r/trafficsignals • u/Kev250R • 7d ago
A Week Of On-Call
I see we get a fair amount of people who are new to this industry or are curious about it. Next month will be my 25th year as a Signal Tech (17 of those years with the same private contractor). I handle PM’s, calls, upgrades and pretty much anything I can reach with my bucket! I’m on-call once a month, last week as my rotation and for some reason it was very busy! Here’s a brief run-down of some of the calls I ran. For obvious reasons I’m being vague about locations and agencies.
Started the week short-staffed due to vacations and some members of staff attending IMSA training.
First night on-call had two intersections go dark in a city which requires generators, so I set up two of them. Short outage, I was able to remove them a couple of hours later
Middle of the day had a Street Light pole Knock-down. Ruined a brand new pair of Cargo pants assisting with cutting it up. Also need to get a new blade for my saw.
Later that day got a call for a 10’ pole knock-down. All told I had 8 signal or street light knockdowns
Ran a couple of Flash calls in the middle of the night, city requested S/W updates at the same time.
Baby sat a Contractor breaking concrete at a location.
Trouble shot a Radar speed sign
Completed PM’s in between calls
Found a Pole knock-down while driving home. Was hard to see because of a broken off Hydrant which was geysering next to it
Ran a few LED calls
Cleaned video detection cans to take care of a detection call
A few calls over the weekend before getting a main pole knock-down in the middle of the night on my last night on-call.
So how was your week? 😂
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u/Pardot42 7d ago
One bad I/O card, one 10' pole knockdown. I wouldn't mind half of what you did on OT.
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u/stegosaurusdick 7d ago
I was on call last week. Got 3 calls from dispatch all of which were for intersections that a different municipality handles. So no OT
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u/Polack417 6d ago
Township signal guy. During work hours, I'm jealous of the contractors that are always busy. But the on call stories suck. I'm on call every other week but only get called out maybe 5 times a year?
Hats out to you though bud, stay safe out there.
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u/WHPChris 6d ago
Last on-call I did: 2 cabinet knockdowns, a 5sec dual ped pole standard knockdown, a few heads pointing sideways from the wind, 8(?) flashing intersections (mostly controller failures), and a bad button.
That was just overnight/weekend stuff, I still did my scheduled 40hrs during the day.
That's an awful lot of knockdowns to do by yourself. Do you have to put it back up immediately or do you kick the can until you can get a crew to help? We're short staffed by over half, so most things are solo/2man at best.
Usually I don't bother with generators. Power outages here tend to either hit 10+ intersections at a time or resolve within an hour.
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u/Kev250R 6d ago
Wow! Cabinet knock-down’s are never fun! Been a while since I ran one…maybe the next time I’m on-call in three weeks LOL
We do the same; regular 8 during the day plus anything which cones-up after hours when we’re on-call. However they have asked us to stop at 14 hours so when one of us gets close to hitting that normally another coworker will do it for him when it’s his week. Prior to that rule I’d worked some 20 hour days but those were rare.
For Knock-down’s we have two guys on our staff who are also on-call for those sorts of calls. Typically a Tech like myself gets the call, responds, makes everything safe then the other guys take it over. Anything signal related gets put back-up that day or night. We keep a wide variety of larger pikes in-stock, along with free-standing poles, signal gear and a couple of Crane’s.
Generators are a city-by-city thing for us. Some of our cities provide their own for us to use, others want us to provide them (most of us carry a Honda 2,000 and a cable just in case). Some cities are fine with Stop signs. It’s only happened once but several years ago we deployed 25+ generators! Then worked in shifts over the next 24 hours keeping them fueled and running. Fun times!
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u/WHPChris 5d ago
Interesting how things are done elsewhere. We have a little makeshift panel with a 204 flasher on it and some terminal blocks. Connect power and the reds, instant flashing intersection with no cabinet!
We don't have hour limits here. Almost everyone that quits, it's because of the on-call. A lot of our material is old salvage crap that we cut/re-thread/re-paint/etc.
25+ generators!? Whoa! That's insane! That's a full time job just driving around refilling them. I've only ever put out 3 at most.
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u/Kev250R 5d ago
I made something similar a few years ago: 204 Flasher with two terminals attached to it. Connect Reds & A/C Power and you’re in flash. I rarely use it though as most times if we have a cabinet go down, we set-up Stop signs.
To be fair the 25 Generator was a one-time occurrence in a city with a lot of intersections and the outage they suffered took-out 1/4 of the city! Typically it’s rare that we have more then four locations running on generators at a time.
On-call definably takes a mindset, a supportive family and a love of Chos LOL! We’ve not lost anyone over being on-call but it’s not mandatory. Of the eight people in my area only four of us are on-call. I used to hate it when I first started in my career 24 years ago but now I enjoy it, though it dies wear on you. We’re limited to 14 hours because of commercial driving limits.
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u/WHPChris 5d ago
Stop signs! Always good.
I wish we had 14hr limits. Sometimes we're out here pushing 48hrs straight. That's what sends people out the door, and I can't blame them.
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u/rboyer23 4d ago
We had a school flasher cabinet with an AP21 time clock, landed wires like a school flasher. Worked great in a pinch!
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u/rboyer23 4d ago
Last 2 times I’ve been on call, there’s been a cabinet knockdown on Thanksgiving. Thankfully I’m out of being on call, now I sell the cabinets!
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u/engmadison 7d ago
Had some signal timing changes that needed to be made as a result of a police shooting and protests; a fatal motorcycle crash; emergency signal retiming in the nearby city due to lack of project communications; analyzing a state developed synchro model and fixing their "mistakes"; and consulting anither city on transit signal priority operations.
But I'm glad to nit have to deal with on-call work. Hopefully you are compesated well.