The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

Just wanted to share a couple examples of streetlights I've admired.  Since we're all getting pretty sick of the acorn "glare bombs" that seem to be multiplying around town, I thought it would be good if people shared some examples they LIKE!

These are right across the street from St. Francis Hospital.  I like the clean lines, and fully shielded light fixtures.  They could blend nicely with many different types of architecture.
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3219/2959334062_1cfaa2a16a.jpg?v=0)

And here are some I loved in downtown St. Louis.  Although they shine "up" they don't light up the sky.  Instead, they reflect/radiate a lovely diffused light back down on the street.  Very warm and welcoming (unlike our downtown acorns), and no harsh shadows.
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3196/2958488921_af2f2ef667.jpg?v=0)(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3169/2958489377_e748f17127.jpg?v=0)

By the way, what are "Kennebunkport" lighting standards?  Is Tulsa requiring this these days?

I like the example you provided from across St. Francis.  They remind me a lot of the streetlights used in Orlando.

As for Kennebunkport lighting standards, this article may help:
http://www.cleanair-coolplanet.org/for_communities/outdoor_lighting.php

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Outdoor Lighting Reduction

Kennebunkport, ME

Community Profile: Kennebunkport is a small town of about 4,000 year-round residents located on the southern coast of Maine. Incorporated into York County and guided by a town manager and board of selectmen, Kennebunkport has become a prosperous community known for its unique local businesses and quintessential coastal scenery, while still maintaining cultural ties to its humble roots in the shipping and fishing industries.

KennebunkportProject Outline:

On March 19, 1977, Kennebunkport adopted an outdoor lighting ordinance designed to reduce problem associated with outdoor lighting such as glare, as well as reduce the energy and financial costs of outdoor lighting. Since its introduction, the outdoor lighting ordinance has undergone three separate amendments in 1979, 1985, and most recently in 1992.

The ordinance, written mainly by engineer and New England Light Pollution Advisory Group (NELPAG) member Peter Talmage, is very well written and can serve as a model for others who are considering writing or revising a local ordinance for outdoor lighting.  

The project was initiated by Talmage when the local utility company proposed drastic changes in the town’s low-level, modest lighting. He worked with town selectmen to form a Lighting Committee, currently chaired by Jim Stockman, whose purpose was to create an ordinance which would preserve Kennebunkport’s nighttime skies.

To simplify the job of the ordinance code enforcement officer, the standards are predominately hardware-based as opposed to performance-based. This allows for the measurement of on-site light levels at nighttime.

Cost:

    * Because the ordinance was voted on by the people of Kennebunkport, the only cost involved was that of placing it on the ballot.
    * There was no cost associated with upgrading previous lighting fixtures to comply with the ordinance as those fixtures were grandfathered.
    * Additionally, the Indiana Council on Outdoor Lighting Education has created a Outdoor Lighting Framework which helps to guide the process of writing an outdoor lighting ordinance.
    * Click here to view the  NH technical bulletin on outdoor lighting

Benefits:

    * Promote safety by reducing glare
    * Minimizes light trespass which can reduce privacy
    * Lowers the cost of energy by reducing usage.
    * Having a lighting ordinance sets clear guidelines for the installation and regulation of outdoor lighting, ensuring increased safety and welfare for the residents of the town.

Guides:

    * For more information, contact the award-winning International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) or access their Outdoor Light Code Handbook. Committed “to preserve and protect the nighttime environment and our heritage of dark skies through quality outdoor lighting,” the IDA has become the authority on light pollution.
    * Use this document to guide developers in the fixtures your municipality recommends. This could be referenced in your site plan and subdivision regulations or zoning ordinance. It can also be added to your Planning Department website with the recommendation that people use these until new rules are created: IDA Approved Fixtures.

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Here's what they look like at night.
/img

Gives you some idea how far behind the curve DownTown Tulsa Unlimited is for promoting their favorite energy-wasters.

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Originally posted by inteller

only one problem.....the Kennebunkport standard never made it out of Kennebunkport.  Instead what most places employ is the Kennebunkport "formulae" which I have YET to see this formula(e) on paper.  Instead all I ever hear in the kangaroo court TMAPC meetings is that each development will adhere to the Kennebunkport formulae.

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The Kennebunkport Formula is a design tool applied to area lighting to insure such lighting does not encroach upon other properties or rights-of-way.  It applies to commercial and residential lighting (as opposed to street lighting).  

The formula helps calculate the mounting height and distance from the property line a Full Cutoff fixture needs to be to not trespass.  Builders like it because they can specify lower wattages and save money not having light wasted where it's not wanted.

The formula is expressed as

H = 3 + (D/3)

where H = height of fixture and D = distance in feet to fixture from a property line.

(http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-12/1116161/kennebunkport_formula.gif)

All new PUD's must include a lighting plan, and the plan must demonstrate how they intend to prevent light trespass.  INCOG prescribes the Kennebunkport Formula to perform these calculations.      

We talked about it briefly in this thread:
http://www.tulsanow.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5961

For the formula to work, the light fixtures must be Full Cutoff.  You cant apply the formula to unshielded wallpacks or acorns or the cheap "farm lights" on residential street corners and expect it to work.  If the fixture has no cutoff angle then there's no number to plug into the formula to begin with.  

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go ask people at Legacy Park behind Sprit event center if the KenneBUNKport formula is working for them.

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If im not mistaken, the Sprint Event Center uses un-shielded wallpacks in a direct line-of-sight to neighbors windows.  That would not conform with a PUD in Tulsa and also violate zoning code 1303C.  That should have never made it past the application stage.

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What they have tried to do is slap a quantitative fix to a qualitative problem becuase this is more convienent for the brain dead developers in the rest of the country.  The formula(e) is obviously flawed.  There is no provision for the overall intensity of lighting over a given area like a PUD, nor is there any variance on what happens for lighting that occurs between zoning classifications (CS abutting RM or RS).

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The Kennebunkport Formula is a qualitative approach, from the perspective of getting under control mis-directed angles of illumination that neither add to safety, security nor good vision at night.

...but you are right, it only address angles and not intensity, and that should be the job of a more encompassing ordinance that would incorporate the Kennebunkport Formula as one of several elements.

Good discussion.

The St. Francis lights have been there for years, and are much easier on the eyes at night than the Public Works lights along the rest of the streets.

They appear to be "Cutoff" rather than "Full Cutoff" with the difference being the "Cutoff" classification allows 2 1/2% uplight while "Full Cutoff" allows no uplight.  Both classifications only allow a maximum of 10% of the fixture's output in the Glare Zone (just below the horizon) so either classification would be a big improvement in Tulsa.

The technical stuff: (http://www.holophane.com/led/fco-utility/gfx/cutoffs.jpg)

In contrast, the PSO-recommended drop-lens Cobra-head lights all over town are the "semi-cutoff" classification where 20% of it's output is in the Glare Zone, and Acorn post-top horrors are "non-cutoff" and have no limitations on glare or uplight.

P.S. The St. Francis fixtures also look good in the daytime, too.  The major hospitals like St Francis and St John do a fantastic job on eye-friendly lighting, and understand what an impediment glare is to human vision (and safety).  Something to talk about when commercial establishments insist their glary moth-effect overlighting is for "safety".

Now just for fun, if you were to apply the Kennebunkport Formula to these, there is a 2 1/2% percent uplight component that might be non-compliant.  If we take a 150-Watt Sodium light with an output of 16,000 Lumens, 6,400 Lumens are likely to trespass.

6,400 Lumens is about the same as the full output of a 70-watt Sodium streetlight light (which is in itself sufficient to light a residential street to nationally-recommended standards) so what might be OK for Yale Avenue or downtown might not be welcome in a residential district.  This is one reason "Full-Cutoff" is preferred over any other cutoff classification when the quality of lighting is the main goal.

P.P.S.  It's also generally understood among lighting designers that you should reduce the wattage of the lamp in a fixture when upgrading to Full Cutoff because they are much more efficient (not having to deal with glare), so with Full Cutoff it takes much less light (and electricity) to properly light an area.

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Originally posted by inteller

Regal Plaza is in Bixby, but Bixby claims to adhere to the same formula.  It was the good old boy planning commission down there that let this one slide.

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Bixby may claim to use the formula, but if they are leaving shielding out of the ingredients then it might as well be the formula for New Coke.

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Originally posted by patric


Here's what they look like at night.
(http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-12/1116161/wash_ave1596b.JPG)

Gives you some idea how far behind the curve DownTown Tulsa Unlimited is for promoting their favorite energy-wasters.

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Patric, I didn't get a pic at night of the ones I saw in St. Lou, but it wasn't like your example above.

I was totally impressed by how little glare there was, and how warm and welcoming the light was.  Your photo shows a harsh, bright white light, and lots of glare.  

The neighborhood where I was in St. Louis was the opposite of that.  No glare as we drove down the street (and I am totally picky about glare! Ask my friends!) and a soft warm light.

Perhaps this is a case of using "the right bulb."  I think they must have been using a much lower wattage bulb than in your photo, b/c my memory of the street at night was "these are great lights."  And I specifically remember thinking: "Weird, the lights shine up, but they don't appear to shine past the reflectors." (I'm also interested in preserving "dark skies.") I'm no expert, but they were very easy on the eyes...at least in the specific instance I saw.  (I can also understand how too bright a bulb would totally ruin the effect!)

Not arguing that these are the "best" example of lighting.... Just trying to show an array of options.  I'd love to see what your favorites are...both functionally and stylistically.

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Originally posted by PonderInc

I didn't get a pic at night of the ones I saw in St. Lou, but it wasn't like your example above.

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Im too far underneath the closest light, so that may not have been the best example.  How about this one?
(http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-12/1116161/wash_ave1604a.JPG)

Neither of the photos really do it justice, though, because when I drove down the street at night I was just blown away by how it looked.
The center stripe down the middle of the road is LED, btw.

How about these?
(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2033/1890334877_fdcf05cf5d_b.jpg)
(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2338/1891166118_1460b14b59_b.jpg)
http://flickr.com/photos/paytonc/1891166118/

Better, more efficient street lighting has been around for decades, and yet every day Tulsa installs some of the least efficient, visually poor lighting it can find.  A  lot of this has to do with Tulsa getting it's expert recommendations from people in the business of selling as much electricity as possible.

Some worthwhile goals for the Comprehensive plan might be:

• Any municipal street lighting system must be designed to improve one's ability to see at night.
• Any streetlighting design must demonstrate that it is necessary to improve night vision, and how such design will accomplish that without unreasonable glare or waste, or that such improved vision can not be accomplished by other less costly means (such as reflective or luminous markings, etc.).

Until our streetlight system is put in the hands of qualified, independent lighting designers who place lighting quality over energy sales, it really wont matter how many cities we can find that light their streets better than we do.       

That may happen in the form of an enabling ordinance, or changes in the marketplace due to new technology.  When more people own hybrid cars that plug in at night, utilities will ease up on strategies to sell their off-peak power to municipalities in the form of inefficient street lights. 
If they arent planning on that, maybe we should.

From this months issue of National Geographic magazine; streetlights in Florida:

http://images.pictopia.com.edgesuite.net/perl/get_image?provider_id=318&ptp_photo_id=natgeo:6241194&size=550_art&m=1224196111.0

I like it, how do we go about getting those things installed? Sign a petition or something?  Is it something to do with City Council?

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Originally posted by brianh

I like it, how do we go about getting those things installed? Sign a petition or something?  Is it something to do with City Council?

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AEP/PSO installs the streetlights in Tulsa,
from a list of "approved fixtures" it gets from Public Works.
Public Works creates the list on "recommendations" from AEP/PSO.
Catch 22...
PSO is in the business of selling electricity, and one of the most profitable ways electric utilities deal with off-peak generating capacity is to sell it to municipalities in the form of street lighting.
Wasteful streetlighting sells more electricity.

When I met with Susan Neil when she was a member of the city council, she suggested the way to break that cycle might be with an enabling ordinance that would add shielded fixtures to the list of those the city "allows" PSO to install (Neil is now Mayor Taylor's director of community development).  She didnt follow through, though.

Another might be an ordinance modeled after laws in states like Texas and Connecticut, requiring any fixtures installed or maintained with public funds meet certain efficiency standards (such as how much of their light output must be at angles useful to human vision, etc.).
 
Someone more familiar with the Comprehensive Plan revision process might better explain how that avenue might work.

In any case, it certainly wouldnt hurt to mention to your councilor that you might prefer cutting back on funding wasted on inefficient streetlights than you would funding for police and fire, for instance.

These lights that were recently installed across from the Centennial Green are a huge improvement over the ubiquitous acorns we've been seeing lately... Check them out!

Even if they're not full-cutoff, they're at least partial and a great step in the right direction.

PLUS, they're beautiful!
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3271/3030838272_742ba6d450_b.jpg)

Those do look nice.

The new streetlights on 6th Street downtown are much better than the acorns.  However, the light bulbs are waaayyy too bright!

Fortunately, the fixtures cut off the glare pretty well.  But when you walk or drive under them, you feel like you've just put your face on the glass of a Xerox machine and pressed "print."  

Similarly, the "landscaping" lights on the new Centennial Green Park are blinding to pedestrians.  They have lights on the stairs that are so bright they hurt!  ("I didn't ask for the laser eye surgery...")

So...a great effort with cool new fixtures.  Now, all we need are the appropriate bulbs!

I emailed Councilor Gomez, expressing my pleasure with the new lighting fixtures. Is there anyone else that I should message to ensure that these and even better lighting solutions are implemented in the future?

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Originally posted by PonderInc

The new streetlights on 6th Street downtown are much better than the acorns.  However, the light bulbs are waaayyy too bright!

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Any informed lighting designer knows you reduce wattage when using Full-Cutoff fixtures, not increase them.
The reason being that the Full-Cutoff is more efficient and puts all the light on the ground instead of into your face or up in space.  By not reducing lamp sizes you pool too much light under the fixtures, your uniformity goes to hell and they eye is less able to adapt from bright to dark.  That makes it harder to see into shadows, and the street less safe.

Maybe someone's way of proving you can have bad lighting even with shielded lights if you try hard enough?

We did the same thing with the jogging trail, by lighting areas several times over the recommended levels set by ANSI and the IES (Iluminating Engineering Society).  

What are they thinking?
...and why dont we have any input in these plans?

"Not blinded by lights: West Avenue street lights illuminate without glare"

http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/2008/11/21/news/z00lights1121.txt

(http://www.lacrossetribune.com/content/articles/2008/11/21/news/z00lights1121.jpg)

Just read the National Geographic article about the effects of bad lighting.

So Tulsa's bad lighting not only costs more, wastes energy, blinds people with glare, and eliminates our ability to see the stars... it also wrecks havoc with wildlife, migratory patterns, and may increase the risk of breast cancer in humans.

Great!

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Originally posted by PonderInc

Just read the National Geographic article about the effects of bad lighting.

So Tulsa's bad lighting not only costs more, wastes energy, blinds people with glare, and eliminates our ability to see the stars... it also wrecks havoc with wildlife, migratory patterns, and may increase the risk of breast cancer in humans.

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National Geographic likened it to damming a river without paying any attention to what happens when the water backs up.
The articles are on their website at
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/light-pollution/klinkenborg-text

Cover shot was very cool, too.

(http://data.nextrionet.com/site/idsa/coverNGM200811_US_sized_image.jpg)

Big City, Brighter Lights: Gotham's New LED Streetlamp Plan (http://"http://www.wired.com/culture/design/magazine/16-12/st_streetlamp")

(http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/st_streetlamp_f.jpg)
More photos: http://www.oviinc.com/projects/New_York_Streetlight/index.shtm

(moved from another thread)

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Originally posted by sgrizzle
You want change made to downtown lighting? You need to talk to Crowley. Most of the big foundations listen to him and he is very pro-green development. The same foundations doing the development on riverparks with the much-improved lighting.

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Since the Riverparks makeover lighting ignored so many rules of good lighting design, I have to disagree that simply changing a fixture style alone actually constitutes "improved".  If anything, the implementation of the jogging trail lighting was done in such a way as to possibly dissuade their use by future designers.

Aside from cutting glare, Cutoff and Full-cutoff lighting fixtures focus their output downward at angles more useful to human vision.  By not wasting light skyward, less light needs to be generated by the fixture to do the job.  That means you must reduce the wattage, or excess light pools under each fixture.

If you allow light to pool under fixtures, you not only waste electricity but your eye has a harder time trying to adapt between lit and unlit areas.  That decreases your safety by making you less able to detect threats.

So why did we over-lamp the Riverparks fixtures in the first place?

Each municipal light fixture (streetlight, etc) maintained by the city must burn a minimum of 100 watts of electricity, according to Public Works.
It's not a rule that has an actual relationship to how well the streets are lit, but rather how much electricity the city agrees to buy from PSO.

As far as how to properly light streets to benefit human vision, improve safety and promote nighttime utilization of public spaces, it's an outdated rule and needs to go.      

For the jogging trail, that means they could have used half the electricity and ended up with much better lighting.  Given the human eye's higher sensitivity to blue-white light (Scotopic vision) we could have even used a third of the light used now, and improved visibility.
At those levels, we could have even used LED's or Compact Fluorescent, had better light, and saved money.

But we have to burn 100-watts per fixture instead...
And the rates just go up every couple of months.

The barriers to better streetlights are not technical, but political.
Not letting our policy makers know we understand that is why we continue to loose city services like trash pickup and summertime pools everytime  a new "Acorn" light adorns a downtown sidewalk.  

I have to admit Patric, I've only casually followed your posts over the years, because to be honest I'm not that "naturally" interested in your favorite topic.  However, I'm starting to pick up some passion for this stuff.  Everywhere I drive now, I look at lighting and am appalled at how much pollution is being generated by businesses who simply look for the cheapest, legal lighting source available to them.  

The City of Tulsa is a different story however.  Refusal to acknowledge the facts about lighting makes me more than a little upset, considering that it's our tax money.

I'm curious...who have you spoken with in the current administration about lighting regulations for the City of Tulsa and before that, regulations and standards for city owned property and projects?

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Originally posted by bacjz00

I'm curious...who have you spoken with in the current administration about lighting regulations for the City of Tulsa and before that, regulations and standards for city owned property and projects?

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Current administration -- spoke with a Taylor aide when I answered the call for volunteeres for city boards, have either spoken or corresponded with most sitting Councilors at one time or another (Dist. 4 Councilor Gomez was with us in the Renaissance Neighborhood association at the time we were actively pursuing dialog with the city on nuisance lighting).  
Not met with Bynum but his predecessor Neal had promised to look into changing the City's franchise arrangement with PSO to allow more energy efficient fixtures.  Didnt.
Was a finalist in LaFortune's "Mayor's Competition for Better Government" and submitted a 62-page analysis on correcting wasteful municipal lighting in 2003.  Except for changing traffic signals to LED, it was mostly ignored, and our spending on just the electricity for streetlights doubled (http://"http://www.tulsanow.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5575") between 2003 and 2006 (mostly due to the conversion to energy-wasting "Acorn" streetlights)

Regulations and standards for city owned property and projects come from the Public Works department, who, lacking expertise on the subject, call on the "experts" at the electric utility to "recommend" what the city should require them to use.

quote:

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Originally posted by patric

quote:

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Originally posted by bacjz00

I'm curious...who have you spoken with in the current administration about lighting regulations for the City of Tulsa and before that, regulations and standards for city owned property and projects?

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Current administration -- spoke with a Taylor aide when I answered the call for volunteeres for city boards, have either spoken or corresponded with most sitting Councilors at one time or another (Dist. 4 Councilor Gomez was with us in the Renaissance Neighborhood association at the time we were actively pursuing dialog with the city on nuisance lighting).  
Not met with Bynum but his predecessor Neal had promised to look into changing the City's franchise arrangement with PSO to allow more energy efficient fixtures.  Didnt.
Was a finalist in LaFortune's "Mayor's Competition for Better Government" and submitted a 62-page analysis on correcting wasteful municipal lighting in 2003.  Except for changing traffic signals to LED, it was mostly ignored, and our spending on just the electricity for streetlights doubled (http://"http://www.tulsanow.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5575") between 2003 and 2006 (mostly due to the conversion to energy-wasting "Acorn" streetlights)

Regulations and standards for city owned property and projects come from the Public Works department, who, lacking expertise on the subject, call on the "experts" at the electric utility to "recommend" what the city should require them to use.

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Wow. It sounds like you're trying to get involved but the way our political system is structured, things don't always move in the right direction.  And certainly they don't move quickly.  Disappointed to know that your 62 page analysis was so blatantly disregarded.  Was there any feedback on that report directly from the Mayor's office?

As far as public works goes, who is the director over there and why wouldn't he/she be interested in more efficient and subsequently more ENERGY efficient lighting for city projects?  Short of some tacky 80's style kickbacks that may or may not be happening, I can't see why COT Public Works would feel the need to cut their nose off to spite their face.  Long term savings in real dollars means more money for their department on a variety of other projects.

Perhaps this is an issue for the Mayor's "Green Team."  Aferall, bad lighting affects the environment so many ways, it seems like a no-brainer to make simple changes that would have a huge impact on the environment, energy useage, and Tulsa's bottom line.

While I believe the best way to salvage our existing investment in "Acorn" decorative streetlights is to convert them to lower-intensity, and instead illuminate the street with something more effective, there <i>are</i> "period"-style fixtures capable of properly lighting streets without glare.  

One of the first I saw on a large scale was installed in the historic district of Atoka, of all places.  They are using the clear-glass version of this fixture (http://temesa.com/cat/hubbell/02_light/aal/promenad.pdf).

