Around £5m will be needed to upgrade traffic lights in parts of Liverpool, with some signals using technology that is nearly 50 years old.
Some city traffic lights are past their expected lifespan and are in need of replacing and upgrading on 11 strategic routes with 25 of the oldest sets of signals.
A report will be presented to Liverpool City Council’s cabinet on Friday recommending that lights, some of which date back to 1967, should be replaced with low voltage LED lanterns. Only 15% of the traffic lights are currently equipped with LED Lamps and 50% will be upgraded.
The investment will focus on strategic routes, sites that more than 25 years old, locations with significant fault history and the upgrade of seven satellite sites, not including those routes already within an existing £80m highways programme
The Liverpool City Council recommendation is because there have been a number of failures recently, which is due to the age and condition of the equipment. The failures have occurred at times when there has been a significant amount of congestion on major routes through the city.
Among the routes to be targeted are Speke Road, Aigburth Road, Park Road, High Road/Picton as well as Prescot Road, West Derby Road, Townsend Avenue, Queens Drive and the Strand.
A spokesman for Liverpool City Council told JMU Journalism: “We hope to minimise the disruption by putting in temporary lights while the units are being replaced.”
Councillor Malcolm Kennedy, cabinet member for regeneration, said: “We have all been caught up in disruption caused by the failure of traffic lights, and it also costs us more as the maintenance costs and repair bills are higher.
“This is a good investment as it will reduce our energy and maintenance costs in future, and has the added benefit of helping traffic flow more smoothly on our roads.
“This is part of our wider commitment to tackling long-standing historic underinvestment dating back many decades to make life easier for pedestrians.”