?
 
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