Since then most major lighting manufacturers have come up with something comparable, so Im not favoring any particular make (just the method).

Tulsa should require, by ordinance, that street lights purchased or maintained with public finds meet minimum efficiency standards, and that any streetlight be warranted by demonstrating that such installation is needed to (and actually will) benefit nighttime vision.

These are presently not the goals of our streetlighting system, but should be.

The Chicago area equivalent to INCOG, known as the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), recently voted to add streetlighting and outdoor lighting improvement to their 2040 Vision comprehensive plan.

But they have some familiar hurdles in front of them:  Their big Public Works and public planning firm Christopher B. Burke Engineering reported that they routinely recommend to municipalities that they chose more energy efficient and eye-friendly cutoff or full cutoff lighting, but municipalities are quietly prodded into choosing "Acorn" fixtures instead, saying they like how they look in the day.   

Money-saving arguments, even in bad financial times, dont seem to have much sway when you are spending other people's money.   

(Courtesy Illinois Coalition for Responsible Outdoor Lighting, www.illinoislighting.org)

I couldn't get your link to work, but I think you're trying to get us to this pdf...
http://www.aal.net/sections/products/_brochures/promenade.pdf (http://www.aal.net/sections/products/_brochures/promenade.pdf)

I LIKE!

That is the fixture they are using in the Historic District in Atoka.

AEP may not like it because you can get a 50-watt fixture to do the work of a 100-watt fixture, but they also know Tulsa will lay off police and firemen before we will cut back on unnecessarily wasteful streetlights.

Some regional planning commissions are really into this.

Look at http://www.ccrpcvt.org/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={6BB25C93-A3D1-4F34-B4FE-FA0E161E853B}
and click on the link for "Outdoor Lighting Guide for Vermont Municipalities"

It makes you wish INCOG and TMAPC were as enthusiastic.

I heard a rumor that the Kaiser Foundation might be considering funding a downtown "landscaping and lighting master plan."  I don't know who would be consulted on this, but I can only hope that environmentally friendly, energy efficient, NON-GLARE BOMB, aesthetically pleasing light fixtures would be recommended in such a plan.

Which is to say: Please, please, please...let's put an end to this absurd acorn-mania!

Anyone catch this in the Tulsa Whirled Sunday?

County Commissioner Terry Simonson intends to:
"Convert county street lights to LED lights: The county has about 363 light fixtures that are targeted for replacement with 100-watt LED fixtures, a plan that would cost about $400,000 and save far more than that over time."

If he's replacing 400-watt glarebombs with 100-watt LED's (and that much light is actually needed) then it could be interesting, but if he's stuck in a loop with AEP demanding fixtures must burn a minimum of 100 Watts to be on the "approved list" then we have a problem.

If you've ever had a 1-watt LED light in your face you know how bright that is.  Imagine 100 of those.
If he's on an energy conservation kick, just switching to LED's isnt really thinking out of the box that much if we arent also re-evaluating those things that are wastefully lit now.

Keeping glare and stray light in check would be a plus even for non-LED lights.  Cut out the spill into the sky and people's eyes and there's no reason a 50-watt Sodium light couldnt be doing the same work as a present-day 100-watter splashing excess light in all directions.

Nevertheless, Id like to hear more about Commissioner Simonson's plan.     

Intended to be inspiration, not an endorsement:


Streetlights are among a city's most important and expensive assets, accounting for almost 40 percent of its electricity bill.
A managed street lighting network based on Echelon's technology offers cities an innovative way to control costs. It lowers energy use and carbon dioxide emissions, beautifies neighborhoods, improves safety, and offers many other benefits, all from a single, networked infrastructure.

How It Works

A LonWorks based street lighting system replaces older, inefficient mechanical ballasts in a city's streetlights with electronic ballasts. These ballasts communicate over existing power lines using Echelon's power line signaling technology. Echelon's i.LON SmartServers act as segment controllers, monitoring and controlling the streetlights. The servers:

 Record lamp status, energy use, and running hours,
 Collect data from traffic and weather sensors, and
 Calculate the availability of natural light.
 Using this data, the servers automatically dim some or all of the lamps. Software remotely controls the lamps, analyzes their behavior, monitors and identifies lamp failures, and measures and displays energy use.

http://www.echelon.com/solutions/streetlight/

White Paper
http://tinyurl.com/psf37a

I have read of several competing systems that do this, so maybe there's room for competitive bidding if Tulsa ever decides to get away from our present brute-force street lighting.  Just a thought.

So, I again ask, what do we as normal citizens do? You are very knowledgable on the issues surrounding municipal lighting, but I don't know what good posting on a forum does. Who do we talk to and what is the best way to approach them to get change in our lighting fixtures?

When I talk to councilors, they usually say they hear from constituents who want more/brighter lights in their neighborhood, and they in turn put pressure on Public Works to make it happen.

Those constituents may not be able to cite anything beyond anecdotal belief that their neighborhoods arent safe without them, and yet they get action for no other reason than they cared enough to express their needs.

Now what if those same councilors were to hear from people with a more informed, active role in their neighborhoods and community, who understand the difference between roads built of concrete and asphalt, how projects are/should be funded, what we want our living spaces to look like and how our transportation system should work.

With few exceptions, this forum is much more substantiative than baseless griping and empty wishes, given the diverse interests that have all found a mutual platform on which to collect our thoughts on Tulsa's future.     

So it's not so much one person with a goal as it is everyone with an interest in the community.  I wouldnt have known what kind of paint to use on a street, or even cared, but it's sufficient that someone does and didnt mind sharing that for the possible benefit of all.

At some point we may be given more opportunities to have input in some future plan for Tulsa, and when the talk turns to concrete or paint or street lights, none of us will have to be just a passive observer in that process.
...that, and it never hurts to have spirited discussions with our leaders as to what should be on their radar. 

(http://www.tulsaworld.com/articleimages/2009/20090614_bradyrend0614.jpg)

If the light source doesnt protrude beneath the bell-shaped skirt, and the intensity is restrained so as to not pool too much light beneath the fixture, these proposed lights could be promising.
I dont know the make and model so I havent looked up the photometrics, but im guessing it's the "Memphis" style light from Holophane.  http://www.skykeepers.org/good_fixtures/ca-areapend.html

They are also one of several manufacturers that make a good Full-Cutoff "Acorn" substitute:
http://www.acuitybrandslighting.com/Library/Documents/HLP/Product%20Brochure/Utility%20Series/HL-2420.pdf

There are also rumblings about LED streetlighting for the Brady District.  Definitely want the 3200K color and not the 5600K blue-ish LEDs that look so cold and uninviting.   

Yes I noticed the new light poles in that rendering. You can also see they are planning on putting in more of the acorn lights in between. I REALLY hope they go with something thats not so harsh, cold and uninviting bulb wise or do the cut off ones for the rest. With the scale of this plan they are talking about, now would be the time to make the switch and then in the future, retrofit the ones that are already in. 

While not perfect, it does look as if the acorns in the rendering have a cap on the top which would serve as a partial cut-off.

One idea would be to use LED street lights, they use little power and burn for a long time.

I have seen some really bad LED acorn designs, and some really good ones, so just being LED isnt necessarily a good thing.
Some designers are installing LEDs inside globes that point straight out at the horizon (and your eyes) like this one
(http://www.speclines.net/images/luminaire_led_lamp.jpg)
(view from inside the globe)
You would want to avoid any design like this, as they are visually no better than the current retina-burning Metal Halide ones DTU is using.

The link I gave earlier for the acorn substitutes also includes Compact Fluorescent versions of Full-Cutoff (shielded) acorns.

The easiest way to spot a vision-friendly "Acorn" as opposed to the current glare bombs is the vision-friendly ones have clear glass, and the light source tucked up under an opaque cap, while the bad ones have frosted glass or a refractive surface.

I recently spoke at a TMAPC meeting about the need to consider wattage in the lighting plans for PUDs. (This is a different issue than streetlights, but equally important.)

The current PUD requirements talk about meeting the "Kennebunkport Standard" but nothing about wattage.  After reading the Kennebunkport ordinance, I thought it was very lenient and general.  I would look at Tuscon's ordinance as a better example with more clarity and definitive standards.  Certainly, the Kennebunkport language is better than nothing. 

But I also realized that nobody but a lighting professional (or Patric) could ever understand the lighting plans that get submitted to the TMAPC.  So when normal citizens express concern about reflected (indirect) glare from over-wattage/inappropriate bulbs, nobody knows what to do.  They asked the developer if they would consider lower wattage bulbs, which of course, the developer said they would "consider."  But I'm sure that was just lip service so they could get approval of their plan as written.

I was encouraged when a member of the TMAPC (Bill Leighty) said that, although he'd never heard anyone raise this issue before, perhaps it is something that should be studied.  I get the idea that he understands urban design issues, including the importance of good lighting.

While not an Acorn, here are some LED post-top lights installed in the town of Banf in the Rocky Mountains that sort of look like something I would find at Woolaroc:
http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/led-streetlight_banff.jpg(http://www.osram-os.com/osram_os/EN/Press/Press_Releases/Light_Emitting_Diodes/_img/72dpi_LED_Streetlight_Banff.jpg)
 

Anyone see the lights they installed in Downtown Bartlesville?

(http://pics4.city-data.com/cpicc/cfiles43371.jpg)

One of the best examples of that issue is when zoning boards place height limitations on light poles without taking into account the need to proportionately reduce intensity.

What happens is the same bright light the applicant wanted at 40' is now restricted to 25' and much closer to the ground which creates a pool of intense, non-uniform light that actually makes it harder for the eye to adapt.  The lighting company then blames the zoning board for messing up their design, but if the lighting installers were worth their salt they would have known to back off on the wattage in the first place.

Since some lighting installers arent that, um, bright, it might be appropriate for TMAPC to "suggest" reducing wattage the closer you install to the ground to avoid pooling while accomplishing zoning compliance.

They are attractive, have a nice dayform (daytime appearance) but look at all that glass sticking down from underneath the skirt.
Look at it again at night and see what you think.

They could have possibly gotten a much more eye-friendly version from the same manufacturer, where the skirt was deeper and the glass less visible, and improved visibility while cutting back on the wattage that is otherwise wasted at angles useless to human vision. 

Still "mostly" directed downward rather than up and out like the acorn.

 
The American Medical Association weighs in on shielded streetlighting at their June 15 meeting:


RESOLVED That our AMA advocate that all future outdoor lighting be of
energy efficient designs to reduce waste of energy and production of
greenhouse gasses that result from this wasted energy use, and be it
further

RESOLVED That our AMA develop and enact a policy that supports light
pollution reduction efforts and glare reduction efforts at both the
national and state levels; and be it further

RESOLVED That our AMA support that all future streetlights will be of a
fully shielded design or similar non-glare design to improve the safety
of our roadways for all, but especially vision impaired and older
drivers.

http://www.ama-assn.org/

If that's Banff in the Canadian Rockies, I haven't been there in FOREVER.  Great place to ski!

From Wednesdays Whirled:

DTU has been paying for the electricity for the specialty “acorn” lights installed as part of the downtown street improvements from the 2006 third-penny sales tax program, (Downtown Tulsa Unlimited Board Chairman Don Walker) said.

After the lights were installed, he said, neither the city or property owners accepted responsibility for them, “so DTU just paid the bill because we knew the lights had to be on.”

Paul Strizek, the Public Works Department’s manager of planning contracts, said the city would use the assessment fees to keep the lights on and to maintain the public rights of way, landscaping and sidewalk furniture.

Ill bet that makes the businesses who are getting the ballpark assessment fees rammed down their throats feel good they are also paying the growing electric bill for the junk lights.

A case study:  Minneapolis


High-tech solutions are hitting Minneapolis streets
Streetlights and parking meters will incorporate new technology to improve our everyday lives in the city.


Cell phones that allow you to pay for a parking spot. Downtown lights that dim in the wee hours of the morning. New pedestrian-level street lights that do a better job of putting light where it helps and not where it hurts.

Those are some of the emerging ways in which recent technology is affecting life on the streets of Minneapolis.

Let's start with perhaps the lowest-tech example -- pedestrian streetlights. The ornamental (acorn) streetlights the city currently uses have been blamed for casting light in too many directions. Critics say the lights cause glare, which actually impedes the vision of pedestrians or drivers approaching the light.

This issue resurfaced this month as a City Council committee considered the city's new street-lighting policy. The panel moved to set standards for how well streetlights direct their light downward and not far to the side or upward into the skies.

At the urging of Council Member Elizabeth Glidden, the committee specified that new pedestrian lighting fixtures need to meet at least the second-most-stringent standard for directing light, known as cutoff lighting. She hopes later to amend that to the most-stringent level of full-cutoff lighting after consulting further with staff specialists. Neither of the popular lantern or acorn styles of ornamental lamps that have been installed by the city now meets these standards. But Glidden sounds confident that with some prodding, potentially from city purchasing specs, both could be modified further to better direct their light.

Besides the safety issues created by glare concerns, advocates of better-directed light argue that it's a technique that reduces the amount shining into nearby bedrooms, makes the stars more visible and helps migrating birds.

Meanwhile, another new technology will be piloted downtown on Marquette and 2nd Avenues next year. It will be used to dim or shut off some lights in the wee hours of the night, saving energy use.

That news perked up the ears of council members who wanted to know if the technology could go citywide if the test is successful. They were told that would require some modification of streetlights so that they could received signals through the wireless communication system now operating in Minneapolis.
http://www.startribune.com/local/36467834.html?elr=KArksLckDiUvckDiU_1OKUiacyKUnciatkEP7DhU



To see how far ahead of the curve they are compared to Tulsa,
this was Minneapolis in 2006:


The city of Minneapolis has installed thousands of ornamental acorn- or lantern-style streetlamps in the past 15 years to improve neighborhoods and reduce crime, but the new lights are overly bright and poorly designed, making it difficult for police officers to see through the glare. "They could have a suspect right in front of them, and they wouldn't see him," said Steven Orfield of Orfield Laboratories Inc. He tested the lights and found them to be thousands of times brighter than their surroundings, meaning they cast a disabling glare. The city was notified of the problem in 1999 but continued to install the lights. About 8,500 of them now cover 10 percent of the city. "It's more difficult to see with some of those lights," said Lt. Chris Hildreth of the Minneapolis police's 5th Precinct. Reports by two lighting consultants find that the glare is a problem not only for police but also for motorists and pedestrians, especially older citizens. A focus group said the glare actually made streets seem less safe and comfortable. The Minneapolis Department of Public Works sees the lights as part of an overall plan to increase safety and comfort in the city.

Now the city is looking at options, which include replacing the fixtures, pulling and replacing the whole streetlights, or doing nothing. "It was a boondoggle to begin with and a boondoggle now," said Prospect Park resident Michael Atherton, who opposed the lights when they were installed in his neighborhood in 1999. "I don't feel like paying for them a second time; I didn't want to pay the first time."

Minneapolis property owners pay for the lights through tax assessments. Some have already paid thousands of dollars to install the lights, which cost the city about $6,000 each.

Besides glare, the lights waste electricity compared with the alternatives the city might have used, and that costs taxpayers money and needlessly creates greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

Problems and possible solutions

Replacing the poorly designed fixtures, probably the most expensive option initially, "is the cheapest solution in the long run," Orfield says. Beverly Warmka of the Department of Public Works said that the reports are under review and that "at this time, we do not have any comments."

The problem with the lights is that they shoot light in every direction - up, down and sideways - including directly into one's eyes. It's the same effect as facing the bright lights of an oncoming car, except that the effect is continuous. Details disappear as the eye struggles to cope with the bright light. The lamps' low height and antique-like fixtures, which aren't meant for today's high-output light sources, compound matters. Lower light in these fixtures won't deliver enough illumination.

Former City Council Member Dan Niziolek sensed trouble eight years ago when he was a crime prevention specialist for the Minneapolis Police Department and contacted Orfield. But even after presenting the city with research and lab demonstrations, he was unable to convince Public Works or the City Council that the lights were a problem.

People have complained about the lights, including Council Member Sandy Colvin Roy. "I hate them as a driver," she said. "I find that they make it difficult to drive."

Someone's thinking in the right direction:

New lights installed by the Pedestrian Bridge along River Parks show a new style of lighting both for the trail and the road that reduces the amount of light pollution.
By PHIL MULKINS World Staff Writer
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20090720_15_A2_Nwlgtn764141

Evening motorists cruising scenic Riverside Drive from 24th Street to the Pedestrian Bridge will soon be able to see more than just the glare of unshielded street lights. The city is installing Holophane Luminaire street lights designed to "put a football shaped light pattern on the ground" — not the air motorists must look through, said Tulsa Traffic Operations Manager Mark A. Brown.

The $120,000 expenditure is being paid by third-penny sales-tax funds set aside for park improvements and George Kaiser Family Foundation donations. The flat panel lights are four times more expensive than standard street lights "but they put great light on the roadway — good distribution of light on the surface," he said. They are aesthetically pleasing, making trail improvements appear more like "urban park" than industrial blight.

Alan McBeath, River Parks maintenance manager, said these lights are upgrades from PSO "cobra head lights" and "farm lights" that were in the area and still run the length of Riverside out south. For now, the five-eighths-mile string of Mongoose style, night-sky-friendly lights is all that is planned this summer, but the city intends to make similar replacements all the way to trail's-end (planned to be at 71st Street) and across the Arkansas River Bridge, replacing "shoebox lights," said Brown.

Rather than string aerial wire or bury supply conduit in trenches (that would have killed saplings planted there) PSO subcontractor Davis H. Elliott Co. used a "horizontal directional drilling machine" to bore subsurface holes base to base. Also, the new street lights are five feet from the curb instead of at curbside where the old poles killed and maimed many a motorist. The new poles are the nonlethal, break-away variety.

...But im a little concerned about this:

"The new light is the same 250-watt, high-pressure sodium variety as our other street and highway lights, but the fixture has a flat lens as opposed to the drop-glass lens of our cobra-head lights," said Tracy Freeman, customer design engineering tech for American Electric Power-Public Service Company of Oklahoma. "The city wanted something more aesthetically pleasing to go with trail improvements and that's why we chose these."

When you convert to Full-cutoff fixtures, you are in essence recycling all the light that has been previously wasted upward and outward (as glare) back onto the road surface.  That dramatically increases the amount of light on the road so much to the point where you have to reduce the wattage to maintain a comfortable and uniform illumination.  Failing to reduce the wattage results in pooling and makes unlit areas appear darker, which in turn gives the perception that more lights need be installed to compensate for the darker areas.  Great if your selling electricity but not good if you are paying the tab or trying to see under that light.   

(edited to add)
I took a look at them in daylight, and was relieved to find they were not the version of the 'Mongoose' that was used on south Yale avenue but rather a flat-lens version pointed straight down.

This is good.
They stuck with Sodium, which was smart (longer life and less maintenance than the garish blue Metal Halide) and except for the over-lamping, they are on the right track.
Ill look at them at night to see if the spacing works, but they still beat acorns hands-down. 

Article from USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-08-26-cities-turn-off-streetlights_N.htm


The old-fashioned streetlight is the recession's latest victim. To save money, some cities and towns are turning off lights, often lots of them.

The cost-cutting moves coincide with changing attitudes about streetlights. Once viewed as helpful safety measures, the lights are increasingly seen by some public officials and researchers as an environmental issue, creating light pollution and burning excess energy.

In July, Santa Rosa, Calif., started a two-year effort to remove 6,000 of the city's 15,000 streetlights. An additional 3,000 will be placed on a timer that shuts lights off from midnight to 5:30 a.m. Savings: $400,000 a year.

The city boasts that it will cut its carbon footprint. What really matters, though, is money.

Public works director Rick Moshier says he'd already cut his department's budget by 25% when he turned to streetlights. "I can either fix potholes and storm drains or keep paying $800,000 a year for electricity," Moshier says.

Turning out the lights has met some local resistance. Santa Rosa has a hotline for complaints.

"What about the human factor?" says Kenneth Ozoonian of North Andover, Mass. His town is turning off 626 streetlights — about one-third of the town's total — to save $47,000 annually.

"Some of these lights have been on for 40 or 50 years. The elderly, children and the disabled need the light," he says. Other towns flipping the switch:

• Dennis, Mass., on Cape Cod is considering shutting off 832 lights to save $50,000 a year.

• Montgomery, Pa., had its police department choose which lights would go. The town turned off 31 lights, one-third of the total, to save $6,000.

• South Portland, Maine, joined several other Maine towns when the City Council voted to turn off 112 lights, saving $20,000 a year.

In Minnesota, cities and towns are starting to charge "streetlight fees" to cover the cost.

Northfield, Minn., a city of 19,000 will decide next month whether to add a $2.25 streetlight fee to monthly water and sewer bills. More than 30 Minnesota towns have added the fee.

"Streetlights are more expensive than people realize," Northfield Mayor Mary Rossing says. Her city spends about $230,000 a year on streetlights.

Many cities are leaving streetlights at intersections but removing them from residential neighborhoods, especially from the middle of blocks.

Most cities use more light than they need, at least in some places, says scientist John Bullough of the Light Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Towns should be careful about removing lights, he says. "It's not something you want to do by throwing darts at the map."

There's little evidence to support the belief that streetlights reduce crime, he says. However, lighting does reduce traffic accidents, especially at intersections.

The nation's streetlights consume electricity equivalent to 1.4 million homes. They generate greenhouse gases equal to 2 million cars a year.




My take on this is that, while Tulsa has a large number of unnecessary or poorly-designed street lights, it would be a mistake to leave large areas that would otherwise benefit from night-time utilization in the dark.

