That cost seems outrageous. Are traffic signal control boxes really that expensive?
Unit costs can be misleading if they're hiding a lot of non-recurring engineering costs. I can easily believe it would cost $175,000 (or more) to replace a single set of traffic signals, especially if they are built from scratch and need to interface with some ancient system. However, the 2nd, 3rd, .... 3,000th signals ought to be progressively cheaper as things get worked out.
Just put in roundabouts.[1] No control system costs anymore!
[1] Why are there hardly any roundabouts in north america? Because there's no money to be made from them.
I'm not sure why people think this. Maybe people don't get around enough? I see roundabouts all the time from Seattle to Nevada to Utah, and beyond.
The problem with roundabouts is that they don't scale. In the 60's and 70's, New Jersey had three massive roundabouts on Route 23 where it now intersects with I-287. They had to be removed in the 80's because they simply couldn't handle rush hour traffic.
I don't know if I ever really believed it until this article confirmed that kind of cost.
https://twitter.com/dongho_chang/status/960645535311937538
Linux 2.6.39 in 2018.
The outrageous prices could also be attributed to good old-fashioned cronyism: some city council member's brother owns a local civil engineering firm that gets a 10-year contract and names its own price.