HIGHWAYS engineers are facing a surge in traffic light failures across York in the wake of the post-Christmas flooding.

Particular problems have arisen at the junction of Huntington Road and Hayley’s Terrace, where signals have been working only intermittently since the River Foss burst its banks and badly flooded the road.

Local resident Louise Pink said the set of five-way lights, including pedestrian crossings, was out last Thursday, leaving the whole junction with no lights or pedestrian crossing, including during the morning school run.

"The lights were fixed later on Thursday but went out again on Saturday morning," she said. "In fact, the lights failed to work on the 16th, 19th, 21st, 23rd and 24th."

She said she reported the problem on Saturday morning and again on Sunday morning but when she went out again on Monday morning they had still not been fixed.

"They were out on Monday morning, fixed later on on Monday, back out again on Tuesday and back on again this morning," she said yesterday.

She said she had spoken to Darren Capes, transport systems manager at City of York Council, and he had seen no issue with lights being left out of order over the weekend, and had advised her the council did not have any provision for 'ad-hoc weekend maintenance' and it was not seen as a 'safety issue'.

She asked The Press to highlight the issue, adding: "I fear that before long, a serious accident will occur."

Mr Capes said: “We are working with engineers to asses and repair the water damage to Huntington Road and Hayley’s Terrace traffic signals which were affected by the recent floods.

"Due to the nature of the water damage this has lead to the signals working on an intermittent basis.

"We are experiencing a higher than normal level of traffic signal problems across the city because of recent flood water and we remind drivers to take additional care when driving through locations where the signals are not operating.

"We apologise for any inconvenience and assure residents that we are working to fix these issues as quickly as possible.”