Our streetlighting system was designed with "ballasting" excess off-peak electrical generation in mind, with assisting human vision a much lower design consideration.  This was in the days when "any light is a good light, and the more the better" was the mantra ... nowadays we pay more attention to how glare and excess lighting  work against being able to see better at night.
That means we could be following the lead of other cities that successfully do more with less -- cut back on wattage that only goes into the sky or your eyes -- by using better fixtures, more appropriate intensities and better planning on were lights are really needed.

Mid block lights?  The present ones can go, unless the neighborhoods want to pay to keep them, and if that's the case they should have more say as to the quality and quantity of those lights.

Think of a walkable neighborhood lit not by a large, glaring orange thing, but a series of much less intense, cheaper-to-operate pedestrian-scale streetlights that render the streetscape more uniformly illuminated.
Fewer harsh shadows and intense light/dark spots would be more inviting and should result in better pedestrian utilization and safety, but we need to get past the mega-watt mindset of our past street lighting strategy.   
Ultra-efficient L.E.D. streetlights are close at hand (current models are too blue and garish) but Compact Fluorescent is ready today.   

Current streetlights at residential street corners can have their wattage cut in half if more efficient fixtures were used.  Once you eliminate the glare you would be amazed at how little electricity is really needed.
   
   

Bluish-white streetlights are not only garish and uninviting, but here are a few other reasons to avoid them:

http://www.darksky.org/assets/documents/IDA-Blue-Rich-Light-White-Paper.pdf

Do you have a chart with the popular sodium vapor street light emissions overlaid on the eye sensitivity?

Not an overlay, but you can line up the wavelengths (nanometers)
(http://www.ambulancevisibility.com/web_images/Light%20spectrum%20%20-%20www.ambulancevisibility.com.gif)

And yes, the golden-colored High Pressure Sodium light is going to be better for the eye than Metal Halide or bluish-white LED's, given the research sofar.
The first chart shows the eye's Circadian sensitivity (that also governs the production of Melatonin) centered about 460nm, while Sodium streetlighting is around 580nm -- much closer to the eyes visual (Photopic) sensitivity than the bluer culprits.

How different sources of light compare, spectrally
(http://sp.uconn.edu/~mdarre/NE-127/Images/Spectrum1/Slide1.JPG)
INC - incandescent
CF - Compact Fluorescent
HPS - High Pressure Sodium (most streetlights now)
MH -Metal Halide
SUN - sunlight

It looks like the HPS makes a good portion of its light at longer wavelengths than human eye sensitivity. The Blue-rich LED looks like a good match, better than HPS, if the spike at about 460 nm could be filtered out. Might waste power though.  I won't argue the aesthetics of the color for street lights.  My dad used to (passed away years ago) complain about the HPS street lights.  He said the proponents touted the amount of light they put out compared to mercury vapor lights for an equivalent power consumption but they neglected to say that a significant portion was not effective for human vision.  

My main interest is for automobile headlights.  I started driving behind quartz-iodide headlights in the early 70s.  I liked the greater illumination they provided.  I don't know if it was the color, the greater lumens for the same power, the lens pattern, or a combination but they were far superior to the tungsten headlights of the time.  When I went on trips, I frequently drove at night on the Interstates and really appreciated not overdriving the headlights.  

Thanks for the chart.

I wrote this on the chart you first put up.  I'll have to look at your latest stuff in the AM.  I have to get up at 6:00.

Patric

OK, I couldn't resist looking.   Would you please repost the first HPS chart and explain the difference between that and the one you now have posted.  I think most of those lights are color corrected somehow.  Maybe "they" have done some work on the final color. 

Blue-rich light is only advantageous at low lighting levels where the eye is relying on Scotopic vision (think full moon).
At higher lighting levels (Photopic vision) the eye is more sensitive to yellow-green.
Ratcheting blue spectra up into Photopic vision levels (where the eye is more yellow sensitive) isnt helping human vision at all, and merely upsets our "body clock". 

(http://www.lightingresearch.org/programs/Futures/LF-Auto/img/nightgraph2.gif)
Streetlighting falls within the descriptions of Mesopic (porch light, residential street light) to Photopic (brightly-lit city centers, gas stations, billboards) vision.

Also, think for a second why foglights are amber and not blue.
If blue light scatters 3-4 times more in atmospheric vapor than amber, a blue light would simply reflect back the fog, whereas the amber fog light would penetrate the fog and reflect back more useful information (like the road).  This is known as Rayleigh scatter (and is the reason the sky appears blue).
http://resodance.com/ali/bluskies.html

This may be something that Patric has covered in the past, but I didn't  bother to search for it...

I was told that the City of Tulsa pays a recurring flat fee to AEP-PSO for each streetlight in town...regardless of whether or not it's on (ie: burnt out bulbs, maintenance issues, etc) or how much electricity it uses.  (This doesn't include "decorative" acorn lights, etc.)  And that the Corporation Commission decides how much the City will pay for each.  Did I hear that right?

So PSO determines the type of fixture, bulb, etc...and the Corp Commission determines the cost per light...and the City doesn't have a say in it?  This makes no sense, so I hope it's false.  Can anyone verify or correct this info?

AEP-PSO submits Price Code Schedules to the Corporation Commission for approval as a part of contractual Franchise Agreements they make with municipalities.

The MSL (Municipal Street Lighting) price code gives monthly prices for different streetlights depending on wattages and what it is mounted on (traffic light pole vs. PSO-provided poles, etc).

In 1997 a 400-watt Sodium streetlight on a wooden pole (Price Code 0832-N) cost $7.82/month.  Being un-metered, the cost is levied whether the light is actually present and working or not.
In 2000 the Tulsa World's Phil Mulkins did a series on streetlighting under the "Action Line" column, where City Traffic Engineer Jon Eshelman explained the streetlight rates as an annual payment "less than $100 per residential light and more than $100 per arterial lights."
 
If a light were removed, the municipality would have to pay PSO an amount equal to the unused portion of the fixture's predicted life (usually around 15 years).

The Corporation Commission does decide the rates on the price code, but that actually consists of the CC rubberstamping the rates AEP-PSO submits to them.   

When I did a report for Mayor Lafortune's Performance Team in 2003, AEP had a difficult time documenting exactly how many lights of each type the city was paying for, saying they would have to hire a consultant to make such an inventory.  The situation was reminiscent of 1988 when the city auditor took PSO to task for double-charging for lights:
http://www.cityauditorphilwood.com/audits/StreetLight88-89-01.pdf

...and to answer the second part of your question...
Ill cite a January 2000 TW "Action Line" article again:

' (lighting specialist Michael) Lemley explained that the ``farm light'' is part of Public Service Company of Oklahoma's standard and, therefore, part of the city of Tulsa's standard for replacing and erecting new street lights. Before the shielded reflector could be adopted as the city's ``standard street light'' -- as it is now in the cities of Texas and Oregon, Tulsa's City Council will have to adopt the standard and require PSO to change its streetlight standard.

``Having Renaissance involved in this is a good start,'' Lemley said. ``When they started working on this, I said: `It is one thing for you to individually try to do this, but there are two areas you have to go after -- one is the City Council, to convince them to review the current standard, and two is to get PSO to change its standard.''  '

So as I understand it, PSO gives Public Works a list of lights it wants to use, and they in turn "require" PSO to use those lights as part of the streetlight standard. 
One of the past requirements is that each fixture burn a minimum of 100 Watts of electricity, since PSO uses the  streetlights to "balance their load" during off-peak electrical consumption. 
Designing streetlighting for the wrong reasons is what leads cities to spend too much money on street lighting that doesnt do a good job of lighting streets.     
My last estimate was around $2 million/year Tulsa is wasting with it's present streetlighting strategy.

The course of action is still to get the city council to review it's streetlighting standard, and make visual performance a higher priority than the utility's need to sell off-peak power, but who in office has the courage to do that?

AEP is doing some good things with streetlights in Eureka Springs, since there is now a state law requiring all new publicly funded outdoor lighting be shielded.  
 
AEP is already retrofitting most Eureka Springs street lights to 100w flat glass cobra-head lights or GE SkyGards, in anticipation of the unanimous passage of the city's new outdoor lighting ordinance;
http://cityofeurekasprings.org/ORDS/planords.html
 
If passed, the ordinance will require all new lighting over 100 watts incandescent or other light sources over 4,000 lumens to be shielded, even AEP lighting leased to residential and business customers.  

New horizontal floodlights will be prohibited and old ones that fail must be removed or replaced with a shielded light.
 
The Planning commission supports the ordinance unanimously.

One of the exhibits for the new Eureka Springs ordinance (.pdf):

Testing LED streetlights in Portland:

http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/publications/pdfs/ssl/gateway_lija-loop.pdf

The irony of this test is that the streetlights they are replacing are BETTER than what we currently use in Tulsa.
...another indication of how far behind the curve we are.

The appendix to this report also includes the city's written Streetlight Standards (something else we dont have in Tulsa).

And in Boston:
http://www.cityofboston.gov/environment/LED

Looks like good value to me, i would normally just share a starter and then have a main each. usually too full for dessert after the huge US portions. I dont know how anyone can contemplate having a starter each, a main and a dessert. may  be there is a difference between US citizens and the UK, dont want to generalise though.

And, once more...
(http://xenohistorian.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/playboybunnypancake.jpg)

Appears to be someone from the UK that is really, really lost...

Simonson and Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett think they've come up with a bright idea to turn the lights back on and save the city money. The city is applying for $750,000 in stimulus money to replace some current street lights with LED lights. If approved, the money would come from the Department of Energy and be part of the city's energy efficiency strategy.

http://www.newson6.com/Global/story.asp?S=11805839


But, they are soooooo blue....

 I honestly havent even noticed any difference with the lights off in the areas of I have been in.  There is so much ambient light from the rest of the city (all the QTs perhaps  :P )that you can see quite well.

But just wait.  Three or four years ago when this was done, there wasn't much outrage until some ill-advised pedestrian tried to cross 244 in an unlit section of the highway and someone killed him.  That got the lights turned back on.

No amount of lighting fixes stupid.

+1

I responded on the "Expressway Lights" thread...
http://www.tulsanow.org/forum/index.php?topic=4110.msg152251#msg152251

Yes, color does matter, more than just aesthetics.  An excerpt from an analysis of blue-rich lighting from a lighting forum:

For decades our understanding of circadian effects in animals tied melatonin suppression directly to rod and cone sensitivity in the eye.  The past decade of research that Holzman refers to ('What's in a Color? The Unique Human Health Effect of Blue Light' by David C. Holzman ) seems to make a sound argument, that it is not rods and cones but these third receptors -- melanopsin ganglian retinal cells -- that are driving circadian effects (plus others, perhaps even fear of the dark?). 

This means that the blue end of the visible spectrum, where peak output is found in most LED lights, is powerful.  Perhaps blue light in the day time can have some powerful, positive effects...  more significantly to outdoor lighting applications, blue light can have disproportionately powerful negative effects at night. 

If the research Holzman points to is sound, then we should consider carefully before advocating blue-intensive light sources, such as LEDs, in night-time lighting applications (i.e. all outdoor lighting).  In addition to the intensified Light Pollution concerns, blue light at night seems to be the biggest culprit in circadian disruption and those related risks of sleep disorders, depression, and cancer.

I dont know if that efficiency strategy involves consulting a lighting designer independent of the utility company, but it probably should.
It might not hurt if the city talked to the people that design lighting at hospitals, since their focus is lighting that actually benefits improved vision at night (even by visually impaired or elderly people).

Compare the lighting of St John Medical Center to that of a McDonalds or WalMart and you will see what I mean.

The days of specifying street lighting on an electric provider's need to sell off-peak generating capacity at night needs to end.  We just dont have the money anymore. 
Utilities should turn instead to promoting electric cars that plug in overnight to meet their excess capacity problems, not bad streetlighting.

A lighting engineer I know is moving to Alpine TX, where they are expected to begin trials of LED streetlights that change hues and intensities as the night progresses.

"You would have a varied light color from 4200K at dusk to 2700K say at midnight.  We would not only change the light (color) temp but also the intensity would be reduced from say 5600 lumens to 2300 lumens (stepped down)."

So at sunset, the streetlight starts out brighter, and closer in color to daylight, but towards midnight (when eyes have adjusted to night) the streetlight has shifted to a warm incandescent and is half as bright.

That's cool.

Where does 2700K fall in the wavelength chart?  You posted some charts last October (page 5 this thread) with some interesting info but I don't see the relationship between wavelength and temperature.  (It's late, maybe it's there and I just didn't see it.)

"Color Temperature" is just a way of referring to where a light source falls on the Kelvin (K) scale.

2700 degrees Kelvin (written as 2700K) would be warmer in color, and closer to incandescent (which is around 3000K) than, say, a colder bluer color temperature like a 6400K (many "white" LED's).

Warmer colors are more natural, inviting and pleasing to the eye at night, but currently LED manufacturers are getting the most efficiency (lumens of light per watt of electricity) from blue-rich sources, so that is what they are marketing.  We are just expected to go along with garish looking lights right now in much the same way the early fluorescent manufacturers convinced us their greenish-fluorescent lights were the way to go in the 50's.
Today, fluorescent lights have much better color than the early ones, and I dont think we will have to wait as long for LED's to mature as we did fluorescent tubes.  3000K LED's are around but not being aggressively marketed as the brighter, bluer ones.

If municipalities insist on better color from LEDs the manufacturers will follow.  It's just we dont need to jump on the "blue light" bandwagon simply to be able to say we have LED streetlights.

FYI this is much more than just aesthetics.  Blue-rich light at night is bad because it interferes with the body's day/night rythym (by suppressing natural nighttime Melatonin production).  I can go into the medical information later, but here is some reading:
http://docs.darksky.org/PR/PR_Blue_White_Light.pdf
which dovetails nicely into the American Medical Associations' (AMA) position on health effects of stray lighting:
http://docs.darksky.org/Docs/AMA%20Light%20pollution.pdf

I was wondering where 2700K fell with respect to the Scotopic, Mesopic, Photopic vision wavelengths.

I found something from Burlington, VT regarding the color they want.  Since they don't give wavelengths or spectral density, I would like to hear your opinion.

"High Pressure Sodium (HPS) lamps, while very efficient and long lasting, emit an orange-yellow light that distorts color as well as our ability to identify features at a distance. Metal Halide lamps emit a cool white light which makes for more accurate object identification and adds to our sense of security.  This white light creates a skyglow similar to moonlight rather than the orange glow of HPS, and are only slightly less efficient at commonly used wattages.  Metal halide is the preferred lamp for lighting applications in Burlington for both it's color rendering and energy efficiency."

They used it's in place of its in the last sentence, not me.
I printed the pages out as a pdf so the URL isn't on the bottom.  I'll try to find it again if you want.

It sounds like they just quoted the lighting manufacturers sales brochure.
They were almost right when they said that Metal Halide creates a skyglow similar to moonlight -- about three to four times as much skyglow as regular Sodium streetlight, due to the Rayleigh Effect of water vapor scattering blue light.  But do you really want skyglow of any color when skyglow is an indicator of wasted light?

Bringing us back to the types of vision

Scotopic Vision (moonlight) 10-² to 10-⁶ cd/m² (or 'nits' for billboard people).
Mesopic Vision (porch light, residential streetlight) 10-² to 1 cd/m²
Photopic Vision (brightly-lit city centers, gas stations, billboards, and daylight) >1  cd/m²

(To give some idea as to scale of 'nits' or Candellas per Square Meter (cd/m²), Tulsa's LED billboards are 6,500 nits in daylight, 500 nits at night, for example.)

Where light of a color temperature of 2700 degrees Kelvin falls with respect to these types of vision depends upon the intensity of the 2700K light source.

At very low light levels (Scotopic) the eye is more sensitive to shorter-wavelength, bluer light (starlight, twilight, moonlight)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7e/CIE_1951_scotopic_luminosity_function.svg/300px-CIE_1951_scotopic_luminosity_function.svg.png)
but some lighting manufacturers have assumed this would also be beneficial at much higher levels when in fact at higher levels different components of the eye are at work.

Here's another explaination of Color Temperature:
http://www.sizes.com/units/color_temperature.htm

So if I were to over-simplify a presentation for the mayor or council, It would be something to the effect:
The ideal outdoor lighting color temperature is 3000 degrees Kelvin, which is the color of incandescent light.

In the draft for the PLANiTULSA Downtown Area Master Plan, there is only one paragraph that made it in about improved lighting:

17. Appropriate lighting should be
provided to encourage a sense of
safety and ease for pedestrians
throughout Downtown. Similarly
appropriate lighting for vehicles is to be
provided. The excitement, identity, and
sense of place which lighting can provide
is to be considered in all public and
private development. Energy conservation and “dark technology” is a key
component in selection of lighting system.

What happened to providing lighting for the purpose of improving human vision?
...and can anyone tell me what they are calling "dark technology"?

The sketches that bother to show lighting all still show Acorns and Drop-lens lights, all high-glare (and high energy waste).  A 2006 energy audit revealed a correlation between the installation of inefficient Acorn-style decorative lights and spiraling streetlight energy costs (doubling between 2003 and 2006), and yet we still maintain that course while we lay off police and firemen?

There is now also an EnergyStar rating for streetlights, why no mention of requiring that for all new streetlights?

That is worrisome that with all this planning something as important as lighting fell by the way side.

Seeing this Italian streetscape is worth the view, even if you dont care about streetlights:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO1rKmNfYkM[/youtube]

I like the lighting but am surprised that you haven't stated that the color is too blue/white.  Do you have the spectrum on those lights compared to what you seem to prefer?

The Color Correlated Temperature of those is 6000 degrees Kelvin.
3000K would be closest to incandescent light (and most manufacturers offer the option to order a "warmer" color) so if you can picture those as the same color as your reading light (rather than your TV)...

...but I liked how you could look waaaay down the street and see the street instead of just the streetlights.

 Refining High Brightness White LEDs  (http://docs.darksky.org/SB/LED-SB-v3i1.pdf)

Sources of light:
Background -- Ordinary "white" LEDs (bluish)
Middle -- High Pressure Sodium (Tulsa's streetlights)
Foreground -- Warm White LEDs  (around 3000K color)

 Seeing Blue:  LED streetlights  (http://docs.darksky.org/Nightscape/Article_SeeingBlue.pdf)

Alternate link:  http://www.southamptontownny.gov/filestorage/596/598/4245/5194/IDA_Seeing_Blue_Nightscape.pdf


(also answers the question of why newer "xenon" headlights are so painful to oncoming traffic).

was purchasing petrol at 36&Peoria QT last night under the new HUGE and LONG gas canopy and noticed 3.47 MILLION BUGS...so many I could not keep them out of my eyes....then relized that there are 14 gajillion tooooo may friking lights! I am a QT fan (Chester C taught me to swim in his swimming pool many yrs ago) but geesh too many and too much light(s)!

Petrol?  okay gottsta ask, spend much time across the pond there?

Some city planners read this (even city planners from  other cities (http://www.tulsanow.org/forum/index.php?topic=15760.0)) so it would be nice if it stayed on the topic of street lighting.

BUT... We DID go into great detail on the lighting at QT's in this thread:
http://www.tulsanow.org/forum/index.php?topic=6838.0
if you want to see what was done and how that turned out. 

From the picture, I like the warm white LEDs (3000K color).

Most people do, once they've seen it.  It's closest to the look of incandescent light.

The problem with cities in a rush to install any LED street lighting is they dont take that into account.
With federal stimulus money in hand, and a deadline to spend it, they will order the brightest ones available, which unfortunately are the worst color blue.
Then we're stuck with that choice for the next 15-20 years.

I understand the environmental concerns about the "blue" LEDs and the effects on human and animal populations. But I've always liked the look of the "cools" better than the "warms"; always gave me a sense of "futuristic".

Really? They give me a sense of an operating table.

...or a mausoleum.
Aside from the adverse health and environmental issues of blue-rich light at night,
it's not an inviting color for public spaces, which is counter-productive if you are trying to attract more commerce or "friendly eyes" to make streets safer. 
That's not to say that prudent use of blue light doesnt have it's place, it's just that it shouldnt be used for illumination of streets and public places.

(updated link)
http://docs.darksky.org/Nightscape/Article_SeeingBlue.pdf

Poorly designed outdoor lighting is one of the most conspicuous forms of energy waste. The global call to conserve energy resources has cities scrambling to replace public lighting with brand new systems.   In the U.S., changes are further spurred by federal economic stimulus funding. 
Technology under development for decades has produced a number of options, many with a potential for energy savings. Of these, high brightness white light emitting diodes (LEDs) have emerged as an industry favorite.
Many of these new options have never been applied on a broad scale, and may have unexpected consequences if widely used for outdoor lighting.  In particular, the stronger blue emission produced by white light sources, such as LEDs, has been shown to have increased negative effects on sky glow, and has a greater impact on animal behavior and circadian rhythms than other types of light.  Widespread installation of white light sources rich in blue emission is among the largest concerns.
Lamp choices made today will affect night lighting for decades, maybe longer.  It is imperative that decision makers understand the consequences—both positive and negative—of lighting choices.

Ha! I didn't listen to Patrick about outdoor lights. Silly me. Friday night a young couple parked their car in front of the home next to me and proceeded up the steps to my front porch where they commenced taking all the Halloween decorations my lovely wife had smartly arranged. This was about 8:00pm. I had left the front porch light on, the car port light on and of course my motion detector floods activated.

That made it very easy for them to see what they wanted. Unfortunately for them, I was at my desk using the laptop and I saw them clearly through the partly open blinds. They looked in the front door but neglected to seem me in the office.

