Written 07/07/08

From Richard Ling, Team Leader, Signals & Systems, Cambridgeshire County Council

Over the past few weeks the traffic signals at Histon Interchange have failed several times, there was a similar situation a few months ago.

During the last period of faults the EDF power supply was suspected to be at fault so a more reliable supply was re-routed from the nearby Bridge Rd /Cambridge Road junction. All of the controller equipment was also replaced with a known working unit. The situation improved but recently the equipment is surviving only for a few hours before it shuts down due to it's internal monitoring, this then requires the County's signal contractor to reset the controller.

A site meeting was held on Friday between representatives of the County's signals team, Cambridgeshire Highways and the signal contractor to try to resolve this unsatisfactory situation. The outcome of this meeting was that a larger diameter power cable may need to be installed, this would improve the quality of the supply which appears to be damaging the controller circuit boards at the interchange.

A further update - 17th July:

The planning for the installation of the larger cable is complete, and a meeting has been held with County's highways partners to arrange the detail of the installation. To complete the work safely it will be necessary to close lane 2 of the circulatory carriageway, which in turn requires the closure on some of slip road lanes. It would not be acceptable to complete this work in peak periods and as the traffic management system could take up to 2 hours to install it is planned for night working to be used. Our current indication is that installation will start on Monday 28th July and will take approximately 1 week. At this time road space is being booked under an emergency notice and specialist contractors booked.

I am continuing to instruct my signal contractor to attend the site just before the morning peak and on weekends. Unfortunately this pro-active measure failed on Wednesday when the engineer's vehicle broke down near St Neots. After advice I have decided not to install a standby generator onto the site due to the risk of theft.

On 12/08/08 at 5:39pm Ray Perkins wrote: I know that I am not the only person to observe that the traffic flows much better when the lights aren't working - even at peak times! Why bother to fix them!

On 12/08/08 at 5:47pm Denis Payne wrote: We've had e-mail responses supporting this - and also strongly arguing for the lights to be repaired as soon as possible. There are 1200 cycle crossings of the junction each day - without lights those are a great deal more dangerous - and even as a car driver I feel safer with the lights operating!

On 21/08/08 at 7:27pm Bryan Smith wrote: I have been a resident of Histon for the past 19 years and drive daily across the roundabout above, both in rush hour and at other times. It has become very clear to me that these signals are a waste of scarce money and resources. When they work, they result in queuing at all entrances and exits from the roundabout at any time of day or night - regardless of traffic requirements. This leads frequently to backing up of traffic onto the roundabout, and down onto the feeder roads, at busy times which is a danger. (Particularly, traffic trying to get into Histon is often baulked by traffic trying to get to the A14 Eastbound, due to the red light controlling access to the A14; also the same is true for traffic to Cambridge and Westbound A14 traffic). Conversely when the traffic lights fail (which is a frequent occurrence), traffic seems to flow very freely, and is only held back by the traffic lights on the roads going into Histon and Cambridge (which are both very close to the roundabout). Would it not be wise to check my findings with a proper traffic survey with the lights on and off, in and out of rush hour, before spending large sums of scarce money and using large amounts of expensive contractor time? I am confident we can easily do without these lights which would surely save a fortune. Many cyclists do not use the cycle path crossings anyway, which leads to a lot of near misses; many of those that do do not bother waiting for the lights to change. In my view, lights at a roundabout lead people to become careless and lazy, and to fail to properly look before acting whether they are cycling, walking or driving. Proper separation of cyclists, pedestrians and motorists is the only way to protect them, either through an underpass or bridge - although the bridge at Milton doesn't seem to have stopped many people from crossing at the roundabout there. It is more dangerous having an inconsistent service than none at all.

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