$1M to replace a traffic light
It’s mind-boggling to read the reasons why it can cost a million dollars to replace a traffic light at an intersection. Even the study done before anything is changed “keeps three or four employees busy for two to three months.”
Nicholas 17:02 on 2025-05-12 Permalink
I’ve seen huge maintenance costs for traffic lights too, and not just in Quebec. One of the advantages of roundabouts: other than occasional landscaping, if you choose to landscape it, there’s no ongoing costs, no power outages.
DeWolf 10:20 on 2025-05-13 Permalink
There are also a lot of small streets around Montreal that have unnecessary traffic lights. I’m thinking of de Gaspé in Little Italy, for instance, or Henri-Julien on the lower Plateau. I assume these date from the days when traffic engineers identified side streets as traffic corridors that could provide relief to major arteries like St-Denis, but now that we’re in the era of traffic calming, it really doesn’t make sense to have these lights.
There’s precedent for getting rid of them: there used to be a traffic light at Esplanade and Bernard (because Esplanade was designated as a traffic funnel at some point in the past) which was replaced by a four-way stop about 20 years ago.
DeWolf 10:22 on 2025-05-13 Permalink
(Actually, looking at Google Street View I can see that the Bernard/Esplanade lights were still there in 2009, but by 2011 they were deactivated and replaced by a four-way stop, and by 2014 they had been removed. I guess these things take a long time.)
Kate 16:40 on 2025-05-13 Permalink
When I first lived in Villeray, 2005, there were no traffic lights on Jarry between St‑Laurent and St‑Denis. Some drivers picked up speed getting from one to the other. There’s a grade school just off Jarry on the block between de Gaspé and Casgrain, and I think that’s where the first lights went up, and it seemed like good sense. There’s also a crossing guard three times a day during the school year.
Then they added another set of lights a block east, at Henri‑Julien, and another set another block east, at Drolet. These blocks are short! I think most people around here would agree that we don’t need one or both of those sets, but there they are, and with little kids going to that school – and high school kids walking to and from the metro – it would be hard to gather arguments against them.