So, I jumped up and chased them off the porch. Tackled the young man while his girlfriend jumped in her car and tried to leave. By the time we hit the street he had lost his hat and glasses and started making lame excuses for their behavior.

I had the jump on him but let him go. His girlfriend came back to get him. He returned twice more and once attempted to engage me in fisticuffs. Even though I had a couple snorts of a very fine Vodka, he knew he had imbibed even more and wasn't up for it. I gave the hat and glasses to the cop who responded.

Sooooo, now I keep the lights off and depend on the motion detector to tip me off. It lights the yard but not the house. Even old farts learn eventually.

WB, I think you got a couple who evolved from the shallow end of the gene pool.  I still think a porch light is a great deterrent to most potential thieves or vandals.  Given a choice I personally believe most burglars would prefer to have as little light to be identified by as possible.

I know this will probably make Patric pass out but I have two (front and back) mercury vapor lamps that shine like the sun in my yard.  Turned on at night; have a photosensor to turn them off during the day.  I prefer safety.

I keep debating on leaving my backyard lights on at night as well.  Drunken vandals generally aren't going to bother with a back yard, home invaders and burglars will.

Perhaps the blue-spectrum lights aren't completely bad. In fact, they might improve the mood of the citizens:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/10/27/health.blue.light.moods/index.html?hpt=Sbin (http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/10/27/health.blue.light.moods/index.html?hpt=Sbin)

That's what I'd like to see at a few of the QT's late at night.  More brains with enhanced abilities to process emotions.

One of our catty corner backyard neighbors has a mercury vapor street light on the property line.  Not close to their house, it just lights the area.  It's not quite so bad in the summer since we have trees that block a lot of it.  It really su#ks in the winter.  I wish they would move it closer to their windows.  I don't think it helps their safety and it makes it difficult to see stars, the space station going overhead, etc.

I hate to state the obvious, but using blue-rich light to treat SAD is done in the daytime, when the body is expecting a blue sky.
Not at night, when the body is expecting darkness.

One of the key players is how (and when) the body produces Melatonin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin).
In healthy people, Melatonin is produced at night as we sleep, the antioxidant hormone working with the immune system and promoting rest.  At dawn (and exposure to blue light) Melatonin production ceases, and we become alert and active.

Upset that cycle, either by not having enough blue light in the daytime, or too much blue light at night, and the body suffers both physically and psychologically.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100412095542.htm
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-20015449-247.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 

" Earlier studies at Haifa demonstrate that, of people living in areas with higher nighttime illumination, men are more susceptible to prostate cancer and women to breast cancer than those who live in darker areas.
In this study, which involves many of the same researchers, the team wanted to test the hypothesis that light at night interferes with the body's natural production of melatonin, a hormone released during the dark hours of the 24-hour cycle and linked to the body's cycle of night-day activities.
Their conclusion: suppression of melatonin increases tumor development. "

So no, having a blue-rich Mercury Vapor or LED light outside your bedroom window, or falling asleep with the TV on, isnt doing your body any good, and should be avoided at night.

Another reason to replace wasteful streetlights:  Air quality.



Study: City lights make city smog

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 14 (UPI) -- The bright nighttime lights of major metropolitan cities are making air pollution worse, a study by U.S. researchers indicates.

Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say the glare thrown up into the sky interferes with chemical reactions that would normally help clean the nighttime air of the fumes emitted by motor cars and factories during the day, the BBC reported Tuesday.

A special form of nitrogen oxide, called the nitrate radical, breaks down chemicals that form smog and ozone.

This natural cleansing normally occurs in the hours of darkness because the radical only shows up at night, being destroyed by sunlight, the researchers say.

Measurements taken over Los Angeles show the energy from all the nighttime light over the city is also suppressing the radical.

The lights may be 10,000 times dimmer than the Sun, researchers say, but the effect is still significant.

"Our first results indicate that city lights can slow down the night-time cleansing by up to 7 percent and they can also increase the starting chemicals for ozone pollution the next day by up to 5 percent," NOAA's Harald Stark said.
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2010/12/14/Study-City-lights-make-city-smog/UPI-14321292359886/



As many cities are close to their limits of allowable ozone levels, this news is expected to generate immediate interest in light pollution reduction as a way to improve air quality among city, state, and federal bodies, including the Environmental Protection Agency.

"(This effect) is more important up in the air than it is directly on the ground so if you manage to keep the light pointing downward and not reflected back up into sky, into the higher parts of the air, then you would certainly have a much smaller effect of this," NOAA investigator Harald Stark told BBC News.
International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) Executive Director Bob Parks is hopeful that results of this study will encourage cities to adopt environmentally responsible dark sky lighting practices that include using fully shielded fixtures, minimum lighting levels, and lighting only when necessary. "The impending transition to LED outdoor lighting will also allow cities to utilize adaptive lighting controls to dim or turn off lights when not needed. Not only will this vastly reduce energy consumption, based on this new research, it could also improve air quality.
http://docs.darksky.org/PR/PR_CityLightPollutionAffectsAirPollution.pdf

Patric, this question is for you:

I'm about to move in to a new apartment, and after talking with the owner about the lights, he has agreed to replace all the clear plastic street light shields with new, full metal shields, like the ones you had installed in your neighborhood several years ago when KOTV ran the big news story on light pollution. In that story, it was mentioned that anyone could request the shields and pay around $30 each for them. I've searched AEP-PSO's website for information on requesting a new shield and haven't found anything.

I have, however, found how to request a new shield in Scottsdale. Why isn't this easier in Tulsa?

So, here's my main question: Where can I send him for information on requesting the installation of these shields? Is there a website or phone number I've missed?

They are called SkyCaps, and AEP/PSO doesnt offer them.
Nelson Electric (north of Cains Ballroom) had the Hubbell NPU-B1 SkyCap  at one time around $20, but I have seen them for much more online so it pays to look around.
RAB Lighting also makes these http://www.rabweb.com/product_detail.php?product=SHY,
as does General Electric (GE SkyGard Yard Lighting Shield SGR-1)
which are designed to re-fit NEMA-style streetlights (The ones with the open-bottomed plastic lenses).
(http://smud.apogee.net/comsuite/content/ces/library/graphics/lpol2.jpg)

http://www.skykeepers.org/good_fixtures/ca-shields-mods.html
http://www.greenearthlighting.com/specs/SpecRABSHY.pdf

PSO isnt as hip as this utility: http://smud.apogee.net/comsuite/content/ces/?utilid=smud&id=1663

...but keep in mind these clip-on shields are mainly to protect existing investments in utility-grade fixtures (such as those used for streetlights) as a retro-fit.  An apartment building might be using utility-grade luminaires, or cheap, incompatable look-alikes from Home Despot.

If the later is the case, there are partial shields that clip onto the acrylic lens, or you could just paint the lens with a gray primer (like PSO does when people complain about light trespass from neighbors leased lights). 

Unless the property has a substantial investment in utility grade "security lights" it might be more economical,  efficient, and better looking to just replace the fixture with one purpose-built to be shielded.

Thanks, Patric. It's not an apartment complex--it's an old building downtown, across from Home Depot, and it's just 3 lights. All of them are the NEMA fixtures you've displayed. One of the light poles is adjacent to the sidewalk and road, and right now, completely lacks any kind of shield. It's just an exposed bulb.

What is the process that you went through to install the SkyCap on your block? We're just looking to retrofit them with the clip-on shields... Is this something that you buy and the utility installs it, or...?

I bought them from Hubbell Electric, called PSO and they agreed to install them at no charge.  They were also curious to see the results.

If the 3 lights in question are abandoned leased lights, PSO may agree to just take them down.

I should point out that when we did the retro-fit experiment in the Renaissance Neighborhood, SkyCaps were the easiest way to get existing fixtures shielded so city engineers could see the effect.

Given that many streetlights are at the end of their useful life, it would be better to just replace the whole fixture with one purpose-built to be shielded.

It would be a matter of the Mayor or Council directing Public Works to require AEP/PSO to begin using the shielded versions from this point on, for any new or replacement fixtures.

The Color of Lights: More Than Meets the Eye
http://www.illinoislighting.org/lightcolor.html

"The colors of light created by our artificial light sources play a large part in determining both the quality of illumination they provide, and the levels of undesirable environmental impacts which they create."

(also provides an explanation as to why bluish headlights piss us off)

Patric

We all know how much you like the acorn lights downtown.  Is there a size or type of bulb readily available that would more accurately mimic the gas lamps they try to imitate?

When the gas lamps the Acorns were intended to mimic were in use, the standard for street lighting was that of the intensity of the full moon -- but more uniform, so you could see 3-dimensionally.

That wouldn't work today because they would be overwhelmed by other light sources; cars, storefronts, etc., and trying to ratchet up modern intensities into that sort of fixture to compensate just results in glare.

If Tulsa wanted to make it's investment in faux-antique Acorn streetlights more resemble their 1900's predecessors, their intensity would have to be greatly reduced (more to a decorative level) and the actual job of lighting a busy street to modern intensity levels would be done with higher-mounted, shielded fixtures.   

It would be a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too approach, where you have the pretty Acorn dayform by day, and adequate low-glare illumination at night.

Given the current state of lighting technology, the best way to do that might be to gut the Acorns of their Metal Halide lamp and ballast, and replace them with a Compact Fluorescent lamp similar to what you would find in your home.   Now, that alone isnt going to yield recommended illumination levels needed for an oft-used pedestrian area, so in those instances you would need to supplement the "decorative" street lighting with a more "primary" light source (like High Pressure Sodium) that is both shielded (for glare) and mounted much higher.

For the converted Acorn to resemble incandescent gas or electric light, you would want to choose a light source with a Correlated Color Temperature under 3200 degrees Kelvin (3200K).   
It's readily available, yes.

(http://climatelab.org/@api/deki/files/191/=Compact_Fluorescent_Light_Bulb.jpg)

...such an arrangement might resemble this:
(http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-12/1116161/street_elements.jpg)

I should have asked earlier but didn't.  Did the gas lamps use a mantle or wick?

Mantle or open flame.  They were around for a while.
Wicks are for liquid fuels.
Acorns were the electric incandescent replacement for gas.

From a city-wide survey of Tulsans:

Only 29 percent of the Tulsans surveyed said they felt safe walking around the city at night.  That could account for a rise in criminal activity after dark.  Or bad neighborhood lighting giving the "perception" it's not safe out there.

After seeing the city survey, Mayor Bartlett says there are neighborhoods with bad lighting, but also areas with good lighting and they didn't receive good marks either.

"There is some kind of perception problem that we need to address."

The survey noted it could be a sign of criminals just being more active at night.

Westcott says if you consider the statistics from the police department, people really are safe in their neighborhoods, most crimes that occurs are not at random.

But he acknowledges the perception problems and feels it's Council's job to do what they can to make people feel safe.
http://www.fox23.com/news/local/story/City-Of-Tulsa-Survey-Results/uk04UCxVw0m5EtjbS-3NJw.cspx


That traditionally has meant adding street lighting that was more effective at pacifying complaints than lighting streets ...or having any effect on crime.

That will probably be the default solution for the foreseeable future, but it doesn't necessarily mean that even street lighting installed for the wrong reasons has to be energy-wasting, glare-prone junk.

Has David Pauling weighed in yet (pardon the pun)?  He might determine that's not the council's job either.

There's actually no ordinance requiring any of Tulsa's streets to be lighted.  It's been pretty much left to the people selling electricity to decide how much we need to buy.  Public Works pretty much waves it on.
That's not to say we shouldnt, but since we do, we should do it sensibly and within our means.

Now, I know there are some in Public Works that know how to do better and wish they could, but if there were an award right now for the most clueless city entity when it comes to outdoor and security lighting it might be Tulsa Public Schools. 
Unless there is another more deserving?

I thought he ruled that there is no city council per his reading of the Charter?

I'm liking this guy more all the time:

Thieves are always prowling parking lots looking for anyone leaving their stuff out in the open.

In this case the thieves break into cars under street lights.
"That just helps them see what's inside,” says Tulsa Police Burglary Sergeant Brandon Watkins.

http://www.fox23.com/news/local/story/Thieves-Could-Target-NCAA-Fans/lImKfJt9GU-CasQ7w_vtiw.cspx

We've spent a lot of money over the years installing the wrong lights for the wrong reasons.
Bravo to Sgt. Watkins for breaking out of the "any light is a good light, and the more the better" mold with a sensible observation.

There's still other good safety issues from the lights like keeping you from stepping in a hole or tripping over a crack in the sidewalk.  People who leave valuable items sitting out in the open in their car has more to do with getting broken into than the lighting.  Don't be a moron and leave a smart phone, laptop, or MP3 player sitting on the passenger seat of your car.

All valid points.  Good lighting (free of glare) helps you identify hazards and threats, but some people will go to extremes thinking light repels evil, and that it's a good idea to spotlight your valuables believing thieves wont make use of that.  Just as true for streetlights as it is for "security" lighting at parking lots and residences.

Interesting that when citizens contact their councilors or the city to have more streetlights installed, they cite "preventing crime" more often than "being able to see in the street" as the reason.
That perception is what leads people to showcase their valuables under bright lights, often achieving the opposite effect they hoped for.


A far better solution.

Streetlights should be warranted for the purpose of seeing better, not as modern-day garlic wreath over the door.

I borrowed this photo from another thread (but posted it here as to not hijack the discussion) but it illustrates what Ive been referring to as a "dual" street lighting system, where you have high-mounted shielded fixtures that do the job of lighting the streets, and much lower-intensity post-top lights for pedestrian scale or aesthetics.
(http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p309/kallsop2/Buildings001.jpg)

Yes, the tall cobra-head lights are full-cutoff (you can tell by the flat lens, as opposed to the drop-lens we use around here).  If the Acorns in this photo are moderate-intensity sources like compact fluorescent (in the neighborhood of 1000 Lumens) this would be a very eye-friendly arrangement.

It's not like any of the folks at the TulsaNow forum have ever discussed this...

Mayor Dewey Bartlett is launching a “Lights On” initiative to improve street lighting across the city, with a particular focus on residential areas.

Bartlett has established a committee to study the issue. It will be led by mayoral aide Chris Benge and include members of the Traffic Operations Division, Mayor’s Action Center, Tulsa Police Department, Working in Neighborhoods, Office of Sustainability and others.

The group is supposed to make its recommendations shortly after the July 1 start of the new fiscal year.

If not for a recent scientific survey of Tulsans, Bartlett said, the issue would not have been on his radar.

“This is a perfect example of the citizens telling us what they want and us reacting to that,” he told the Tulsa World.

The survey, conducted earlier this year, indicated that 44 percent of Tulsa residents were dissatisfied with the adequacy of the street lighting.

Bartlett said some of that likely had to do with the city’s expressway lights being shut off during the budget crisis, even though they were back on at the time of the survey.

But the mayor said it also indicates a bigger issue, pointing to another survey result that 38 percent of Tulsans feel unsafe walking in their own neighborhoods after dark. The dissatisfaction and unsafe feelings were the same, regardless of where those surveyed live, Mayoral Chief of Staff Terry Simonson said, showing a map with red dots scattered across the city.

“When you have a situation like this,” he said, tapping the map, “the mayor has to take action. This is a quality-of-life issue.”

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=298&articleid=20110507_298_0_MayorD999171

Since you referenced this pic of mine to discuss the lighting in the area, since there a flat lense cobra head street lamps and the acorn style as well, I wanted to follow up on your thoughts. Along Central Ave in Phoenix (the arterial portion) the lighting wether decorative or traditional are flat lense sodiums. Over 90% of the street lights in the PHX metro area are flat lense. The acorns in the photo that you refer to are sodiums as well, but they are not bare bulb sodiums.

Unlit....
(http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p309/kallsop2/misc035-1.jpg)


And this one happened to be lit showing the internal shading inside to direct light downward...

(http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p309/kallsop2/misc036-1.jpg)

This is an example of the decorative light poles along this corridor, and they are shoe box sodiums that have been fit into decorative poles.....

(http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p309/kallsop2/misc039-1.jpg)

In this case they are of different intensity between the light over the roadway, and the light over the sidewalk, and they compliment each other wee with out being intrusive.

And speaking of intrusive this next picture shows how if your back yard is against an arterial how they help cut down on the light pollution into your yard. (And yes, they are quite effective.)

(http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p309/kallsop2/misc052-1.jpg)

The other things I will add to this converstation are things that I can speak on. In the city of Phoenix, the street lights are maintained by APS, the elictric utility, and if you have issues, and want a shield installed to keep light pollution out of your yard you call them not the city. The cost of the lights is a small charge (pardon the pun) on your electric bill. In the city that I work for, due to the explosive growth that it has gone through, the city maintains all of the street lights, and the issue has become that there was no standard for street lights during the growth time. The main issue that they are trying to resolve is the fact that you had residential developments being built and the developers put in the light standards that they wanted to fit the development. The problem became from the fact the city would take over the maintenance and replacement, but you have areas that have $500.00 standards, and then you have areas where the standards are $5000.00 to replace. The reason that I have become aware of this issue is my departement is using the fiber optic network to connect city facilities together, of the traffic department. As traffic expands it's fiber network to take care of all of the traffic signals, it is my job to see that we can attatch all of the facilities together, which includes Fire, Police, P&R, Public Works, etc, etc.

PSO built Tulsa's streetlighting system to it's convenience.  The weight of the wires dictates a pole every 300 feet, so that's also the interval of the lights in most instances.  Many utilities have designed systems that way, and have argued that they dont want to use Full Cutoff (shielded) lights because it doesnt shine as much between their chosen pole interval.  That argument proved to be empty, as Texas and other states have shown when they changed out older semi- or non-cutoff lights (like we use) for the newer Full-Cutoff using existing pole spacings.

There is actually no ordinance requiring streets to be lighted in Tulsa, so the choices, or "warranting" is done by Public Works based on "input" from PSO.  This should be changed to a better warranting system based not only on actual need for light, but how well the light performs the job.   This would serve the citizens better than installing pointless or inefficient lights as a band-aid for random perceptions. 
Remember, the USDOJ found that there isnt a solid relationship between street lighting alone and a sustained reduction in crime (only that the "fear" of crime is reduced) and that many affluent neighborhoods do well with little or no street lights.

PSO has had 10-15 years (the life of an average luminaire) to adapt to the glare-free lighting of Full-Cutoff but hasnt.  One reason might be that, because Full-Cutoff doesnt waste light at angles useless to vision, they require lamps of less wattage to do the same job of lighting the street.  Light otherwise wasted in people's eyes or the sky is recycled back down to the street, so you can burn less electricity.

But if the streetlight system turns out to actually be designed primarily to burn off-peak electricity, there might be some resistance to that.  In cities where the municipality owns the street lighting system, they are more apt to use streetlights that do the best job improving vision and providing a real sense of safety.

The standard default streetlights we use now are glary, wasteful junk.  Wouldnt it be nice if we used this opportunity to start installing better ones from this point on?

That looks like a King Luminaire "K118 Washington"  http://www.stresscrete.com/pdf/K118.pdf  and the louvres, while a good idea, really work when the glass is clear, and not refractive.  The reason is the refraction scatters light, which counteracts much of the shielding benefit of the louvres inside.  Still better than AEP/PSO's options, though.





That's another good example of a Dual system, but instead of using separate fixtures, they use one thats dual-purpose.  Since Tulsa (thanks to DTU, V2025, etc.) has so much invested in Acorn fixtures, I suggested a way the Acorns could be re-fitted with lower pedestrian-scale intensity (thereby reducing glare) while the job of actually lighting streets would be a higher-mounted, brighter flat-lens fixture such as those in your original photo (Central & Portland).  

Until LEDs mature away from the "Blue" problem, the best choices are still the goldish High-Pressure Sodium.  HPS also has a big edge over Metal Halide in terms of lower maintenance (2X longer life), less sky-glow and Circadian disruption.

Noticed the new lights along the I-44 corridor today.  Are those the permanent lights.  They seem pretty small compared to other interstate lights I've seen.

Yes

(http://www.moonlighting.com.au/epdata/content/689_l.jpg)
http://www.holophane.com/products/ImagePopup.asp?ImageName=G%20Drop%20T-D_large

Unfortunately.


The Holophane Mongoose produces terrible glare, and trespass (spill) beyond the roadway.
It's essentially a broad floodlight, with the worst performance furthest away from the fixture, where the light is practically shining along the horizon.  It's about as useful as the sun in your eyes.  DOTs like them because they eliminate the overhead arm and make for cheaper installations (not because they produce better light). 

What would have been a better choice (even using less electricity)?

(http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTnKLjhAMRjDfI5tpF3cx79333qI0pcN4MaG-9KPHkn1cJ5O7Ip&t=1)
Aww, you guessed.   ;)
(http://content.calgary.ca/NR/rdonlyres/ezkc4ujognsx5shwwfnegrwaidm6ylg6vtk2vj6ctujybas6euctb727a2geb2zf3jwl6tmt7g3bqni4o2kxnafzvog/full_cutoff+roadway+lights.jpg)

More on why color really matters:

Artificial light has been around for more than 120 years. But the light emitted by older sources, like incandescent bulbs, contains more red wavelengths. The problem now, Dr. Brainard and other researchers fear, is that our world is increasingly illuminated in blue. By one estimate, 1.6 billion new computers, televisions and cellphones were sold last year alone, and incandescent lights are being replaced by more energy-efficient, and often bluer, bulbs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/health/05light.html?_r=2&ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=all

In this modern world, our eyes are flooded with light well after dusk, contrary to our evolutionary programming. Scientists are just beginning to understand the potential health consequences. The disruption of circadian cycles may not just be shortchanging our sleep, they have found, but also contributing to a host of diseases.

