Shropshire traffic lights to be improved following funding award

Shropshire Council has received a boost in its effort to improve the county’s traffic lights, and to save money and carbon by reducing the amount of power that they use.

The council has been awarded £250,000 through the Government’s Traffic Signals Maintenance Specific Grant – which will speed up its traffic signals refurbishment programme over the next two years.

Steve Charmley, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member with responsibility for highways, said:

“This is excellent news for Shropshire and will help to ensure that we have better, more reliable traffic lights, but also help to save the council money, and reduce the carbon emissions that result from traffic light usage and maintenance. It also means that we will achieve our carbon reduction and improved air quality targets more quickly. So, it’s good news for the council, for all road users, and for the environment.”

The money will be spent in three ways.

Firstly, eleven Low Voltage (LV) traffic light junctions will be converted to Extra Low Voltage (ELV).*

These junctions will be upgraded to Microprocessor Optimised Vehicle Actuation (MOVA), improving reliability, safety, journey time reliability, capacity and reducing power consumption – saving money and carbon.

Secondly, a programme of refurbishing controlled crossings from LV to ELV will be partially completed. This will significantly reduce energy/carbon consumption by around 65%, improve reliability by a factor of around seven, and allow future co-location of pollution monitors and other sensors.  The sites will be remotely monitored, eliminating wasted site visits and saving wasted fuel (carbon) and money.

Thirdly, remote monitoring units will be added to crossing sites which are not remotely monitored and are not included in the LV to ELV sites listed above. meaning they can realise the benefits of improved response times and reduced wasted journeys to site.

Assuming a 30-year life span for each set of lights this work will save the council an estimated £118,500.

Further information

*Nine are already on the refurbishment programme for 2021/23 and this funding would allow the remaining two to be brought forward over the next two years.