More than a year after residents and aldermen agreed not to alter traffic lights on Ridge Avenue, Evanston City Council voted 8-1 last week to change the traditional signals at two intersections in the Northeast Evanston Historic District — a move that has rekindled community opposition to the issue.
The city will place decorative mast arms — metal beams that suspend traffic lights above roads — at two city intersections during the next year. City officials said mast-arm lights are more visible than Evanston’s traditional post-top signals, which are poles on corners of intersections.
“If you have a certain amount of traffic on the streets, (Illinois) requires mast-arm signals, as do federal highways,” said Keith Fujihara, Evanston’s deputy director of public works. “They just feel that it is much safer. It’s a national thing and every state in the country has agreed on this.”
In order to receive state money to repave Isabella Street and portions of Sheridan Road, the city needed to install mast-arm traffic lights at the intersection of Isabella, Sheridan and Ridge Avenue. The city also will install mast-arm lights at the intersection of Ridge and Central Street.
“This is an opportunity to relieve the city of a million (dollars), and we’re not sacrificing anything,” Ald. Ann Rainey (8th) said last week.
But some residents decried the decision, saying mast arms are ugly, don’t improve safety and don’t belong anywhere in Evanston.
“They are changing Evanston in appearance and feeling, and people move to Evanston for the visual atmosphere,” said Evanston resident Gordon Gerald, who lives near Ridge. “There have not been any studies performed on how mast-arm signals perform in the kind of the streets that we have here in Evanston.”
For some residents, the ordeal brought back memories of the dispute between city officials and residents about putting mast-arm traffic lights on Ridge in 2002.
“Petitions were circulated against mast- arm signals for part of Ridge Avenue, and hundreds of people signed those petitions,” said Evanston resident Vera Chatz. “These particular lights do not seem to have aroused the same controversy. I don’t know if the community was aware of it.”
The city is considering repaving sections of Ridge and Sheridan next year, using both state and federal funds to finance the improvements. The city also may examine installing mast arms on some Sheridan signals seven or eight years down the road, Fujihara said.
Officials plan to install some mast-arm traffic lights at several other intersections throughout Evanston in the coming months, but Fujihara said the city will continue to scrutinize the costs of installing the new signals.
“Mast arms are more expensive than post tops, and if we should feel that the traffic volumes do not warrant it, we won’t do it,” he said, adding that mast arms costs $25,000 more than post tops. “We will normally install them in Evanston when we deem it necessary.”