Sometimes being able to afford streetlights where they are needed means removing them from where they aren't needed:

http://www.rrstar.com/carousel/x181941773/900-streetlights-removed-so-far-in-Rockfords-cost-cutting-plan

ROCKFORD — City officials and ComEd are more than a third of the way to their goal of removing 2,400 streetlights from city roadways by the end of the year, saving $500,000 in electricity costs

Broken Arrow is adding highway lighting to the concrete median along the Broken Arrow Expressway from Aspen (145th E. Ave.) to County Line Rd. (193rd E. Ave.)

It makes sense to add lighting to interchanges (to draw you attention to areas that need it) but if they are just lighting entire straightaways it would be a waste of taxpayer money.

They did use these in Phoenix, but they actually put three sided hoods on them to help direct the light to the roadway. The are used alot in the area around Sky Harbor on I-10.  

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Phoenix+Sky+Harbor+International+Airport,+3400+East+Sky+Harbor+Boulevard,+Phoenix,+AZ+85034&hl=en&ll=33.432493,-112.037804&spn=0.000009,0.013014&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=36.505383,106.611328&vpsrc=6&t=h&z=17&layer=c&cbll=33.432493,-112.037804&panoid=P-x0ukY0AiAdSvDldKlFiQ&cbp=12,113.34,,0,1.93 (http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Phoenix+Sky+Harbor+International+Airport,+3400+East+Sky+Harbor+Boulevard,+Phoenix,+AZ+85034&hl=en&ll=33.432493,-112.037804&spn=0.000009,0.013014&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=36.505383,106.611328&vpsrc=6&t=h&z=17&layer=c&cbll=33.432493,-112.037804&panoid=P-x0ukY0AiAdSvDldKlFiQ&cbp=12,113.34,,0,1.93)

Patric,

I thought you might appreciate that Tulsa isn't the only place with bad taste in street lighting.

I have some pictures of the street lights along Peoria/Elm south of the Creek Turnpike in Jenks but it appears that I cannot post them.  Oh well.

North Tulsa Getting More Street Lights Under City 'Lights On' Project
 
TULSA, Oklahoma -- The city of Tulsa's new Lights On project will see the city installing 53 new street lights, most of which will be in North Tulsa.
Mayor Dewey Bartlett and representatives from the Public Service Company of Oklahoma were on hand for the announcement at the corner of Mohawk and North Lewis Wednesday afternoon.

Bartlett says the project was the result of a citizen's survey calling for more streetlights citywide to increase neighborhood safety throughout Tulsa.
Bartlett said a Lights On! committee composed of representatives from the Mayor's Office, PSO, Tulsa Police Department and City of Tulsa Traffic Engineering to create a work plan for more street lighting in neighborhoods.


What a shame there was no one on the committee that knew anything about good street lighting.

It's not just that the mayor is placating a population segment without establishing that the expenditure would actually meet the stated goal, but the lights they are leasing from the electric utility are junk.
Wonder if they even bothered to do a study, or just went with knee-jerk perceptions of people responding to anonymous surveys?
...And what would it have hurt to specify newer, low-glare "shielded" fixtures for new installations?
They would have used less electricity, yet provided better light.
  
The garbage streetlights they will be using are drop-lens Cobras (left) and NEMA-head (right).  In other words, the same stock energy-wasting AEP inventory.
(http://kotv.images.worldnow.com/images/15571418_BG1.jpg)

But blinding light and glare keeps you safe.

Wonder if this travesty is part of the Mayors vaunted "energy efficiency" initiative?   ::)

"While the science behind it says lights mainly impact the feeling of safety, here the Tulsa police believe it will make a difference in actual crime.
"You're right, it is a feeling, because it's in our genetics to be afraid of the dark and light makes us not as scared," said Tulsa Police Captain Jonathon Brooks.

It was the police department that suggested more lights around a high crime area near 3600 North Lewis. "


But it's always easier to spend someone elses money.
If the cost to buy and operate these came from the TPD budget, they would not be quite so impulsive.
Lets see how many cadets and Police Academies and pay raises they would give up to pay for lighting empty stretches of road and cul-de-sacs.

Come on Capt. Brooks, just come out and say there is no scientific correlation between adding more lights and reducing crime.  The DOJ studies actually show the opposite...  or maybe just listen to your own people:
"In this case the thieves break into cars under street lights.  That just helps them see what's inside," says Tulsa Police Burglary Sergeant Brandon Watkins.
http://www.fox23.com/news/local/story/Thieves-Could-Target-NCAA-Fans/lImKfJt9GU-CasQ7w_vtiw.cspx

So, which would be a better use of $2700 -- paying a patrolman for real security, or the utility company for the perception of security?

It's one thing to try and convince leaders to upgrade existing lights,
but these are completely new installations that could be done correctly from the start.

What a lost opportunity.

We must be careful we don't get into the "unwarranted government intrusion" zone - that place where government dictates what is suitable based on what is actually best for the citizens.

This is closely related to the architecture allowed in commercial buildings, including signage and facades.  Recently took a trip to the northwest of here and was impressed with the fundamental approach to a variety of these type things.  From bike lanes to signs to the style of the front of buildings, there was a large number of towns in the various states that obviously are intruding and as consequence, making their towns look very nice.  Tulsa still makes all the noise about "America's Most Beautiful City" while losing the substance to back it up over the last 30 years or so.  The main propaganda cheerleaders behind the continuation of that urban myth have either NOT traveled elsewhere or are flat out lying.

Many of the cities were approached at late evening, and when viewed from a distance, the lighting looked subdued, almost like the town was "closed" for the night.  But when we got closer, the lighting was more than adequate, but not splashing all over the town.  Very nice effect in many of these towns.  (Denver is still obnoxious - glaring.)

Having said that, our downtown area is a very good, if somewhat limited start at fixing the aesthetics.  And then undone so much by allowing the massive LED billboards....

We should send a delegation to study;  CO; Aurora, Boulder, Loveland, Estes Park, Longmont, Ft. Collins, Craig, Steamboat Springs, Idaho Springs, Arvada, Broomfield.  WY; Cheyenne, Casper, Buffalo, Jackson, Rock Springs.  MT; Billings, Livingston, Bozeman.  UT; Vernal. 

Compared to allowing private industry (with all the conflicts of interest) to make those choices, an "intrusion" by the city council or INCOG would be a lesser evil if it reigns in a little corporate greed.

There's nothing wrong with a public process to set design standards for neighborhoods, for instance, or requiring efficiency standards for municipal lighting.  Just throwing up your hands and saying to the utility companies "Here, you do it" is poor leadership.


P.S. My epiphany was in Tucson in '96.  My perception was that the streets looked dark (because of the absence of glare), yet I could see better and further without that glare.  Cops and firemen loved it, so did the taxpayers: they saved $$millions upfront because they use less electricity.

I agree completely.  The phrase "unwarranted government intrusion" is one of those Murdochian key talking points they use while trying to sell the people of this country the MAJOR bill of goods that government is somehow always bad (and cutting all taxes all the time is good - part 2 of the mantra).  We have been dealing with that set of lies for 3 decades, and now getting to live with the consequences.

Tucson - that's what I saw in all the places mentioned above, as well as Tucson and Las Cruzes a couple years ago.  Lot of towns doing so much better than we are.  And beautifully, too!!

Earlier this year, Mayor Bartlett initiated a Lights On! committee, which is composed of representatives from the Mayor's Office, Public Service Company of Oklahoma, Tulsa Police Department and City of Tulsa Traffic Engineering to create a work plan for more street lighting in neighborhoods.

Translation:  The decision to add more lights had already been made, the committee just got to pick where they would go. 
In most municipalities, there is what's known as a "warranting" process where a location is analyzed to determine if adding, changing or even removing a light would be beneficial or address a problem.  Not here.

http://www2.oaklandnet.com/Government/o/PWA/o/IO/s/SL/OAK025394
http://www.arlingtonva.us/departments/EnvironmentalServices/dot/traffic/streetlights/images/file61665.pdf
http://www2.oaklandnet.com/oakca/groups/pwa/documents/policy/oak026007.pdf

In a nutshell, most cities at least require new lighting meet national standards such as "RP-8-00 American National Standard Practice for Roadway Lighting".  The AEP junk in the photo DOES NOT.


Some of my peers in the world of municipal lighting are getting a kick out of this:

"Criminals use the cover of darkness to commit their crimes, so when we take that element away from them, they no longer commit crimes in that area," said Tulsa Police Department Captain Jonathan Brooks."

When you see photos of drive-by shootings, armed robberies, etc. chances are there will be a streetlight in the picture, because bad guys need to see, too.  Crimes take place in some of the brightest areas, and most burglaries occur in broad daylight...
It's downright embarrassing that people are expected to tow this outdated line of thinking.  TPD gave up on it years ago, yet it rears it's ugly head again for this occasion.

What we are doing is stupid, on so many levels.

They had to do something with them.  ;D

More seriously, on the Gilcrease Expy from Tulsa International to I-244 I noticed streetlights that appear to be shielded.  What do you think about them?

There are several makes of shielded lights around the airport.  Some are newer flat-lens Cobra-heads, and some older ones are drop-lens Cobras with an aftermarket shield known as an "admiral's hat".

The streetlights near the airport are shielded to keep them from blinding pilots.  They do so by eliminating the uplight waste.
....waste that PSO apparently feels is OK for every other area of Tulsa.

The irony is that shielded lights are often cheaper to manufacture and buy, and when installed properly, burn less electricity because you can use less wattage (since you arent paying for the wasted uplight).  But the goal of "Lights ON!" appears to be more lights, not better ones.

We got an interesting schooling in lighting recently on a trip to Colorado.  They have ordinances which limit the amount of light you can emit.  I suppose it goes to trying to help preserve the pristine sky views you can see at night and to be as unobtrusive as possible to nature (no complaints here).  Places like Pagosa Springs are very picky about any directed light on your business sign may not extend beyond the image of the sign.  Hell, they even limit the size of your sign and how the color or hue arrangement can be illuminated on a self-illuminted sign.  I'm still trying to think if I've ever seen a billboard along Hwy 160 from Durango to Walsenburg or Hwy 84 from Pagosa to Chama, and I don't think there are any.  Kind of nice, though it probably sucks to be in the outdoor advertising business up there.

That's exactly what I said a few posts back.  The sign business is doing fine, they just have to make a little different sign.  It's not just Colorado, but Wyoming, Montana, and Utah.  As well as parts of California, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. 

And very few of those big obnoxious LED signs.

Crime will drop slightly as cold weather approaches,
and someone will declare "Mission Accomplished"
but then comes summer again, and a year from now crime numbers will be slightly higher unless we do something other than just lights.

...and it's that something other that really makes the difference, whether you call it "friendly eyes" or the "natural surveillance" that occurs when families (instead of thugs) make use of lighted areas.

Otherwise, having just lights and no "friendly eyes" only looks like this:
(http://www.thelostogle.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/chicken-hut1.jpg)

patric, just curious about your thoughts about induction lights for street lights.




http://www.azcentral.com/community/gilbert/articles/2011/10/21/20111021gilbert-replace-2700-streetlight-bulbs.html (http://www.azcentral.com/community/gilbert/articles/2011/10/21/20111021gilbert-replace-2700-streetlight-bulbs.html)

Given that Induction lighting is an emerging technology still in need of a lot of refinements, I think it would be a bad idea to commit to lighting your streets with it just yet.

What they will notice first is the high blue component, which will produce between three and four times the amount of sky glow compared to the High Pressure Sodium they are currently using. 
Besides it's cold, aesthetically uninviting appearance, high intensity blue light at night also has known adverse health issues for humans and nature.
http://www.illinoislighting.org/lightcolor.html

Other than the poor color, the efficacy numbers (lumens of light per watt of electricity) and lifespan look really good, so when they can get the color closer to incandescent (around 3200 degrees Kelvin or less) I'd be more comfortable with tax dollars being spent on it.

Induction has been around for 20 years or so.  Essentially fluorescent, so I suspect the technology is about as developed as it needs to be or is likely to be.  Lets you roll up one of those long tubes into a bulb without the corkscrew.  It may just get skipped over for LED...??

The most common color temps for induction lamps are 3500k, 4100k, 5000k, and 6500k.  Ought to be something for just about everyone in that mix.

A grant from the DOE is tax dollars.

LEDs have been around since the mid '60's, and are still evolving.
Like Induction, they are currently most efficient at the least desirable color temperatures, so maximum lumens-per-watt at a comfortable color still remains the holy grail of lighting.
It will happen, though, as long as the market drives it.

Today:
TULSA, Oklahoma -- The City of Tulsa uses a lot of energy each year, and a new study shows some of that it wasted.
The city hired an auditor to go over the utility bills, and then figure out where energy dollars are being wasted. The Mayor says the savings will start right away.

Somehow, Im skeptical....
Now if the mayor announced he was re-thinking the deal with AEP to install more energy-wasting streetlights on long stretches of empty roads...
...or at least started leaning more towards energy efficient, lower-wattage shielded lights...

Now this induction luminaire looks promising:

http://www.mhtlighting.com/products/roadway

    100,000 Hour Product Lifespan (IESNA)
    10 year OR 60,000 Hour Warranty
    High Pressure Die-Cast Aluminum Housing
    Clear Tempered Glass Lens (get the flat lens instead of drop lens)
    Type 3 Distribution, Qualifies for IDA Dark Sky full Cutoff
    Dimmability, 2-way Communication
    Instant On, Flicker Free, Minimum Light Loss
    100W – 400W Square Tubular Induction Lamp
    Color Temps available: 3000-5000k (you want the 3000K version)
http://www.mhtlighting.com/pdfs/products/specifications/SpecSheet_MHT_Street_Roadway_Roadway.pdf

(http://www.mhtlighting.com/images/products/roadway.jpg)

Lighting is a piddly little piece of the puzzle.  Electric motors and losses on the grid account for around 75% of electrical power consumption in this country.  Make the motors 25% more efficient (variable frequency drives) and add more wire to the grid transmission lines and you would could make a real difference.  But hey,... since we can't (won't) do what really counts, let's worry about light bulbs....


Now, don't let the above give you the wrong impression - I like the idea of cutting power in light bulbs.  The incandescent bulbs I used to have put a lot of heat into the space that had to be taken out by an ancient A/C system.  They are all CFL now. 

Likewise, energy waste is also only a part of the puzzle when it comes to reforming our bad streetlighting system.

Improving night vision by reducing or eliminating glare -- that would be a realistic goal.
Mitigating adverse health effects to humans and nature -- that would also be a plus.
Saving money on electricity while doing so, is the icing on the cake.

Park officials will kick off a series of neighborhood meetings Tuesday to discuss plans to replace obsolete amenities at nine parks with modern, urban, sustainable ones as outlined in the Tulsa Parks Master Plan.
The first meeting will address the demolition of the dilapidated recreation center and junior pool at Turner Park, 3503 E. Fifth Place, which are to be replaced with a new pavilion, walking trails and security lights.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=334&articleid=20111115_11_A9_CUTLIN847296

We have yet another opportunity to install the right lights from the start, so will they be the same harsh, glare-prone, inefficient junk, or will we seize the moment to do something to be proud of?

Tulsa's Sustainability Director Brett Fidler confirmed with me that it's still PSO that decides what type of street lights Tulsa installs, and as with the Mayor's "Lights On!" stunt, that decision might have already have been made before any public announcement.  BUT... then again... maybe the park department might impose some input and we could have something easier on the eyes like what they did for O'Brien Park's walking trail.

Absolutely! 

(http://kotv.images.worldnow.com/images/16388239_BG2.jpg)

Cant blame this pedestrian fatality on lack of streetlights.
Probably has more to do with the blinding glare from the used car lots.

A woman was hit by a pickup truck as she crossed Memorial at 51st Street around 9:30 p.m. Friday.
"The victim, Krista Holloway and her family had been involved in a hit-and-run collision in the southbound lanes, and officers were on the scene," said Officer Leland Ashley, Tulsa Police.
Officer A. Finnegan said he was at the intersection in response to the first wreck and heard the second collision.

Someone had asked earlier if Tulsa was legally required to use certain streetlights, or even to light at all.
I mentioned that there's nothing in the city ordinances setting requirements for street lighting, but I finally found the broader legal reference to lighting and liability:

The legal standards publication "American Jurisprudence" Second Edition, Volume 39, Highways, Streets and Bridges, says:
"In the absence of a statutory or charter provision to the contrary, it is generally held that a municipality is under no duty to light its streets even though it is given the power to do so, and hence, that its failure to light them is not actionable negligence, and will not render it liable in damages to a traveler who is injured solely by reason thereof. [Fn. omitted.] A duty to light, and the consequent liability for failure to do so, may, however, arise from some peculiar condition rendering lighting necessary in order to make the streets safe for travel."

Now having established that, it would still be in the best interest of the city to create a comfortable, inviting atmosphere after dark, by sensibly illuminating public areas.   Furthermore, The choice and placement of lighting intended to accomplish that should reflect the most economical and efficient ways of doing so, rather than simply what a utility wants to market.

So I've noticed an area of downtown that definitely needs better lighting, but not for safety's sake. The center of the universe is the kind of local attraction that we should be showing off.  But at night the nighting makes the bridge barely illuminated.  If we want to make the Brady more Tourist (dollar) friendly then this is the kind of thing that nobody driving by should be able to miss.  Not just the scupture itself, but the walkway going all the way down to AHHA.

Just a thought.

That could be a fun challenge, but not a task for the uninspired.
Taller buildings could support theatrical-style lighting that is very focused and strategic, but we have a habit of using low-bidder work which is just floodlights everywhere.

Some ellipsoidal spotlights on the Artificial Cloud and the surrounds would not only add some life, but the addition of glare-less lighting wouldn't hurt pedestrian safety, either.  Of course, it would be down-lit, the way natural light is.

The bridge could have incandescent-like LEDs recessed into railings (so that you don't see the light source), giving the bridge a soft warm luminescence.

We could do so many cool things once we stop letting the people who sell electricity decide how the city should be lit.

And with that sentence, I now understand why it is that you are so interested in lighting as a political statement.  Well said.

Hello!
I'm so glad this thread is still going on.  I signed up to TulsaNow just so I could respond.  I got here via Google, searching around to see if anyone had the same pet peeve that I did -- namely the waste of lighting in Tulsa.  I've looked for local International Dark-Sky Association (http://www.darksky.org/) chapters, but I don't think Tulsa has one.  I got interested in this ever since moving to Lortondale last year.  With our open glass across the back of our houses, the ambient light at night makes it seem almost like daylight when there's low cloud cover.  Plus, I have a street light shining directly in my bedroom window, through a transom that's difficult to cover.

I read through this thread and know a lot of things have been tried, but is there any organization effort?  Has this been brought to the attention of the MET or INCOG?  What is our next steps?  Should we bring it up at a council meeting?

In the meantime, is there a solution to the streetlight that's literally been keeping me up at night?  I know there's always the pellet gun solution, and in my youth I wouldn't have hesitated to use it.  But I'm looking for a solution that wouldn't get me fined and/or imprisoned.

Wooden pole or metal?  Chain saw or cutting torch.

For your immediate problem, I would call AEP tomorrow and have them paint the half of the plastic lens on their fixture that is being a nuisance. They may bring a bucket truck, but I have seen private contractors use a can of grey primer spray paint on a long plastic pole.
Next, ask if it's a city-funded streetlight, or a long lost neighbor's leased "security" light, and if they would be willing to remove it or replace it with something that has better house-side shielding. 

(http://lighting-gallery.net/gallery/albums/userpics/10261/normal_4-26-08_027.jpg)

Thanks, I'll try that!


It's one of the ones that are mounted to the utility pole.  There's one on every 3rd or 4th pole in our neighborhood.


I would, but that would take out power to the neighborhood also.  I don't think the neighbors would be happy with me.

Woohoo!  Called PSO, and someone is supposed to be out in the next 3 days to fix it!

Now, what about the more long-term issue?  Has anyone brought the poor street light issue to any local organizations?

thundercougarfalconbird, this is a fine handle, jayz it is.

(http://slurmed.com/3d/jumara/001_blue-thundercougarfalconbird_jumara.jpg)

Not to derail the topic, but one word: Thundercougarfalconbird.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOoKL0N4_0I[/youtube]

Ok, bad news.  PSO called back, and said that they can't do the spray paint solution on a streetlight because of the city.  The city requires it to shine in all directions.  She suggested that I go to my city councilor.

It would have been good if you got a name to go with that, because there's no such ordinance. 
In fact, there's not even an ordinance requiring streetlights, period.

PSO has and does shield streetlights that are nuisances, but only if driven by complaint(s), you just need to stay on them.
Having your councilor on your side couldn't hurt, either.  CC: them with any correspondence.

Two words come to mind:

Pellet & gun.

Here's a street view photo of a street light that has been painted on one side near Braden Park (about 9th & S. Braden, just East of Yale).

http://g.co/maps/95mrg

Since this streetview photo was taken, they have replaced the plastic lens with something called a Hubbell SkyCap.
It's an add-on that converts a typical NEMA street light into a fully-shielded street light, often used in communities to bring older fixtures into compliance with newer ordinances that address nuisance light or require efficiency.  Nowadays it's more economical to replace older fixtures with new ones that already come shielded from the factory.  

A sampling of other solutions:
http://www.skykeepers.org/good_fixtures/ca-shields-mods.html

  
 

Good to know.  Apparently, IDA is coming up with a set of sample by-laws that can be presented to a city council.  I'll be interested to see what those look like when they're ready.

The Model Lighting Ordinance was a ten-year joint project between the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America and the International Dark-Sky Association.  I was a peer reviewer and, while much of the language I contributed was adopted, the final draft is not one I feel comfortable promoting to our city council.
 
