The traffic signals installed on the Nu-Tunbridge phase one road network have been switched off after fourteen months.
The installation cost £41,000 including the power connection, which required 1.1km of cable across peat. The signals operated on a ninety-second cycle, day and night, at a three-lane approach to a junction with a single-track road, in open moorland, eleven miles from the nearest occupied building.
No vehicle has been recorded waiting at them.
Why they were on
The developer has explained that the signals were installed as part of the completed phase one specification, commissioned on handover as the contract required, and left running because switching them off was not in anybody’s scope of works.
This is, everyone involved agrees, entirely correct procedurally.
“I have driven past them at two in the morning in February and sat at a red light on my own, in the dark, in a bog, because I could not think what else to do.”
A contractor working on the site
The stonechats
Removal was scheduled for this month and has been postponed.
An ecological check ahead of the works found a pair of stonechats nesting in the cabinet housing at the base of the northern column, having entered through a cable gland. The nest is active. Disturbing it would be an offence.
The works have accordingly been deferred until after the breeding season, and the columns will remain in place until at least November.
The developer’s statement notes that the site “continues to support breeding birds” and describes this as an example of the scheme delivering biodiversity benefits.
The installation
- Cost: £41,000, including 1.1km of cable
- Operating period: 14 months, continuous
- Vehicles recorded waiting: 0
- Cycle time: 90 seconds, day and night
- Currently nesting inside: 1 pair of stonechats
- Removal: deferred to November
