It’s unusual to see stoplights mounted like this in New York City, where they’re usually found on large, thick guy-wired stanchions (as they have since the early 1950s). This unusual arrangement, with stoplights wired across Lefferts Boulevard, is necessitated because there’s no room for a mastarm that allows traffic to see them. Here, two railroad overpasses make an X right at the junction of Lefferts and Jamaica Avenue, and the Department of Transportation scrambled and improvised.
Elsewhere on Jamaica Avenue, if the elevated is at relatively low clearance above the roadway, stoplights are simply mounted on the el structure; when the clearance is higher, you’ll see stoplights strung across the avenue as they are here.
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5/28/16