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Old 04-27-2015, 06:17 PM
 
Location: USA
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Connecticut is vertical and always will be. Pretty much the whole northeast hates horizontal.
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Old 04-29-2015, 02:09 PM
 
43,303 posts, read 43,957,600 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bus man View Post
Do you prefer your traffic lights to be mounted vertically or horizontally? Why? And which way is more common in your city?

I strongly prefer vertical. Reason being, I know that red is always on top, and green is always towards the bottom (either all the way at the bottom or just above an arrow). Thus, even the briefest glance will tell me if the light is red or not. With horizontal, I never remember which way it goes; is the red the one on the right or the left? One might think it doesn't matter, but what if you're color-blind? Or what if the sun is glaring on the lights, and you can see which one is illuminated more clearly than you can see its color?

Fortunately for my preferences, almost all of the traffic lights around here are vertical. The only ones that are horizontal are ones just past overpasses, where it would be hard to see the light on top if it were mounted vertically.
Most traffic lights in my area are vertical and that seems to be preferable to me.
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Old 04-29-2015, 09:17 PM
 
Location: WA Desert, Seattle native
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I can't name a city in the west (west of the Rockies) that has horizontal stoplights. Somebody correct me if I am wrong.
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Old 03-05-2016, 05:05 PM
 
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Texas is an exclusively horizontal state. I've been all over the state and with very few exceptions we have horizontal. In Houston many of them are hung on wire and it just looks awful. I live in Waco now and nearly every intersection has the nice arching metal poles. Most are silver with yellow lights. There are some that are black on black that I like very much. I agree in suburban areas they should be black or dark green, looks sharper to me. Maybe have the black frame around them with the reflective yellow border.
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Old 03-05-2016, 08:37 PM
 
Location: East Coast
676 posts, read 950,122 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ARrocket View Post
Wisconsin has a mixture, and Quebec either has a mixture or only vertical (I'm staring at some from my window...).
So to update this, Quebec has a mixture of vertical and horizontal.

Interestingly, Quebec also uses a flashing green light to indicate protected turns (instead of an arrow).
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Old 03-05-2016, 08:54 PM
 
Location: WA Desert, Seattle native
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Areas in and around Seattle have generally been going to a yellow/black look the past several years. I believe safety is the reason. But still all vertical! I think the wind argument someone mentioned earlier is valid, though Seattle is certainly not immune to windstorms.
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Old 03-05-2016, 09:00 PM
 
Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico
1,741 posts, read 2,602,060 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by beasley106 View Post
Texas, Wisconsin, and New Mexico (along with Mexico and Quebec) seem to have only horizontal traffic signals. Louisiana, Florida, and New Jersey seem to have a mix of both vertical and horizontal traffic signals.
I wanna say that Santa Fe has vertical traffic signals, but I think I'm just remembering it that way because they have those funky, yellow cab-looking yellow boxes around the lights in their downtown area. I know in other parts of the city they have the more normal (for New Mexico) black boxes with unpainted metal masts and poles.

Quote:
Originally Posted by pnwguy2 View Post
I can't name a city in the west (west of the Rockies) that has horizontal stoplights. Somebody correct me if I am wrong.
Albuquerque is west of the Rockies and it has horizontal stoplights. Actually, Albuquerque often has complicated traffic signal set ups where there are both horizontal lights on masts over the roadway and vertical lights on poles in the median and at the corners. Very rarely you will see vertical lights placed on the masts (usually just one at the end closest to the sidewalk, with the rest horizontal). But the vast majority and especially the smaller intersections have only horizontal lights on an overhead mast. The boxes which hold the lights are always black and the masts and poles are almost always unpainted metal. There are some areas of town which have different colors of masts and poles, such as downtown, with turquoise-painted masts and poles and certain intersections which have those blocky, integrated mast and pole setups, usually painted brown.
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Old 03-05-2016, 09:59 PM
 
Location: Arch City
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St. Louis has a mixture of vertical and horizontal but for the most part it's vertical. With a few exceptions of traffic lights being mounted on wires, most are hung on metal poles.
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Old 03-06-2016, 10:09 AM
 
Location: San Antonio
5,287 posts, read 5,733,547 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tmmontgomery View Post
Texas is an exclusively horizontal state. I've been all over the state and with very few exceptions we have horizontal. In Houston many of them are hung on wire and it just looks awful. I live in Waco now and nearly every intersection has the nice arching metal poles. Most are silver with yellow lights. There are some that are black on black that I like very much. I agree in suburban areas they should be black or dark green, looks sharper to me. Maybe have the black frame around them with the reflective yellow border.
Texas is mixed. Most of the lights in San Antonion are vertical and you'll see them in Galveston as well.

My preference is for horizontal hung on wires, since I only want to see the lights and feel that everything else should be mostly camouflaged.
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Old 03-06-2016, 10:52 AM
 
Location: Louisiana to Houston to Denver to NOVA
16,505 posts, read 26,083,316 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pnwguy2 View Post
Houston, TX has mostly horizontal. I can't think of another major city in the U.S. that does this, but I would guess that other Texas communities have them.

The other question is the color of the stop lights. I remember back in the 60's and 70's most in the west were painted black or rarely grey, and many in the midwest were yellow. Can't speak for the the east coast.

Now we are seeing more yellow markings on stop lights throughout the country.
No it does't. Don't remember that at all.
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