Traffic Light Weekend

March 29, 2008

Two important events took place in Moscow recently. The first is that they’ve started replacing the excellent traffic lights made by Svecha with hideous ones made by a company called Nov-2000. The new lights resemble a light bulb covered with a colander (because the manufacturer was too cheap to put in a normal amount of LEDs).

Of course, you can find all sorts of astonishing specimens in Moscow.

But the stuff Nov-2000 makes defies all description. The way they mount the visors alone speaks volumes.

The new lights are set up next to the old ones first before switching the signal. Here the replacement is warranted: bulb lights need to be phased out.

Here’s another old one that’s still functioning.

But why they’re replacing this one is a mystery. Not only are the new traffic lights less bright, they also look worse. They’re three times thicker and have a bunch of bolts sticking out.

Old traffic lights are being replaced with new ones at an unprecedented pace since January of this year. And the old ones don’t even look that old, especially given that they started installing them only about 10 years ago (Moscow was practically the first city to transition to LED models, immediately after high-brightness LEDs were invented).

The second important event: Moscow has actively started installing mast arms with traffic lights hanging right over the roadway (i.e., like in the United States).

As usual, they began with the suburbs, where such structures have already been popping up for a couple of years. Moscow has always had one traffic light on the right before the intersection and one on the left after. Now there’s also a third one above the roadway. This makes complete sense, because nothing can block this signal, and it’s visible from afar.

Here they’ve already installed the mast arm, but haven’t hooked up the light yet.

The way the lights are attached is pretty terrifying. It’s likely that with the first strong winds, the new signals will come tumbling down like apples in autumn.

And to conclude, a small aesthetic gift from the road administration authority to Moscow citizens. Someone decided that the mast arm wasn’t secure enough and needed some kind of support. So they welded on an ugly-ass strut everywhere.

The Soviet spirit really is ineradicable.