Council Staff Trained to Change light bulbs!
Following a reply from Kildare County Council stating did not have the funds to change a light bulb in the traffic signals on Main Street Leixlip “because it was not a priority” I tabled a motion seeking to find out just what was the criteria the Council applied to such events. I got a detailed reply which can be seen by clicking the link below. In the debate that ensued I was told the 2009 budget for such maintenance had reduced from €400,000 in 2008 to €200,000 in 2009. As a response the Council had now trained some of their own staff to change defective bulbs which had produced considerable savings.
The Committee was told up to recently the Council engaged the services of a Specialist Traffic Lights Consultant to deal with faults, including changing broken bulbs. Sighs of disbelief was the initial response of Councillors prior to further questioning. I sought to know how much had been spent calling in specialists in 2008 to change broken bulbs, and was told could not be quantified. I then asked that in future junction treatments such as roundabouts should be installed in preference to traffic lights which would reduce maintenance costs. While it is now welcome news that the Council staff can do this work, it does pose serious questions as to the use of public funds in earlier years.
Kildare County Council report to the Celbridge Area Committee 11th Sept 2009
The following is the Priority List for Traffic Signal Maintenance:
1. Any faults at “Shuttle Signals”, traffic accidents or “knockdowns” and all lamps out at pelican crossings and traffic junctions;
2. Faults at pedestrian crossings and faults of 2 lamps out on one approach to any junction;
3. One green arrow or red lamp fault, controller faults, isolation of remote monitoring units and SCHOOT faults;
4. One green lamp and any other single lamp out at a junction, loop/detector faults, controller log faults and timing complaints; and
5. CCTV camera faults reports of queue length increasing, single lamp out at any junction, communication faults, faults with the Traffic Management Centre equipment and all other faults.
Faults which are considered to be a risk to the public (generally Priority List 1 and 2 above) are prioritized and repaired subsequent to available funding.
Other faults (generally Priority List 3, 4 and 5) are logged for repair when funding becomes available.
It should be noted that bulb changes, lens changes, lamp realignments, signal clearing, small timing changes and detection checks are now undertaken by an in house traffic signal maintenance team. All other specialist faults are repaired by a private traffic signal maintenance contractor.
It should be noted that the allocated budget for Traffic Signal Maintenance in 2009 was €200,000 which was considered inadequate but no other funds were available to supplement this budget. The budget for 2009 has now been fully committed and any further repairs will result in an over expenditure.