Interesting Municipal Installations

[Larryc39]

Some sights around Youngstown, OH, which like most large cities has a shrinking industrial base and is overburdened with infrastructure to keep up.

This was in a mixed residential-commercial neighborhood of mainly abandoned buildings. Electric pole replacement. It must have been too much work to relocate the box as well.

Close up. That load can't be good for the wires, but at least they tied the cable to the new pole with some rope (or extra Romex?) for additional support.

This well done wiring splice was nearby as well. Yes it appeared to be actively shorting out, Red and Green traffic lights worked fine but the Yellow phases would turn on all the yellow lights at once.

And of course everyone's favorite tool, fun with Romex. This was in the outskirts of an industrial area of the city, one of many beacon traffic lights in flashing mode, ran with Romex from the nearest electric pole and spliced into what was once a full up jacketed cable. This was one of the nicer installations of Romex I've seen.

 

[mcclary's electrical]

I can understand the first one, that's just because the power company changed the pole, and the phone company has never fixed their side. The power company is not gonna do that for them.

But the traffic lights are ridiculous. Do you have a number you can call for code enforcement? They're getting paid good taxpayers dollars and ripping off the officials by doing it that way. This may have been done by a town maintenance guy. If that's the case, they don't care what you say, they're operating under a budget.

 

[iwire]

This was one of the nicer installations of Romex I've seen

If it happens to be UF the NEC allows running it along a messenger.

 

[mxslick]

If it happens to be UF the NEC allows running it along a messenger.

In any event, do the munis fall under the NEC? I thought they are like POCOs and don't.

 

[brantmacga]

This may have been done by a town maintenance guy. If that's the case, they don't care what you say, they're operating under a budget.

cable appears to be much newer than the fixture; most likely installed by the city maintenance crew.

 

[ksmith846]

If it happens to be UF the NEC allows running it along a messenger.

But is it allowed to be terminated without an "Approved fitting"?

 

[Larryc39]

Maybe in this use of Romex it's not strictly "against code" but like everyone expecting a product to be UL listed, traffic power cable is usually a large, solid conductor, multistrand, color-coded cable (like in the shorted spaghetti picture above it). Given that the installer did such a professional job yet lacked the basic components to do the job to spec is what is funny about this (and several others in the area) being done with whatever wire was lying around. Pretty sure it was a city job, the signal's probably 50 years old or so from the style of it, (anyone have a spare bucket truck :grinmuch of the city is repair/refurbished equipment, little is new installations/new equipment.

 

[tom baker]

In any event, do the munis fall under the NEC? I thought they are like POCOs and don't.

Some would like to think they are exempt from the NEC. They may have a street lighting department, which would be under the NESC, but traffic signals clearly are under the scope of the NEC.
A lot of signal wiring is done by electronic techs or non electricans.
And even a lot of new traffic signal wiring violates the NEC, IE a multiconductor cable white-red-yellow-green to the heads, with the green used for the green lamp.