Street Lights & Traffic Lights

Content

Street Lights

Complaints or Concerns

• Report any street light issues to the District of Maple Ridge Operations Centre for both metal and wooden pole street lights. When reporting an issue, please be prepared to provide information including the closest address or intersection, the condition of the street light and whether or not it is on a wooden or metal pole.

General Information

• The District of Maple Ridge maintains 3,000 ornamental street lights, which are the ones you see on metal poles. These street lights are repaired within 10 business days from the day it is reported. Exceptions might occur in difficult circumstances, such as motor vehicle accidents with damage to the concrete base, etc.
• BC Hydro maintains 1457 hydro lights, which are the street lights that you see with a metal mast arm that are on wooden poles. These lights are reported to BC Hydro as soon as we get the complaint. After that it is up to BC Hydro to repair it.
• Power cost for street lights is established as a flat rate, per light. So, if a street light is on 24/7 or is off (burned out) the cost to the District is the same.
• Every metal street light pole has a hole to access the wires and fuses inside. This oval shape hole is covered with a lid. Many of the poles have this hand hole cover made special to be vandal proof so as to prevent wire theft.
• The District standard for metal street light poles is for them to be galvanized and then powder coated. This is estimated to extend the life expectancy of the poles to 50 years. Every year the District replaces a number of street light poles. Replacement is based on the condition of the pole and not on appearance. The first to be replaced are the ones that are badly corroded and have holes at the base - this type of condition is usually thanks to our beloved canine companions!

Traffic Lights

Complaints or Concerns

• Report any traffic light issues for District maintained lights to the Operations Centre at 604-463-9581. Issues with the ones maintained by the Ministry of Transportation and Highways can be reported to 604-660-8300.

General Information

• The traffic lights on Lougheed Highway are maintained by the Ministry of Transportation and Highways with the exception of the 7 lights in the downtown core, from 223 Street and Lougheed Highway to 116 Avenue and Lougheed Highway, which are maintained by the District.
• The Electro-Mechanical Department is responsible for the maintenance of 36 of the 46 traffic intersections within the District of Maple Ridge.
• The District maintained traffic lights all use LED traffic "bulbs" which use only 10 W of energy compared with the 69 W that the typical incandescent type uses.
• The way the traffic light "knows" when to change from red to green is by pressing one of the push buttons, or by detecting vehicles stopped at the stop bar. If the vehicle passes the stop bar, the controller "thinks" the vehicle went by (turned right for instance), and does not change the light.
• There are two ways to detect vehicles: metal detection or video detection.
  • In the case of metal detection there is a wire loop buried in the pavement in each lane located next to the stop bar. When a vehicle (metal) stops at the stop bar, the loop picks up the signal and the controller "knows" that a vehicle waits to cross the road.
  • Half of our intersections have video detection. The detection is done by the software which monitors the change in the pixels of each camera. There is no video recording though...
• Red light cameras are installed and maintained by the Ministry of Transportation and Highways. The District only supplies the hydro power to the equipment, nothing else. There are three red light cameras:
  • Lougheed Highway at Dewdney Trunk Road, for east bound traffic
  • Lougheed Highway at 203 Street, for east bound traffic
  • Lougheed Highway at 207 Street, for west bound traffic
• All traffic lights "rest" on green on the main street (for example on Dewdney Trunk Road) until there is a request to change from a vehicle on the side street. This is why at night the lights are all green on main streets.
• Almost half of our traffic intersections have UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply). This is a system using batteries to power the intersection for a period of time after the hydro power is out. A typical intersection can be powered off batteries from 6 to 12 hours.
• You may have noticed that some traffic controller cabinets are wrapped in a kind of plastic with various scenery. This "shrink wrap" of the traffic controllers almost eliminated the graffiti issue. The District plans to wrap all the traffic controllers.
• When crossing the road, pushing the button multiple times doesn't speed up the light! Pushing the button once does the same thing.