It is still a work in progress, though.
The MLO's present form is quite expansive, yet the city has resisted even the simplest of initiatives, such as requiring efficiency standards for streetlights (i.e., that a streetlight actually light a street effectively,) or that older, failing streetlights be replaced with newer, lower-glare technology when the time comes.

Our mayor recently signed off on another 53 energy-wasting glare bombs simply because someone decided empty stretches of road in north Tulsa needed them to chase crime away.  http://www.tulsanow.org/forum/index.php?topic=11866.msg212802#msg212802

The technology exists to do wonderful, yet affordable things with our municipal lighting; we just don't have the political climate to make it work yet.

Aha, good to know.

I think the most effective path would be to educate the city council on how much money we're wasting annually on inefficient lighting.  It may cost quite a bit to replace the current lighting with more efficient lighting, but that change can pay off in a few short years.

Found this video appropriate.  Watch all of it.  Great example of how a city can do lighting better:
"There may be no more simple, affordable, and effective way for cities to improve their urban life than through better lighting." (http://secretrepublic.com/post/18188493878/we-tend-to-talk-a-lot-about-the-sexier-aspects-of)

Interesting urban study, and not just from the lighting perspective.

Phillips has sort of been in the doghouse in past years because of a misleading campaign to market their Metal Halide lamps as "white light".
What they were peddling was clearly environmentally UN-friendly blue-rich light, but they were comparing it to the gold hues of Sodium to exaggerate their point.

Maybe this is a departure from that, as they were showing a lot of warmer, more inviting colors, as well as some hip-looking shielded LED fixtures.
Their Cosmopolis Ceramic Metal Halide line also now includes a warm (2800K) lamp that looks more like incandescent than Metal Halide, so a little public pressure can go a long way.

I don't get where this mayor has the nerve to do stuff like that and then tout himself as being some "energy efficiency leader".   Boggles the mind really.   

They're getting warmer (so to speak):

(http://img.optics.org/objects/news/thumb/3/4/13/CreeXSPApril2012.jpg)

LED street lighting is slowly becoming less blue, which is good news for environmentalists (and people that don't want their neighborhoods looking cold and garish).
An engineer I correspond with said these are around $200, which for some communities, is cheaper than just replacing a burned out lamp on a Sodium fixture.  While 4000 degrees Kelvin is bluer than the ideal 3200K (incandescent) it's considerably warmer than the earlier 5700K.
http://www.cree.com/lighting/products/outdoor/streetlights/xsp-series-streetlight

It sounds like the manufacturers are listening, and with any luck we will have warm white LED's by the time the city gets around to the residential areas.

Yeah, it does.

But you have been around here long enough to not be really too surprised by this clown...he is just the latest of caricatures this state elects on a regular basis.  THAT is what really boggles my mind - how otherwise seemingly rational and intelligent people can so continuously buy into the BS spewed by the likes of him, and Fallin, and Inhofe.

Another reason not to rush to blue-rich streetlighting:

The American Medical Association Wednesday adopted recommendations based on a report co-authored by a University of Connecticut researcher asserting that certain types of nighttime lighting can adversely affect health and may be linked to breast cancer and other medical conditions.

The AMA's house of delegates voted to adopt policies based on the report "Light Pollution: Adverse Health Effects of Nighttime Lighting," co-authored by Richard Stevens, an epidemiologist at the University of Connecticut Health Center. He was one of four writers.

Stevens' theory is that exposure to artificial light for prolonged periods will disrupt the body's biological clock that regulates sleep and wakefulness, known as circadian rhythms. Electric light — around for only the past 150 years — has impaired these natural rhythms, which have evolved over millions of years. As a result, Stevens said, hormone and melatonin levels are disrupted and that could lead to the onset of breast cancer.

The report calls artificial light "a man-made self-experiment" that throws sleep out of whack. It also asserts that excessive light at night — including light from TVs and computers — can cause sleep disorders, especially in children and adolescents.

http://www.courant.com/health/connecticut/hc-light-dangerous-ama-0621-20120620,0,257372.story


More:
Exposure to 'White' Light LEDs Appears to Suppress Body's Production of Melatonin More Than Certain Other Lights, Research Suggests

ScienceDaily (Sep. 12, 2011) — Exposure to the light of white LED bulbs, it turns out, suppresses melatonin 5 times more than exposure to the light of high pressure sodium bulbs that give off an orange-yellow light. "Just as there are regulations and standards for 'classic' pollutants, there should also be regulations and rules for the pollution stemming from artificial light at night," says Prof. Abraham Haim of the University of Haifa.

"White" light bulbs that emit light at shorter wavelengths are greater suppressors of the body's production of melatonin than bulbs emitting orange-yellow light, a new international study has revealed.

Melatonin is a compound that adjusts our biological clock and is known for its anti-oxidant and anti-cancerous properties.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110912092554.htm

The fact that "white" artificial light (which is actually blue light on the spectrum, emitted at wavelengths of between 440-500 nanometers) suppresses the production of melatonin in the brain's pineal gland is already known. Also known is the fact that suppressing the production of melatonin, which is responsible, among other things, for the regulation of our biological clock, causes behavior disruptions and health problems.

In this study, conducted by physicists and biologists from ISTIL- Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute in Italy, the National Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, and the University of Haifa, researchers for the first time examined the differences in melatonin suppression in a various types of light bulbs, primarily those used for outdoor illumination, such as streetlights, road lighting, mall lighting and the like.

Taking into account the necessity for artificial lighting in cities, as well as the importance of energy-saving bulbs, the research team took as a reference point the level of melatonin suppression by a high-pressure sodium (HPS) bulb, a bulb that gives off orange-yellow light and is often used for street and road lighting, and compared the data from the other bulbs to that one.

From this comparison it emerged that the metal halide bulb, which gives off a white light and is used for stadium lighting, among other uses, suppresses melatonin at a rate more than 3 times greater than the HPS bulb, while the light-emitting diode (LED) bulb, which also gives off a white light, suppresses melatonin at a rate more than 5 times higher than the HPS bulb.

"The current migration from the now widely used sodium lamps to white lamps will increase melatonin suppression in humans and animals," the researchers say.

The researchers make some concrete suggestions that could alter the situation without throwing our world into total darkness, but first and foremost, they assert that it is necessary to understand that artificial light creates "light pollution" that ought to be addressed in the realms of regulation and legislation.

Their first suggestion of course, is to limit the use of "white" light to those instances where it is absolutely necessary. Another suggestion is to adjust lampposts so that their light is not directed beyond the horizon, which would significantly reduce light pollution. They also advise against "over-lighting," using only the amount of light needed for a task, and, of course, to simply turn off lighting when not in use -- "Just like we all turn off the light when we leave the room. This is the first and primary way to save energy," the researchers say.

"Most Italian regions have legislations to lower the impact of light pollution, but they still lack a regulation on the spectrum emitted by lamps. Unless legislation is updated soon, with the current trend toward sources as white LEDs, which emit a huge amount of blue light, we will enter a period of elevated negative effects of light at night on human health and environment. Lamp manufacturers cannot claim that they don't know about the consequences of artificial light at night," says Dr. Fabio Falchi of ISTIL.

A new study on lighting and fatal accidents compares roadways with and without lighting, and finds fewer accidents at night on darker roads.
Conventional wisdom suggests that lighted roads should be safer, but doesn't take into account people take more unnecessary risks when the road is brightly lighted.
Might explain why accident numbers went back up when expressway lights were turned back on.

http://tinyurl.com/8f7pz2u

ftp://ftp.asce.org/ICLEM%202012%20Files%20for%20Kase/Files%20to%20Vendor-K
ase/Volume%201/4%20Logistics%20Risk%20Mgmt%20and%20Safety%20Tech/20120460.
pdf

Lighting conflict points like intersections, ramps, etc., is still the preferred method because the change in lighting draws your attention to what needs it.

The intersection on North Harvard Ave. where 7-year-old Elijah Rivers was struck and killed by a car:

(http://www.fox23.com/media/lib/13/1/d/0/1d001595-0179-40b2-8412-63fafaa3c43b/Original.jpg)

It's a continuous installation of 200-watt Sodium drop-lens Cobra-heads.  Really bright, and really glarey, yet the first thing out of people's mouths was "add more lights" when asked what to do about the tragedy.

Instead of more lights, how about lights with less glare?
Would even cost less to operate if done right.

A city engineer failing miserably at defending a switch from Sodium streetlights to blue-rich LEDs:
(my comments in green)


Nov. 29, 2011
To: Chris Morrill, Roanoke city manager
From Suzun Hughes
Hi Chris,
We have new blue light street lights downtown. Is this an economy measure?
The lights are annoying and do not create the same soft ambiance as the yellow lights. Why has this been done?
Suzun Hughes
WILSON HUGHES gallery & studios


(http://blogs.roanoke.com/dancasey/files/2011/12/LED_blue-300x327.jpg)


Nov. 29, 2011
To: Suzun Hughes
From: Mark Jamison, Manager of Transportation, City of Roanoke
Ms. Hughes,
The City is in the process of changing out the city-owned street lights downtown from high pressure sodium bulbs to LED bulbs.  We are taking advantage of a rebate offer from AEP that will cover a portion of the cost of these bulbs.
More importantly, we expect to reduce our monthly power bills.  Preliminary information suggests a savings of about 60-70 percent per month.  Additionally, given the age and condition of the high pressure sodium lights, the LED bulbs will reduce our maintenance efforts on these lights and will ensure that more lights are on for longer periods of time.
You are correct that the color of the light changes. The LED’s produce a more uniform light and eliminates some of the bright and dark spots that are a product of the high pressure sodium lights. Public safety officials believe this enhances visibility from a safety perspective as the light produced is closer to the natural light spectrum.
I trust that this helps to answer your questions.
Mark D. Jamison, P.E.
Manager of Transportation
1802 Courtland Road
Roanoke, Virginia 24012
(There's nothing inherent about LED's that make them "more uniform" or "eliminate bright and dark spots that are a product of the high pressure sodium lights."
That's more a function of fixture optics, fixture placement, and inappropriate choices of intensity.
You can have an LED installation that does what the engineer describes, but it involves more than just the boilerplate sales pitch he's parroting).



Dec. 9, 2011
To: Suzun Hughes
From: Mark Jamison, Manager of Transportation, City of Roanoke
Hi Mark
Thank you for your detailed response to my question. Here is my empirical data.
1. Friday night as we were in our gallery for ART by Night until 9 PM we were able to observe the difference between the LED’s and the high pressure sodium lights. From the inside the gallery at street level we found that we were not as able to see the pedestrians on the street even right in front of our gallery.
2. About 10 PM we walked to a restaurant and were able to experience the difference as a pedestrian between the LED’s and high pressure sodium lights. The high pressure sodium lights provided much more visibility as a pedestrian. Perhaps the LED’s are not installed correctly?
3. The LED lights as seen from our second floor living space are very harsh. When looking out the window, the light bulb is extremely prominent, in an offensive way.
4. Since both light types are currently installed it is easy to see the difference between the  LED’s vs high pressure sodium lights. The color of the lights changes the atmosphere downtown from friendly to cold, from quaint to antiseptic. I question the economic advantage of the  LED’s as a trade off for creating a pleasant downtown appearance.
I request that you all walk the streets after dark to experience the difference firsthand between the  LED’s and the high pressure sodium lights.
Thank you.
Suzun Hughes

————————————————-

Dec. 9, 2011
To: Suzun Hughes
From: Mark Jamison, Manager of Transportation, City of Roanoke
Ms. Hughes,
Thanks for your comments.  I’m sorry that you are less than satisfied with the changes.  Our observations are that lighting levels are comparable to those with the high pressure sodium lights.
As I had indicated in my initial email, the lighting appears different as the LED’s provide more uniform lighting. (but acorns provide more glare and wasted uplight)
We do feel that these changes are an important component in reducing energy consumption as well as the City’s carbon footprint.  Both are consistent with the City’s overall goals for sustainability.
Mark D. Jamison, P.E.

(The eye is several times more sensitive to blue light at night than it is to orange light, so a lumen-for-lumen comparison is meaningless, and deceptive)

——————————————————

Dec. 10, 2011
From: Suzun Hughes
To: Mark Jamison, Manager of Transportation, City of Roanoke
Mark-
I applaude the City’s  effort to reduce energy consumption as well as it’s carbon footprint. And while I disagree with the ascetic decision to change from warm yellow to cold blue, I feel that the larger issue is the lack of light on the street.
Yes the LED’s provide more uniform lighting but less light on the sidewalk. The light is directed up to the second story of the buildings.
If you stand at the corner of 1st and Campbell you can see the difference. The lower level of light on the sidewalk is potentially dangerous to pedestrian safety.
Perhaps  a different bulb can be used which would direct the light down to the sidewalk? Have your observations been made after dark?
Suzun Hughes

(She is describing the poor optical performance [glare, uplight] of an Acorn light [pictured] at eye-level, that probably replaced a Sodium light that was mounted higher up on a pole.  As for after-dark observations... it's surprising how few planners and engineers dont bother to consider nighttime performance, or how well a streetlight actually lights a street beyond a calculation on paper.  As is often the case with Acorn-style lights, they are simply chosen for how attractive they look in the daytime)

This came from http://blogs.roanoke.com/dancasey/2011/12/guest-post-unhappy-with-new-blue-street-lights-downtown/  and there are additional comments.

Why don't they shield the top of the acorn so the light goes to the ground instead of the sky. Shield kits for those type of acorns are fairly inexpensive :/

Who can I complain to about the fact that they remodeled a McDonalds at 91st and Memorial and installed a permanent rotating searchlight on the roof? I expect Lady Soundtrack underneath it offering half-off tape decks.

Go to Neighborhood Inspections at
http://www.cityoftulsa.org/reporting/advertising-sign-violations.aspx

And reference this ordinance:

Zoning Code of the City of Tulsa, Title 42
SECTION 1410. STROBE AND BEACON LIGHTS
Strobe and beacon lights, if visible from a public street, shall be removed immediately,
unless otherwise required by law.



http://www.tulsanow.org/forum/index.php?topic=13198.msg232493#msg232493

The McDonald's in Jenks did the same thing about a year ago.  Shall we say it "caught my attention" the first time it lit up the inside of my airplane while I was in the pattern.  I "mentioned" it to the (airport) control tower.  I haven't noticed it from the ground lately so it may not still be there.

91st and Memorial is close enough to the approach for 36R at TUL that the airlines may complain about it.

Putting a lid over it does nothing to abate the disabling glare in your eyes.
This is what you want to accomplish:

(http://www.bpastro.org/uploads/images/sportsfieldlighting/bpnl72-5.jpg)



"Acorn"-style lights were fine 100 years ago when gaslight and early incandescent light was the norm.
Trying to put modern high-intensity light in something that emits light at eye-level is just foolish.

Another chance to get it right:


The Tulsa County Parks Department plans to begin replacing the lights at LaFortune Park this spring with work expected to be completed in early summer.
The Board of County Commissioners voted Monday to let the project out for bids.

Parks Director Richard Bales said all of the park’s 114 lights and light posts would be replaced with LED lights and new, taller light posts. In addition, two new LED lights will be added to the park’s picnic area along Yale Avenue.
The lights have not been replaced since they were installed in the mid-1980s, Bales said.

Bales said he believes the park has adequate lighting and that the taller light posts — along with the brighter LED lights — would only make the lighting better.
County Commissioner Fred Perry said in a press release that he has received several requests for more lighting along the park’s trails.
“I asked our park director to make the necessary improvements,” Perry said. “The Tulsa County Parks and Engineering departments have worked to make it a reality.”
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=334&articleid=20130114_334_0_TheTul564979

This is a big opportunity to cut down on glare there, but they also need to consider that older LED lights are blue and uninviting. 

A follow-up to the above post; the county was kind enough to list the model fixture that they plan to use at LaFortune Park.

Its the "GreenCobra" by Leotek
http://www.leotek.com/products/documents/ci/Leotek.GC.Brochure.020712.811.pdf

Good news it's a Full-Cutoff Optics (FCO) shielded light that should go a long way towards reducing vision-robbing glare.  That's a big issue on the jogging trail because reducing glare increases your ability to see further and clearer at light.   That, in turn, makes it easier to assess any threats or hazards ahead.

Bad news is, it's a tad blue:
(http://www.leotek.com/images/productpages/GC_before_after.png)

The manufacturer promotes the model which has a color temperature of 4300 degrees Kelvin, which is much "colder" than the ideal 3000K (incandescent) available on special order.
I can understand the need to get energy-efficient lights up asap, and other than garish color, there's no reason to believe these are not good light fixtures.  We may have to put up with gradually colder-looking and less inviting landscapes until the LED manufacturers do a better job of promoting their warmer-color lights.
 

What the? I like the Mercury lights, I don't like the orange glow of Sodium lights. Orange lights are fine for Halloween, but not for street lighting. I think the Mercury lighting is far better. I'd like to have all street lighting changed back over to Mercury lights.

IMO lighting on the jogging trail does not do much and those new lights they installed on the RiverSide jogging trail were over $5,000.00 a piece. I'd rather have less frills and use that money saved to expand the jogging trail farther south past 101st street, and widen up the rest of the jogging trail. We still have a few sections of trail that has not been made wider and updated. What about better mile markers, there are sections of the trail south of I-44 with no mileage markers. Let's do the major important stuff first, then if money is left over it can be invested in the frills. or so it seems to me...

I would argue that trail lighting increases usage much more than mile markers do. Most people have smart phones with GPS enabled running applications to track their mileage and don't need to rely on physical markers.

Also the span just south of I-44 will be rehabilitated, this was just postponed for the I44 Bridge widening and flood mitigation projects to finish first.

I would argue that mile markers and nicer trails are "frills" while the lighting is necessary.

Patrick, any opinions on the micro algae lights being developed?

Biochemist creates CO2-eating light that runs on algae

http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/biochemist-creates-co2-eating-light-that-runs-on-algae-2012055/ (http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/biochemist-creates-co2-eating-light-that-runs-on-algae-2012055/)

(http://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/algae_lamp-580x383.jpg)

That would look cooler in my family room than on poles over intersections  ;)

Bio-luminescence sofar works with Scotopic vision (blue-green night vision sensitivity) so barring a breakthrough, it's just an interesting piece of furniture. 

Too bad.  I was envisioning everyone bathed in Green Lantern ring light.

I want one to go with the lava lamps!!

Turn Down the City Lights and Make Streets Safer
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-24/turn-down-the-city-lights-and-make-streets-safer.html

No one doubts that artificial light can reduce the risks of being out at night, and no one is saying that we ought to exist in the dark. But increasingly, police, doctors, astronomers, economists, business leaders, communities and now the French government agree that we should reduce the light we use, and that too much brightness at night actually reduces our safety and security. Bright lights may make us feel safer. Alone, however, they don’t actually make us safer.

The research bears this out. In 2008, PG&E Corp. (PCG), the San Francisco-based energy company, reviewed the research and found “either that there is no link between lighting and crime, or that any link is too subtle or complex to have been evident in the data.”

Others are even more to the point. Australian astronomer Barry Clark went so far as to conclude that “advocating lighting for crime prevention is like advocating use of a flammable liquid to try to put out a fire.”

Our own eyes tell the same story. Too much light at night actually blinds us with “disability glare” -- something middle-aged and elderly drivers know all too well -- and bright, unshielded lights make it impossible to see past them to where criminals might hide.

A homeless couple living in a car parked under a streetlight were beaten
and robbed:

http://www.fox23.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?videoid=4061896

So.....having street lights in a city is dangerous!

It draws robbers in much the same way it draws other bugs!

Living in a car in an alley near Admiral and Pittsburg has more to do with it than being parked under a light.

It's harder to beat folks in the dark.

The "streetlight" the people were parked under in the alley behind Supurb Motors, was not actually a "streetlight."  It was the Supurb (yes that's how they spell it) Motors security light.
(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8267/8796401721_e268aa2634.jpg)

It seems that nightfall at Admiral and Pittsburg would be rather scary for this Southie, even well-armed.

Get a Colt or Bushmaster.  I saw both in stock last weekend!  Imagine that.....

That is the most stupid post you have ever made. There were many reasons why this happened, including people mentioning above the lighting, homeless people living in the car, the seedy neighborhood...and your answer is get a gun.

Why try to solve any social problem, just get a gun.

You are brilliant and so, so deep.

Well, it was tongue in cheek until now..... it was a mildly facetious thought directed at Gaspar, who expressed the idea he might be concerned even if well-armed.  (Shame we cannot get inflection in text...)


In all seriousness - they could actually have defended themselves if they had a firearm of some sort.  But since they were homeless, it's not likely they could afford that, now is it?  And we can see by the results just how well lights worked.... and cops?  Well, even if they had a phone to call with (don't know about that one way or the other), it would be the typical situation of how the police are only minutes away when seconds count.

Shows one of the heartrending facts of our 'modern society'...as so often - the majority really - poor people prey upon other poor people.  Yeah, I know it's a generalization that more criminals tend to be from less affluent situations - at least as far at this type of violent crime.  But it is also true.

So rather than just a generic wringing of hands, how do we handle these type social situations?  Seriously.  'Cause so far, we do a pretty crappy job of it.  The poor are marginalized at the edges and don't impinge on our collective consciousness until this kind of thing occurs, then they make the headlines for a few minutes (15 minutes of fame?) and fall back by the wayside.

Who would have gone to jail if they were discovered to have a loaded firearm in the vehicle they were living in?
Sometimes, the law is an s.

