Written 22/04/08

From Chris Kennett, Traffic Signals and Systems, Cambridgeshire County Council:

The traffic lights at the junction of the A14 and B1049, Histon Interchange, failed again in the early hours of this morning (Tuesday 22nd April). This appears to have been part of an ongoing problem, which is causing severe damage to parts of the traffic light controller.

Despite replacing 300 metres of cable, most of the traffic light controller and providing a new electricity supply the cause of the problem is still unclear, as all works to solve it have so far have been unsuccessful.

Update

The traffic lights at Histon Interchange are now back on as of 14.00 on the 22nd of April.

Further to my previous email this morning, our Partnership Contractor have located damaged cabling that may have been causing the problems experienced over the last few months. Some minor re-cabling has taken place and the lights have been turned back on. Further works to complete repairs, including more extensive re-cabling, will take place over the next few weeks. In the meantime, the traffic lights will be monitored to check the effectiveness of the repairs so far.

Works to complete the repairs may require the traffic lights to be switched off again during planned periods, outside peak hours during the day. There may also be traffic management and a number of lane closures for safety while some works are carried out. Disruption will be kept to a minimum during the remaining works.

Further update - 23 April 9:30

The traffic lights at Histon Interchange have unfortunately failed again overnight and are off again. Once again several pieces of electronic equipment appear to have been damaged by an unknown fault and will need to be replaced. The repair made yesterday to damaged cabling does not seem to have had an effect on the ongoing problems at this site so a detailed inspection of cabling and equipment will continue today in an attempt to find the cause.

We (the Traffic Signals and Systems team) are having a meeting with our Partnership Contractors today during which we intend to discuss why this problem is taking so long to resolve and what can be done to find the root cause. In the meantime we are working to restore the traffic lights as quickly as possible and are looking carefully for any potential cause of the ongoing problems.

May 1st 10:04

As you may be aware, there have been further failures of the traffic lights at Histon Interchange since last week. Our Partnership Contractors have now completed a replacement of the entire traffic signal controller. We are still monitoring the lights closely for further problems and we will be testing the original controller at our maintenance depot to try to find the cause of the fault.

The planned re-cabling has also been completed while the traffic lights were off, so there are no further expected works.

If you would like any further information on the works to repair the traffic lights, please email or phone 01223 717162.

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