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Council replacing streetlights
_ben
Posts: 5,758 Forum Member
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The council have been replacing the yellow sodium streelights round here with white LED ones. They come along and saw the top off the concrete posts and then lower an inverted L shaped metal bracket onto the stump. However there are a few that they haven't been able to do because they're totally buried in tree branches. I'm curious as to what councils do in this situation, do they prune people's trees themselves or hassle the home owner to do it, or do they just leave it?
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I'm pretty sure that the Highways Act requires residents to ensure that their trees don't obstruct roads, pavements, footpaths, signs or street lights, so the Council can request owners to comply. The owners then have a set period of time to prune the trees, otherwise the Council will come along, do the job and bill the house owner for the work.
They looked like this to start with
Then when they'd sawed the top off and put the metal sleeve on they look like this (these are just photos I found on the internet)
There's even a video on youtube showing part of the process here, the new sleeve can be seen lying on the ground. I have to say, the one I saw being done looked a good deal more entertaining than this. Instead of a gentle upward pull, the crane was applying a lot of sideways tension so that when the guy in the cherry picked cut through it, the top section went swinging violently across someone's front garden, narrowly missing their bedroom window, not helped by the fact that the crane also jerked sharply away to make sure it wouldn't swing back and hit the guy in the cherry picker.
They claim it's much more power efficient and gives them much greater control (the lamps receive commands over radio, rather than just a simple on-off timeswitch).
I don't think they have as much "projection" as sodium but I guess that is also an advantage in reduced light pollution
Ugly looking things them concrete ones.
I am guessing they are not allowed to pull them all down and replace them with new ones then?
Many of my local cycle routes are now like that too and I love it. :cool:
They say the new LED lights will save them money in the long term.
I do think the new LED lights give of a brighter light then the old yellow ones.
Darren
How do you like the new LED lights? The ones here are probably comparable to the old sodium lights in terms of how much light they cast on the road and pavement, but the overspill onto people's gardens and houses is now virtually non existent, it's a bit unnerving.
They don't produce anymore light, about the same as standard bulbs, and none have failed yet over a year. The old ones were always failing and flickering outside our windows.
It looks very artificial though.
we don`t get lighting on the cycle paths >:( and this hellhole is a lycra lover`s paradise.
Probably just cheaper not to bother until they need to. I'm not a fan of the concrete ones, I once saw a car hit a concrete lamp post at modest speed outside a pub, it fell right across the pub doorway - could have killed someone! The metal ones just crumple and bend over a bit.
Makes little difference anyway as I said it just causes shadows. I nearly knocked someone over last year when I was riding back from work as they was in the shadow. Thankfully my bike light is pretty bright and I just managed to see them in time.
Ours looks like a metal plate stuck on a post and a grid of LED lights stuck in them.
Looks like something someone would knock up at home to be honest, looks cheap. they are also turning off lights at night now in certain areas and they say they will do that with LED ones as well. So the saving will be almost zero compared to normal light, I bet it cost more to put these things up than what they will save..
I wonder how many funny handshakes went around with that contract?