Good question - they could argue that since it is their primary residence, they are legally able to have it for self defense like people in other domiciles.  That would be an interesting court session, I think.

I'm not a big fan of street lights- when driving you don't even notice 'em, drivers depend on their headlights. The trail lights on the RiverSide Jogging trail are on every night- I don't see why a jogging trail has to have lights anyhow.

Don't you think they might deter muggers/ne-er do wells?

Wow.

Nah, those guys are already there.  The lights attract victims.
 
 ;D

The jogging trail lights serve a useful purpose in helping identify hazards and land features at night.  
They serve a secondary purpose by creating an inviting environment and extending public utilization of the park past sundown.
Both of those functions are greatly enhanced by the fact that those lights are shielded, and have reduced glare output.

Now I wouldn't say that there weren't specific circumstances where their presence didn't defer or obstruct the commission of a violent crime, but one would have to be very naive to believe that happens with any consistency.
If the lighting were to attract more "friendly eyes" into the area, however, you would be much more safe than if you were alone and in the spotlight.  

Many may not remember, there was a woman who was abducted, raped, and murdered while running along the trail in the mid-1970's.  I believe there were a few other assaults along the trails as well which resulted in the push for lighting.  I don't recall hearing of any assaults of significance in years along the trails.  Anyone else remember anything.

There was an abduction and rape of a female jogger along the West side of the trail in '90 or '91.  I lived in the Westport apartments and it was a big topic among the resident women at the time.

Almost moved into those apartments in 1995 after I moved back from Houston and got a job down the street on Jackson (at Bender Direct Mail, now defunct).  Would have been awesome for festivals on the river.  I loved having parking for the 4th of July.  One year our company President invited everyone out.  Just a few of us showed, we got a ladder and some lawn chairs and adult beverages and enjoyed the show from the roof of our building.  I loved working at that place until it was bought by a Texas corporation in 2000.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/article.aspx/Woman_attacked_in_River_Parks/050310_Ne_A14_Woman12071
http://www.tulsaworld.com/article.aspx/Jogger_is_attacked_on_trail_by_river/040108_Ne_A13_Jogge
http://www.tulsaworld.com/article.aspx/Woman_attacked_on_River_Parks_trail/L073101040

Considering the miles of trail we have as well as a high amount of users, it's amazing you don't hear of more assaults.  Perhaps it's the growing popularity of the trails and more people being around that has made it less and less of an occurrence over time.  If you notice, no mention of violent assault in 8 years in the Tulsa World.  I am aware of car break ins in parking lots (River West & the Skate Park most frequently).

Long Island Signs Ban on "Blue-rich" Streetlights

http://www.longislandexchange.com/press/2013/10/04/county-executive-signs-schneiderman-legislation-to-limit-blue-rich-light/

(Long Island, NY) Suffolk County Legislator Jay Schneiderman (I-Montauk) announced that Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone has signed legislation to further reduce light pollution from County-owned facilities.

Introductory resolution 1472-13 was unanimously approved by the legislature at the last general meeting on September 12. This local law is an amendment to previous legislation, which was sponsored by Legislator Schneiderman in 2004.

This law requires all outdoor lighting which is purchased or replaced by the County to use “warm-white” light sources. Under this legislation, the County will commit to utilizing only warmer-colored outdoor lights at its facilities to protect the health and well-being of residents and to protect the County’s ecological systems. It is required that Suffolk County use lighting fixtures with a correlated color temperature no higher than 3500 Kelvin for all lamps purchased through December 31, 2015. Any new lighting fixtures bought after December 31, 2015 will have a correlated color temperature no higher than 3000 Kelvin. Correlated color temperature is the perceived color of the light emitted by a lamp, which is expressed in Kelvin (K) units. The higher the Kelvin rating, the “cooler” or more blue the light will be.

Advances in light technology over the past decade have created high-quality, energy efficient lighting in several forms, with high brightness LEDs becoming the most popular. Most LED “white” light has a substantial blue component, referred to as “blue-rich white light.”

The Suffolk County Legislature has determined blue-rich white light is linked with a higher incidence of glare, particularly outdoors from dusk to dawn. This type of light is also more difficult for human eyes to process as people age. Blue-rich white light also creates higher levels of light pollution in the night sky, introducing a portion of the light spectrum which is not currently contributing substantially to such pollution. Blue-rich white light is also associated with disruption of circadian rhythms and melatonin secretion in humans and animals. Disruption of these functions can change the instinctual habits of wildlife living near such light sources.

“This amendment to my previous legislation to limit excess lighting is an important step forward in efforts to protect human health and the health of our wildlife and to insure that we save money on energy costs and reduce unnecessary light that limits our ability to enjoy the beauty of the night sky,” said Legislator Schneiderman.

Earlier legislation required Suffolk County to use fully shielded outdoor lighting fixtures to reduce light pollution at County-owned facilities. Directing light more accurately onto areas intended for illumination prevents the waste of energy, reduces energy costs, and lowers emissions from fossil fuel burning facilities needed to produce this excess energy. There is increasing scientific evidence demonstrating that unshielded, misdirected, excessive or unnecessary outdoor night lighting can have detrimental effects on the environment and the human physiology.

Kendall-Whittier's West Park project Acorn Lights:  FAIL

(http://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/tulsaworld.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/2/47/247b61b2-fa8b-5f8b-b1f9-e055c6fd045d/5260e3a7d3114.image.jpg)

Ooooh...do blackout curtains come standard? 

On the bright side, folks can save on electricity.  They won't need to switch on their living room lights at night!

So that's what that mess looks like when complete...was wondering when I drove by a few months ago.  Yeah...great "growth" for Tulsa.

Hi,

I am new to the forum. A city near me, Clovis, recently decided to switch to LED street lighting. Here are the lights...

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17/jamesinclair/Fresno/IMG_3866.jpg

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.pdf

For 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

 

I think I found an LED street light that looks promising.

http://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com/2013/06/04/led-street-lights-a-hit-clarke

I don't know of the relative performance of the optics of that light at cutting down glare. I don't even know what company makes it, but the light looks fairly close to the 3000 k warm white light you mentioned. The casing to the light looks clean, balanced, and refined as well.

I'll get into contact with the city, and I'll be sure to include the warm white alternative as well as the negative effects of the blue-rich light on human vision.

Clovis seems to be on a blue-rich LED lighting kick. They actually converted their school bus depot parking lot form HPS to LEDs, but unfortunately they only changed the light source. The retained the grossly inefficient un-shielded floodlight setup that now shines harsh light into your face whenever you travel down the busy high speed thoroughfare next to it. I may want to address that to.

"Clarke said the lights cut down on light pollution and save on energy costs."
Well, yes and no.

The file photo used to illustrate the story appears to show a Full-Cutoff fixture, in which the optics are "shielded" from projecting light along the horizon or at shallow angles that create glare.
...but if it's blue-rich, it's 3-4 times more likely to scatter waste light in the atmosphere than the Sodium light it replaces (Rayleigh Effect), and that's what people usually think of as "light pollution," or more specifically, "skyglow."  http://www.resodance.com/ali/bluskies.html

The fixture looks to be a good choice, but I'd follow up on the light source color and see if the manufacturer can supply the light in something less blue.
Someone may scoff that the "warmer" color sources arent as bright, but they may not need to be, once you take into account all of the fixture's output is actually going where it needs to go instead of being indiscriminately broadcast.   

Look at the recent lighting along Cherry (15th) street, between Peoria and Utica.  They are also Full-Cutoff Cobra Head fixtures (like the one above) which is very good.  They are also a lot bluer than I would have liked to have seen, but the city had the good sense to reduce the intensity to soften the blow (and take advantage of the night eye's increased sensitivity to blue).  Not perfect, but definitely a big step in the right direction.

I will probably have to follow up on the lights in Peterburough. Here is my response to the city...

 "I want to remind the city that the purpose of street lighting is to light streets. That cannot be properly achieved by assaulting the eye with harsh glary lighting cast in every direction. For good perspective compare the LED lights the city has chosen with the blue-rich lights in source 1.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17/jamesinclair/Fresno/IMG_3866.jpg

http://www.southamptontownny.gov/filestorage/596/598/4245/5194/IDA_Seeing_Blue_Nightscape.pdf


    Glare reduction is a key component of a successful lighting system.  Research done as early as 1955 indicates that blue rich white lighting causes more glare with later studies confirming a light wavelength of 420 nm to be most closely linked with discomfort glare. A light source with an spectral output below 500 nm will increase the perception of glare.(Source 1) Most  white LEDs have peak emissions of around 460nm. (Source 2) 

    Blue rich light increases the time it takes for the eye to adapt to darkness or low level lighting. (Source 1) This trait is particularly detrimental to a growing city with a mix of un-developed and highly developed streets. The blue-rich LED street lighting light makes seeing one's surroundings more difficult then with light with lower spectral power output such as HPS. (Source 1)
    There are better alternatives to the chosen LED streetlights available to the City of Clovis. Today LED manufacturers are perfecting warmer color lights that are almost indistinguishable from incandescent light.

http://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com/2013/06/04/led-street-lights-a-hit-clarke

"”Coun. Henry Clarke took time during Monday night’s city council meeting to rave about the new LED street lights retrofitted on a select few streets in his ward as part of a pilot project.

“It’s like driving in moonlight,” he said. “It’s a soft, gentle, white light. You can see clearly. It is just so relaxing and it really enhances the neighbourhood.”
    It should be noted that most residents in source 1 preferred the 'warm' white LEDs over the HPS lamp and the 'cool' LED light. I ask the city to realize the superiority of available alternatives to the chosen lights.

Sources

http://www.southamptontownny.gov/filestorage/596/598/4245/5194/IDA_Seeing_Blue_Nightscape.pdf

http://www.illinoislighting.org/lightcolor.html"

Thoughts? I should hear back from them in less then 20 days.

I've got a reply.

"Thanks, we will look into this when we do the next group of lights."

At least they know of the alternatives now.

I agree, acorn lights are terrible. But I think they're a little different than most acorn lights we see in this city. A little. When I've been over there at night, it seemed like they had some sort of top shield installed inside the glass. They didn't seem to project light in a 360 degree glare bomb fashion, only 180 degrees. I say "only" partly in jest. It's slightly better, but they still suck as a lighting choice. My only guess is that because TU was involved, GKFF caved on the lighting (even though they have made some fantastic choices in the Brady District) so TU could have continuity in design.

Acorn lights (or really any "decorative" lights) become a problem when people try to use them as the primary roadway light source.

Acorn lights were originally designed for much lower intensity Incandescent or gas light, when the design standards called for street illumination to be slightly better than that of the full moon.  It worked because they were supplementing existing illumination, as opposed to dominating.

Illumination standards today are multiples of that, and glare suppression is much more critical.  Where we fail is by exceeding the design limitations of older fixture styles, pumping thousands of lumens through optics that were only designed for a few hundred.
The result is blinding, vision-robbing glare.

I have also seen recent Acorn designs that have tried tricks with internal baffles and computer-designed refractors around town, but they merely soften the blow rather than effectively address the problem (like a filter on a cigarette).

We can have our pretty Acorns and well-lit streets at the same time:  How?  Keep decorative lights at decorative intensities, and use better designed street lights to actually light the streets.

Here's what actual lighting experts recommend; it involves high-mounted shielded (Full-Cutoff Optics) street illumination, in conjunction with reduced-intensity decorative post-top lights (for dayform, and a little pizzazz at night):

(http://i.imgur.com/4fwXLVi.jpg)

That picture reminds me of this...

(http://www.starlight-theatre.com/images/ROADWAY_GLARE.JPG)

Supposedly the lights in the foreground are only running at half the power of the ones in the background. That would reinforce an earlier post saying that you could get a 50 watt sodium bulb to do the work of a 100 watt bulb.

...IF you use the newer shielded fixtures that re-direct what would be wasted light, downwards.

That's an interesting shot, because it almost looks as if some of the fixtures arent working, until you look at the lit street below.

I found something interesting.

http://www.darksky.org/assets/documents/MMPG.pdf

You can see how the conversion to more appropriate light intensities along with upgraded optics help to cut over half the energy use in the boulevard. You can also see how much more discrete the neighborhood lighting is.   

A couple things might get in the way of your message;

One, dont lead the charge with a barrage of numbers, but do have them handy to support your position, and
Two, make it relevant to the needs of the community.  
The handout you cited has some useful information, but overall gives the perception of some astronomy special interest that city leaders can easily dismiss.

Glare is a big concern, and very timely.  There have been three deaths in the past two weeks in Tulsa form drivers not being able to see pedestrians.
These didnt happen on dark country roads, but in brightly-lighted areas on primary streets.
In each case, bright, glarey commercial lighting overwhelmed both the street lighting and the motorists headlights.

It was reported that TPD spent two hours investigating the auto-pedestrian death at 51st & Lewis, so I have to wonder if that didnt include identifying sources of glare or maybe doing an Isofootcandle Plot showing a grid of what light is where (but im not holding my breath).

Energy waste is also a big concern -- one that's being addressed by the conversion to LED lighting.  Lets face it, High Pressure Sodium is the workhorse of streetlighting, but it's orange glowing days are numbered (as are outdated and technically flawed "recommendations" from utility companies that streetlights "must be at least 100 watts").  LED conversions can be poorly done, however, when those doing the conversion dont really understand the details of human vision at night.

The goal of street lighting is to light streets in order to improve nighttime visual acuity, public utilization and safety.  
Go from there.

Alright, I just thought that the document was interesting and was worth sharing.

Now as I understand you can light a neighborhood to federally recommended standards with a 70 watt HPS semi-cutoff. Now, I wanted to know what sort of wattage would you recommend,assuming the lights are HPS full-cutoffs with a pole height of 19 feet and spacing of 125 feet, for this street? It's Shaw Ave. between Palm and Maroa.

http://goo.gl/maps/zzVMu

Also, if the city were to go with warm white LEDs in full-cutoff, around 3000k, what wattage would you recommend then?

For starters...
100 Watts incandescent isnt the same as 100 Watts Fluorescent which isnt the same as 100 Watts Sodium which isnt the same as 100 Watts Metal Halide which isnt the same as 100 Watts LED.

For our purpose, light output is measured in Lumens. 
Footcandles is the metric we use to measure Luminance (the light reflected from a lighted surface) or Illuminance (the light radiating from a light source).  Europeans prefer Lux to Footcandles, so you see both terms used in literature.

Watts is a measure of how much energy they use.  In the days of incandescent light, Watts was a ballpark figure representation of brightness, but in the age of solid-state lighting, it's meaningless.

It's about here most elected officials just give up and let the utility company handle it.
Dont give in.

There are a lot of factors that need to be considered for the streetlighting task you gave, but as a very generic example, an arterial roadway with medium pedestrian conflicts on smooth asphalt would have 1.1 footcandles of illumination at the road surface, if the ANSI / IESNA "Illuminance Method" design criteria were used. 
More pedestrians, additional vehicle conflicts or changes in the road surface reflectivity will yield different numbers, as would alternatively using the "Luminance Method" or the "Small Target Visibility" method.

If you want to dive into the real numbers, get a copy of "American National Standard Practice for Roadway Lighting" which is also known as ANSI/IESNA RP-8-00.  I think it's a bit pricey, so you might check your library first:  ISBN # 0-87995-160-5

http://www.ies.org/store/product/roadway-lighting-1028.cfm
Preview: http://www.techstreet.com/products/preview/739518

(http://www.thetechstandard.com/image/cache/data/5000000630-1.-500x500.jpg)

Watts is watts is watts.... 100 watts in an LED light is the same as 100 watts in an incandescent....  now, if you are talking 100 watt EQUIVALENT light from an LED as compared to an incandescent, then there is a huge difference (5 or 10 to 1 or so....).  Or the 100 watts LED would give that much more lighting than 100 watts incandescent.  Always gotta have more information than just watts when talking lighting - the story is incomplete.

Actually, VA may be a more accurate measure, due to the inductive methods used in sodium....

It was interesting.  And was worth sharing.  Don't worry about random comments...ask patric if he read the whole thing.  The focus was not just for stargazing, even though put out by an observatory.  Even if no one was interested in seeing stars, there were several other very good stand alone points made.  Just a really great bonus if we could still see the night sky...!!

Plus, more effective lighting might just keep enough of a glow from escaping the planet, such that the alien watchers might miss lower levels of light and not notice us!!

Shhhh...the aliens are already here. Have you looked at the people in a Dollar General? They're not from this solar system.

And one serious geek point - reflector design is just as important as wattage.

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk

I also wanted to share this. It's a CCT comparison between the warm whites. It's 2700 k vs. 2800 k vs. 3200 k.

http://i01.i.aliimg.com/img/pb/834/569/257/1279099510626_hz-myalibaba-web5_3098.jpg

Any thoughts?

Also, I've been looking around a lot, and I haven't found any pictures of how a complete warm white LED setup looks with cobra head fixtures. Does anyone know of any?

Reflector design is the heart of good Full-Cutoff Optic fixtures that use omnidirectional lamps like Sodium and Metal Halide.
It's the reflector that determines the "shape" of the light the fixture projects on the ground.
http://www.agi32.com/kb/index.php?article=77

LEDs, however, are directional, so most dont even have a reflector.  Instead the luminaire classification (projected pattern) is determined by the backplane on which the LEDs are attached.

Geek out.

I caught a terrific interview on Studio Tulsa yesterday by the author of a book about the importance of dark skies, and how our bad lighting is affecting our health and safety.  

He made great points about the fallacy of more light = more security, and talked about the billions of dollars that are wasted each year by inefficient, non-shielded light fixtures.  Also interesting was the notion that as you increase the brightness in various locations around the city, people think they need more and more light because their eyes never really dilate. So you have super-bright areas, and then what your eyes perceive as "shadows."  In cities where the lighting is shielded and consistent, your eyes adjust and you need far less light to see effectively throughout the city.

Here's the Studio Tulsa interview:
http://publicradiotulsa.org/post/searching-natural-darkness-age-artificial-light (http://publicradiotulsa.org/post/searching-natural-darkness-age-artificial-light)

The book is called: The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light

"Bogard considers our affinity for artificial light, the false sense of security it provides, and its implications.... Bogard urges readers to weigh the ramifications of light pollution and our failure to address them, illustrating his arguments with photographs that prove his point."

Ever notice how many people who have a streetlight in their front yard, have also had PSO add another in their back yard?

It's called "ratcheting" and it's a product of homeowners who are unable to see much beyond the city streetlight because their eyes are trying to adapt to the overly-bright pool of light, which in turn makes everything else appear darker... so they add yet another overly-bright light.

An article in today's Whirled lists the things the city plans to look at to address the surge in pedestrian fatalities, and nowhere do they even mention the effects of glare and poorly-planned lighting:

Tulsa officials plan safety improvements in area where auto-pedestrian accident killed toddler

The lives of the Corrie family were forever changed at 7:20 p.m. Nov. 11, the time and date of a south Tulsa auto-pedestrian collision that killed Marshal Corrie, their soon to be 2-year-old son, grandson and brother.
The accident took place just north of 63rd Street and Peoria Avenue near the Warehouse Market grocery store. It involved an out-of-town driver who was unfamiliar with what sources say is a pedestrian-heavy area because of the several apartment complexes in the vicinity.

During the past five years 42 people have died because of auto-pedestrian accidents in Tulsa, according to Officer Craig Murray, the Tulsa Police Department's traffic safety coordinator.
Changes scheduled for next month include lowering the speed limit in addition to installing static signs and crosswalk markings, she said.
In the long-term, the city is working with a consultant for a mobility study of the area, Allen said. Longer-term treatments will depend on the study's findings.

Mobility studies assess the safety, functional performance and service quality experienced by all users on an urban street corridor to identify needed improvements to achieve performance measures, Allen said.

The study will consider factors that include roadway geometry, traffic volume, pavement condition, speed limit, crash history, vehicle and pedestrian access, intersection control type, signal timing data, on-street parking, sidewalk widths and transit data.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/tulsa-officials-plan-safety-improvements-in-area-where-auto-pedestrian/article_a4ff7ac4-a31b-5916-9f92-b960a10ad991.html

Poor choices of street lighting are not the only sources of glare in that area.  
Commercial lighting often overwhelms municipal lighting, until someone complains (citing one of the few lighting ordinances Tulsa has; Title 42, Section 1303-C).
In the meantime, reducing blinding glare from taxpayer-funded city lighting is completely doable, costs less in the long run, and should be a public safety priority.  
I know there are people in both the police department and Public Works who "get it" with regard to glare-prone lighting, but we need to put that knowledge into motion.

Just a safety tip.  If you see a can of crab soup at the Dollar General, do not purchase it, even out of curiosity.

Another fun example of bad lighting: a photographer proved that bright lights don't increase "security" by showing two photos side by side.  In one, there's a "security light" shining directly in your eyes.  All you see is the glare bomb of light.  In the second, the photographer holds his hand out to block the blinding light (essentially creating a shielded light fixture), and it reveals a man standing just beyond the light, who was present in the previous shot...you just couldn't see him!  I love this example b/c it has been my experience more than once that lighting made it hard to see the ground in front of me or pedestrians in the street (hello TU acorns!). 

Patric, I wanted to run this by you to see if it's near right. Unfortunately I haven't bought the book on street lighting yet, but I wanted to run this by you.

As I understand, as you increase fixture height, you increase wattage with a given light source to maintain light levels, be it foot candles or lux, at the street level. Think of holding a flashlight about a foot from a piece of paper and then imagine moving that light farther and farther away. You'll notice that the light spreads over a greater area, but the intensity of the light drops as the light covers the greater area.

Yes.  That's exactly how it works for a given type of bulb.

