Green light for Leicestershire traffic signal improvements

The council has received £250,000 towards upgrading old traffic lights to improve reliability and reduce faults.

photo of traffic lights on a road

Leicestershire County Council is to benefit from the Department for Transport’s fund to improve traffic signals.

After a successful bid, the council received £250,000 towards upgrading old traffic lights to improve reliability and reduce faults to provide longer term maintenance savings.

LED lights will also be retrofitted to some signals to save on energy use.

Councillor Ozzy O’Shea, cabinet member for highways and transport, said: “Ensuring our traffic lights are well maintained and upgraded as regularly as possible helps us reduce delays caused by faults and keep traffic in Leicestershire moving.

“Reducing congestion helps keep carbon emissions down. Using the money to continue the replacement of existing traffic signals with LED lights will also reduce energy use by up to 78%, saving on energy costs and further reducing carbon emissions.

“We have ambitious targets to be carbon neutral as a council by 2030, so any way our highways work can help reach this goal, and make Leicestershire greener, is beneficial.  

“We are currently scoping out areas which need their older traffic signals replacing as a priority and will announce areas once they are confirmed.” 

The extra money from the Department for Transport is part of this year’s Highway Maintenance settlement for English local authorities outside London.

The government’s £15 million scheme saw over 100 authorities bid for cash to receive funding of up to £500k.

Leicestershire was one of 39 successful councils, and part of the 18 councils to receive a partial funding amount.

Mr. O’Shea continued: “As one of the lowest funded councils in the country it is vital that we continue to take advantage of any government funding pots being offered – especially when it helps towards the rising cost of vital maintenance work on our busy highways.”

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