These lights are being installed all over the city in all new constructions and road widenings. The lights chosen appear to be very harsh on the eyes in person. I dislike the blue-ish white color. I tried to contact the city to express my concerns with them. Here's the email I sent and the reply.
"I have noticed the city has decided to switch a number of its cobra head streetlights to LED fixtures. I'm concerned the city and its lighting providers have not observed other options to reducing power use including the use of high pressure sodium cut-off luminaries running at reduced power. In addition, the light color chosen may be an inappropriate choice. I also would like to know if the city has minimum efficiency standards for street and municipal lighting. Who would I need to get into contact with to express these concerns?"
Here was their reply...
"The City worked with PG&E to retrofit some of the City owned lights. PG&E recommended the selected lights based on the existing light lumens provided. We believe the LEDs are a superior alternative to the high pressure sodium lights as they provide a more daylight type light, are efficient and provide a very long life compared to the high pressure sodium."
What would be the best way to reply to that?
My first impulse would be to remind them that the purpose of streetlighting is to light streets, and you dont do that by assaulting the eye with harsh, glarey lighting cast in every direction.
...but if I want to endear them to using a better alternative than what the people who's primary job it is to sell electricity peddle, I need to show them that they actually have more choices than they were led to believe.
The city's response to you simply parrots sales literature, and overstates the "advantages" of blue-rich lighting.
The first mistake is assuming lumen levels for blue-rich light light need to be the same as the orange-ish Sodium light it replaces.
Not so, because the eye is much more sensitive at night to blue light than orange, so you need much much less blue light to experience comparable visual acuity as you would Sodium.
This is why blue-rich light appears so much brighter even when a light meter shows the same amount.
Translation: you probably need less than what the utility company wants you to buy.
...which brings us to the second mistake: Selling electricity doesnt make you a lighting expert, so you shouldnt give a utility company carte blanche authority to dictate what you need to buy from them. If a streetlighting system isnt being designed with the primary goal of improving human vision, you need to look elsewhere for your expert advice.
A third and more common mistake is assuming all LED light has to be blue-rich light. That was true for the first generation of LED streetlights, but the fact today is more LED manufacturers are perfecting "warmer" color lights that are almost indistinguishable from incandescent light. PG&E may simply be trying to protect their investment in older technology (the blue-rich lights) but in this case, good things come to those who wait, and today cities can specify LED streetlights with color temperatures around 3000 degrees Kelvin that cast a warm, inviting color.
What Im seeing from your photo is not just bad color, but poor shielding (if any). It wont help to get the color right if it's still trashing your vision by hitting you in the face. Its easy to design LED fixtures that are low-glare, but manufacturers will just as easily sell LED glare bombs if they think naive municipalities will buy them.
You sound like you have done some homework, so these links may be old hat (but Ill throw them out just for good measure):
http://www.southamptontownny.gov/filestorage/596/598/4245/5194/IDA_Seeing_Blue_Nightscape.pdfFor the harder science folks, a "blue-rich light" white paper is here:
http://www.southamptontownny.gov/filestorage/596/598/4245/5194/IDA_blue_light_white_paper.pdf