Street Lights...
It wasn't that long since all the lamp sections of the street lights were adapted across the town. Then they took the concrete posts out and put in new metal posts and had to put new lamps on those...
Now they are back around town taking away the lamps(again)and replacing them with LED lamps.
Do they save money? Perhaps. Does it help light pollution? Probably but these days I am unsure how many people go out when its dark and look at the stars. If you are really that serious you are more than likely to go into the countryside and take in the night sky. This is also at a time when there is much talk of the switching off of street lights for certain periods during the night or where possible dipping their brightness or having them lit in an alternative pattern of being off/on.
I do know that they do not offer much light even if its directed to the ground and already some people have said they feel less safe when walking after dark, some with poor eyesight feel vulnerable. I am not impressed myself and as I type this the work is being carried out in my own street.
The work is also taking more time to complete as it appears they are having to do extra engineering work and where a lamp post is located, they have to dig up the roads and it results in a patch approx. the length and width of at least one vehicle. I suspect it won't be long before these road repairs are affected by the weather and other problems and they'll need resurfacing. And until the new road works change colour and merge in with the existing tarmac they are quite unsightly.
Now they are back around town taking away the lamps(again)and replacing them with LED lamps.
Do they save money? Perhaps. Does it help light pollution? Probably but these days I am unsure how many people go out when its dark and look at the stars. If you are really that serious you are more than likely to go into the countryside and take in the night sky. This is also at a time when there is much talk of the switching off of street lights for certain periods during the night or where possible dipping their brightness or having them lit in an alternative pattern of being off/on.
I do know that they do not offer much light even if its directed to the ground and already some people have said they feel less safe when walking after dark, some with poor eyesight feel vulnerable. I am not impressed myself and as I type this the work is being carried out in my own street.
The work is also taking more time to complete as it appears they are having to do extra engineering work and where a lamp post is located, they have to dig up the roads and it results in a patch approx. the length and width of at least one vehicle. I suspect it won't be long before these road repairs are affected by the weather and other problems and they'll need resurfacing. And until the new road works change colour and merge in with the existing tarmac they are quite unsightly.
posted by The Great Gildersleeve | 8:59 am
2 Comments:
One time we had streetlamps standing that had possibly been there since the dawn of electricity,and maybe even used gas at one time?- as new bulb technologies came along they just replaced the bulb fitting and the electronics. They removed these old lamps and posts and now it seems every time a new type of bulb comes along they have to replace the entire post and dig the road up - progess eh?
Agreed Anon...The only good thing is that they now stick a new lamp on to the existing post.
Luckily the paths are reasonable here but I usually now have a torch ready in my pocket but would probably use it more in an area that is less known to me.
I'm not complaining because I like to but they really are poor.
I'm old enough(just)to remember gas lights.
If we'd stop putting clocks back and perhaps stayed on BST or even go with Europe we could perhaps avoid using street lights so much across the year especially between March and November.
If needs be we could allow Scotland as its affected by being so far North to go onto a different time zone?
It would only need to be a small difference not as much as North America for example. But they cope. Or perhaps I have not thought the idea out and it really would not work.
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