Pretty much.
The principle you are describing is known as the Inverse Square Law, illustrated below
(http://www.waybuilder.net/sweethaven/Journalism/PhotoJourn/image001%5B3%5D.gif)

...but I cant emphasize this enough:  "Brightness" (Luminous intensity) is expressed in Lumens (not Watts) and different light sources produce different ratios of Lumens per Watt.

I have seen some well-intentioned but failed lighting installations where someone proscribed a limit on pole height without reducing intensity, and the result was massive pools of light close to the ground. 

Pole height shouldn't be an arbitrary number, but rather one based on the "cutoff" angle built into shielded fixtures and the distance from the property line.
The "Kennebunkport Formula" is a design tool applied to area lighting to insure such lighting does not encroach upon other properties or rights-of-way.  It applies to commercial and residential lighting (as opposed to street lighting). 

The formula helps calculate the mounting height and distance from the property line a Full Cutoff fixture needs to be to not trespass. 
Builders like it because they can specify lower wattages and save money not having light wasted where it's not wanted.

The formula is expressed as

H = 3 + (D/3)

where H = height of fixture and D = distance in feet to fixture from a property line.

All new PUD's must include a lighting plan, and the plan must demonstrate how they intend to prevent light trespass.  INCOG prescribes the Kennebunkport Formula to perform these calculations.

Unfortunately, the city I live in doesn't seem to understand the inverse square law. I think my city has a big problem. They make use almost exclusive of use of 70 watt HPS cobra heads in the wasteful semi-cutoff configuration everywhere, neighborhoods, arterials, and so on. They use shorter fixture heights in neighborhoods and some residential streets such as mounting heights of 22 feet, but they use the same fixture with comparable spacing on a larger arterial with mounting height as much as 35 feet. I noticed that our arterial streets with heavy traffic are almost pitch black, so with adjusting fixture height to cover a greater area with the same luminaries all my city has achieved is darkening itself. While all the light is still there, the luminous intensity underneath each fixture is not as high as each neighborhood light mounted on the shorter poles. I know pole spacing is another element, but it's just so dark underneath each light.

I was thinking of a solution to this. If the city was unwilling to go with any fixtures of a greater luminous output, would it be wise to restrict fixture mounting heights?

Sorry about that last bit if it didn` t contribute to the discussion. I got the book on street lighting from the IES. It is mind blowing.I`m still trying to pick up information from it. One thing that still gets me, how is it that the IES could recommend semi cutoff lighting when the notorious drop globe lens cobra head is so wasteful,unless I`m missing something?

The Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) actually does recommend Full-cutoff fixtures for all new roadway lighting.  
http://www.iesna.org/PDF/FullCutoffLighting.pdf


Sadly, ODOT has been going the cheaper route with more glare-prone highway lights...
(http://www.acuitybrandslighting.com/library/HLP/images/photogallery/G%20Drop%20T-D_large.jpg)


...When they actually could have spent less on a more effective version from the same manufacturer:
(http://www.acuitybrandslighting.com/library/HLP/images/photogallery/G%20Flat%20V-C_large.jpg)
You can see examples of the later along Riverside Drive south of 21st street.  There are still some older model FCO lights closer to 21st and along the river bridge that are working.

Ignoring the fact that there have been about a dozen pedestrian deaths on brightly-lighted streets this winter alone, there are people that believe this is the only answer:

http://www.tulsaworld.com/homepagelatest/councilors-call-for-better-lighting-on-mohawk/article_24fd037e-8a10-11e3-9de1-001a4bcf6878.html

So the only question now is, will they do a good job of lighting (like what was done with Cherry Street) or will they get the prison yard treatment (like what was done with the LightsOn 2011 appeasement) ?

Admittedly, the area is in need of some basic infrastructure. 
Sidewalks would be a good addition so kids arent walking in the street,
and some good quality, shielded (low glare) light at intersections isnt unreasonable.

I wish I knew more about Mohawk. What kind of nightime pedestrian traffic does it see?

I think though that this would be a good opportunity to finally show some streetlights that are decorative and yet have the functionality of the modern cobra head. Some of these lights are fitted with the globe lens light, but they can be fitted easily with full cut off models

http://goo.gl/maps/Aa5L1

http://goo.gl/maps/Vt63N

I like the clean lines of this one personally, and it's full cut off as opposed to semi cut off.

http://goo.gl/maps/6JDZi

I think it goes to show that the cobra head doesn't have to be so bland. Admittedly the concrete poles aren`t that frangible in a crash, but most acorns aren`t either.

The first two you link to are essentially what you see on most Tulsa streets, which are semi-cutoff Cobra-heads, while the third are Full-cutoff Cobras.  The later flat-lens are easier to manufacture than the drop-lens, so FCO cobras tend to be cheaper to buy.  If the public works people are on the ball, they can also be cheaper to operate since you can reduce the lamp wattage a step or two because FCO are more efficient and more of it's light is focused where it should be.

Acorn-style lamps tend to be deadlier in accidents because the globe is extremely heavy and tend to go thru windshields.  Think "liability"

Are you certian the flat lens lights are cheaper? The Texas Ida made ir seem that full cutoff lights could cost several dollars more a light with competitive  biding.

I to share some more lights. This street light, in particular, astounded me. It's a massive 400 watt HPS full cut off cobrahead with a fixture mounting height of around 35-39  feet.

http://maps.gstatic.com/m/streetview/?q=las+vegas+boulevard.and+wynn&layer=c&z=17&iwloc=A&sll=36.131086,-115.165673&cbp=13,212.6,0,0,0&cbll=36.131130,-115.165638&hl=en-US&ved=0CAgQ2wU&ei=1DjwUqGqCqi5wAGm3ICIAw

I had to get in idea of how thick the poles were, so I held out my arm. The pole diameter was from my fist to my elbow, or it was a 15 inch thick pole.

I`m curious, could we use the inverse square law and lumious efficacy to find out the horizontal light output of such a beast?

A clear flat glass lens is a lot cheaper to manufacture than the molded "drop lens" refractor,  The aluminum reflector behind the lamp is stamped differently, but it's the same amount of material.  GE (at least) reflects that savings in their unit price, I believe others as well.
If you are talking the whole installation, closer pole spacing is often (but not always) used with FCO (shielded) fixtures in new installations.  For years utility companies used pole spacing to argue against converting to the better shielded lights, but they were only considering their profit margin and not the quality of the finished product.


You should be able to get output numbers from the manufacturer's cut sheets, and how much light falls where by looking at the IES photometrics that each manufacturer publishes.

http://www.ransen.com/Photometric/understanding-photometric-polar-diagrams.htm

Alright, so it looks like Las Vegas is basically following IES standards. Assuming the luminious efficacy is around 90 lumins/ a watt we should have a total light output of around 36,500 lumins.Using the inverse square law I got a luminious intensity of around 28 lux. It seems to fall in line with the IES standards for intersection lighting.

I found a picture if a warm white, in this case 2800 kelvin, streetlight. It's a metal halide, and it's optics are poor. It's still worth a look, I think.

http://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=55571&fullsize=1

Sorry about that, I forgot to include the fixture height of 36 feet and wattage of 400.

Lumens is a measure of the total amount of visible light emitted by a source, and is usually printed on the packaging or right on the lamp.
What you measure on the ground is going to be either Footcandles (US) or Lux (Europe).

Typically, the average residential streetlight in Tulsa is going to be an open-bottomed prismatic ring NEMA luminaire, burning a 100-Watt High Pressure Sodium lamp, which outputs 9,500 Lumens and places about one footcandle of light on the street beneath the light.

IES standards (actually "Recommended Practices") take into account the street surface reflectivity, so a quiet residential street with asphalt pavement and few conflicts might range from 0.4 to 0.8 footcandles.  Keep in mind this is weighted for Sodium light, so bluer light sources (which the dark-adapted eye is much more sensitive to) should be less intense to achieve comparable visual acuity.





They look like different fixtures, the one with the lens "dropped" is what you want to avoid.
As far as lamp type, here's the super secret streetlight label decoder chart:

(http://uticom.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Luminaire-1x1.png)

I was in San Jose the other week, and my visit there was an eye opener.One light source that I'd thought I would never see,low pressure sodium, I got to see firsthand lighting whole streets.I saw cobra head style LPS fixtures.Here are some of the lights.

http://goo.gl/maps/1y1LP

http://goo.gl/maps/4N51J

I really have to ask. Between reading about the advantages LPS and seeing it first hand, what's so bad about it? Also how would one of the pictured cobraheads compare to a metal halide, 5000 K blue rich,unsheilded acorn light?

Low Pressure Sodium (LPS) is monochromatic.  It renders only one color: yellow.
It has some uses, such as beachfronts, wildlife refuges, zoos, migration areas and astronomical observatories, but it's really not suitable for the urban center (such as you pictured) mainly because of the poor color rendition.  To hang a number on that, the Color Rendering Index, on a scale of 0 to 100, has incandescent light at 100 and LPS as 0.  Dont confuse color rendering with color temperature, though.

The Sodium lights Tulsa uses are High Pressure Sodium, which have spikes of other colors in the spectrum that allow the eye to see more than just the dominant reds and oranges.

LPS has a tubular form-factor like fluorescent lights, so the fixtures you are seeing are not really the "Cobra-head" we see with HID lights like HPS, Metal Halide or Mercury Vapor.  They are probably still in use there because they have a very long life, low maintenance, and are likely paid off.
If they were to be replaced today, a better choice would be an incandescent analog like 3000K LEDs in shielded, low-glare Full Cutoff luminaires.

But wouldn't even the 3000k light scatter more readily then the LPS? Also, because there's essiantly no blue light, wouldn't it be better for our day/night sleep cycles as well? How about luminous efficiency? 200-180 lumins to the watt isn't bad. Just some thoughts.

Any light with a blue component is going to exhibit a Rayleigh Effect.  The trick to reducing or eliminating the atmospheric scatter that causes skyglow is better shielding, avoiding excess, and better choices of light sources.
The much maligned High Pressure Sodium is criticized for it's orangish hue, but its much less damaging than it's blue rich counterparts Metal Halide, Mercury Vapor or early LEDs.


The lumens-per-watt of LPS reigns king, but LED is making gains in leaps and bounds.  Unlike yellow-only LPS, LED can be tailored for just about any color, and has already replaced some LPS in eco-sensitive areas.  I could envision amber LEDs along the river near Least Tern and Eagle habitats, for example (cough..River Spirit...cough...Blue Rose...cough..cough).  Even PSO's Riverside Station uses *some* amber LEDs (but we could still take it further).

I found something that made me think, though.

"LPS light, being nearly monochromatic, provides essentially no color perception. This is clearly a drawback for visibility, though it is also essential to its low environmental impact, low sky glow, and advantage for professional astronomy (see below under LPS and Astronomy). In application in the real world, however, LPS light is in most situations supplemented by other light sources such as roadside commercial lighting or automobile headlights, which provides for quite adequate color perception. In many applications, particularly in the Flagstaff and Tucson, AZ areas, fixtures or poles combining LPS with another lamp type (fluorescent or metal halide) have been used. An investigation by R.M. Boynton and K.F. Purl (“Categorical colour perception under low-pressure sodium lighting with small amounts of added incandescent illumination,” Lighting Res. Technol. 21(1) 23-27 (1989)) shows that categorical color perception (placing colors accurately into categories, such as “red,” “yellow,” “green,” etc.) is restored by the addition of 5-10% broad-spectrum light (such as incandescent or LED) to LPS light."

http://www.flagstaffdarkskies.org/low-pressure-sodium-lighting/

It would seem then that the principle weakness of LPS, it's monochromatic color rendering,could be easily, or at least partly,be remedied. Wouldn't such a composite system of LPS and warm white LEDs have less scattering, skyglow, then an all 3000k system? By extension, wouldn't that also mean less of risk of carcidian disruptions?

Also, there was another point brought up in the webpage that was also brought up in the IES guide. LPS maintains it's light lumin output over it's lifespan rather then the light getting darker as time goes by. What of that?

Just some more thoughts.

Patric - are you Tim Huntzingering with this Cetary posting?

Just curious

Nyet.  I dont think it's someone local, though, but that's OK because it still gives me an idea of different perceptions people have.
Maybe someone could give us their local situation by introduction?

If your city can only afford a patchwork quilt -type of system, then that's what you are dealt.  I still think a purpose-built streetlighitng system would yield more predictable results.


That might answer your earlier question about why they are still around:  Reliability.  Contrast that to Mercury Vapor that will still be burning for 20+ years, but it's light output gradually falling off while it still consumes the same amount of power.

When choosing lighting for public places, you have to take into account some aesthetic.  Is it an inviting look, and does it render colors accurately?  LPS is gawdawful by itself.  They used to use it at TU at one of the mechanical buildings.  You just have to see it to understand why people dont like it.

Seattle's new LED-lit streets: Blinded by the lights


Our new streetlights save money and energy, help police and give Seattle early-adopter bragging rights. But do they have to be so glaring?

This is a good news-bad news-good news story. The first good news: Seattle is leading the nation into a bright new future of energy-efficient, cost-saving LED street lighting — a future limned with truer colors, better visibility and, maybe, safer streets. The bad news: despite extensive, much-touted prior testing, the city has been installing these new streetlights in crude one-size-fits-all fashion with little regard to Seattle’s hilly terrain, bombarding many residents, outside and sometimes inside their homes, with intrusive, blinding glare. The other good news: It can and will correct these problems — if you call to complain.

Seattle stands with Los Angeles as a pioneer on the road to LED streetlights, which it began trying out clear back in 2007. Its efforts hit overdrive in 2009 when the Nickels administration secured a stimulus grant to start converting about 41,000 lights on residential streets to LEDs. Mayor McGinn upped the ante last June when he and LA’s Antonio Villaraigosa introduced a measure adopted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors urging that every city switch to LED streetlights — presumably with suitable federal funding. Edward Smalley, Seattle City Light’s chief streetlight engineer and a longtime LED booster, is the director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Municipal Solid State Street Lighting Consortium — the point man for LED conversion nationwide.

The advantages of the new technology are manifold. LED displays use as little as 40 percent of the electricity that high-pressure sodium bulbs, the old standard, use to produce as much light. Though they cost more upfront, they last about three times as long, which saves labor replacing them and disposal costs. They don’t get jiggled to an early demise by vibration, as bulbs do; this makes them especially well-suited to bridges and other bouncy sites. City Light expects to recover the capital cost of converting in 7.7 years; it originally expected to save $2.2 million a year in energy and labor, but now hopes to save $3 million.

LEDs can deliver not only cheaper and more durable but better quality and more versatile lighting. High-pressure sodium bulbs, with their pale-orange glow, operate at the warm end of the light spectrum, about 2,100 kelvin; incandescent and “soft white” fluorescent bulbs emit in the mid-range, about 3,000 kelvin, and office fluorescents show cooler at 3,500. (Cooler light is thought to be stimulating — bad for sleep, but good for work.) LEDs can be made with your color temperature of choice; the cooler the temperature (i.e., the bluer the light), the less energy they consume.

Seattle considered an icy 6,000 kelvin but opted for a merely chilly 5,000, the temperature of moonlight.

Many people find this cool light unsettling, at least at first. But it also makes for truer colors. Police like LEDs because they help witnesses accurately report whether a suspect drove a blue or green car or wore a black or brown hoody. Politicians like any excuse to proclaim that they’ve made the streets lighter, brighter and safer. Street lighting is like long, determinate prison sentences: More is always presumed to be better, and no politician ever lost an election calling for it.

But for many residents living under them, the new lights are a mixed bag. For some, they’re a nightmare. When the new lights arrived in Wallingford in late 2011 (the city installed them north of the Ship Canal first, and then started working up through the South End), the Wallyhood blog lit up with comments, from “a bit better than the yellowy light we used to have” to “HATE the color…HATE the sharp glare…HATE that it makes everything under it look cold and blue.”

For many the shock of the blue fades with familiarity. “I don’t hate them so much as I did at first,” says software engineer and light-pollution watchdog Bruce Weertman. “I actually like the white — it’s more natural.” The bigger problem, for Weertman, the Wallyhood bloggers, and your correspondent, is the new lights’ blinding glare and surprisingly intrusive reach.

“We can’t sit comfortably and read in our living room without the curtains drawn,” one Wallyhooder noted after the LEDs arrived. Worse yet, I could sit and read in my living room with the curtains open — by the glow of the streetlights. The streets outside (we’re on a corner lot) were lit up like a prison yard, and suspended mini-novas pierced the eye with glare when you stepped out to the sidewalk.


It’s not supposed to be that way. Another argument for LEDs is that they can be precisely targeted where light’s needed, rather than scattering and trespassing where it’s not. But these good intentions sometimes collide with the shakeout state of the industry (the technology’s always improving, and the city keeps seeking better makes), the nature of the technology and the hills and dales of a city like Seattle.

Rather than a single bulb, whose emissions are reflected and directed by the backing fixture, an LED fixture has 120 little diodes —“like an array of small spotlights,” in the words of Ballard-based lighting engineer Dan Salinas — variously pointed to cast what’s supposed to be a composite block of even light.

From some angles the results are amazing: You can stand bathed in light and look straight up into one of the new streetlights without blinking. From others, they’re excruciating: Step back and that same fixture will glare like a headlight. (See photos.) “That’s because the peripheral lights are directed horizontally,” explains engineer and lighting maven Terrence McCosh, “and LED optics defeat the inverse square law” — which holds that the intensity of a property (in this case light) is inversely proportional to distance from its source.

Steep slopes complicate the angles and compound the effect. An LED fixture a block or two up a hill can glare brighter than one across the street.

Seattle City Light is swapping out the city's traditional streetlights for LEDS rated at the same light output. City Light spokesman Scott Thomsen says that’s at the direction of the Transportation Department and City Council, and in keeping with national standards for street lighting. But it’s also deceptive. “You really can’t judge lighting by its output,” says Salinas, who sits on the board of the national Illumination Engineering Society, the leading professional group. “You can’t say this amount of LED is going to replace this amount of high-pressure sodium. You have to consider the total system — do a photometric calculation so you can see how the light is distributed.”

Because their output isn’t lost to back-glow and dispersion, LEDs are effectively brighter than nominally equivalent traditional lights. City Light Thomsen acknowledges that there’s an emerging view in the field that “because of the higher quality of light [with LEDS], you can reduce lumen output,” and that the city may look at doing so in the future.

Right now, however, it’s switching the lights over lumen-for-lumen — effectively upsizing Seattle’s residential street lighting. They then tinker with individual lights — reducing output or adding glare shield when residents complain and city engineers confirm a problem. “That’s not necessarily the best way, not the way I would do it,” says Salinas. “But they think it’s more efficient.”

Thomsen says the city received complaints about fewer than 2 percent of the 31,000 LED residential streetlights it installed through 2012. (It has about 10,000 more to install this year.) “We don’t feel it’s that much of a problem,” says engineer Ahmed Darrat, who oversees the conversion from SDOT’s side.

But I wonder if some complaints got lost or overlooked. Bruce Weertman says he duly filed an online complaint form with City Light — and never heard back.

Maybe things are better now: “Over the last several years we’ve made concerted effort to improve our web report response,” says Thomsen. Or maybe phone is the way to go. I called City Light’s streetlight complaint line (206-684-7056). One of the operators I spoke to admitted that the office was getting “lots” of complaints about new, overbright lights. Within a week a ladder truck was out changing out the fixtures. (Their output is adjustable, but that’s done in the shop.)

Now our block looks like a neighborhood again rather than a prison yard. I’m glad to help the city save a little more on its electric bill, but maybe they could have gotten it right the first time?

View this story online at: http://crosscut.com/2013/03/18/energy-utilities/113476/streetlights-seattle-led/

Why do we keep our highway lights on all night? Seems like a waste of money and resources to keep them on when very few drivers are on the roadway.

Because it's dark all night.
 
 ;D

For pedestrians that shouldn't be there.  Seriously.

Almost all highways handle faster speeds -- and are unlit (except for interchanges).

Now I really do like what the city did on Cherry Street, but...


Warm-white LED street lighting photo:

http://twitpic.com/ecq2ut/full

...because cold blue isnt the only option.

I liked those old Mercury lights that cities used in the 1970's & 1980's. Then they switched to those ugly orange Sodium lights. Street lights on freeways don't seem that critical, your cars headlights is all ya really need-- but on surface roads  street lights  are helpful.

I guess it's a matter of taste I perfer those "Daylight" colors over the  "warm" or "soft" lights. In my house I use daylight curly bulbs, I don't like the  warm or soft white lighting.

Cities should consider glare, color when lighting streets with LEDs

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26383-lighting-cities-with-cheap-glaring-leds-is-a-dim-move.html#.VEkljz3gpSR

New York state just signed a law requiring efficient, low-glare lighting on public buildings, streets, walkways and public spaces. 

http://www.nysenate.gov/news/governor-signs-marcellino-bill-curtail-light-pollution-state-buildings



"By directing light into a focused beam, rather than allowing it to disperse, fully shielded lighting fixtures reduce light trespass and dangerous glare.
With less illumination needed to appropriately light a given area, fully shielded lighting fixtures are also more energy efficient."

Good job.

I'll partly admit I was playing a bit of the advocate with LPS lighting. I did find another nice picture displaying the power of modern fixture optics in modern light fixtures.In this case cobraheads.

http://mms.businesswire.com/media/20140508006463/en/414499/5/GE-LED-Roadway-Lighting-Oakland-Resized.jpg

The lighting looks really well done. Very little to no glare and a slight non uniformity in the lighting look well thought out. The intensity also looks appropriate. Only the CCT seems a bit high.

I should just go ahead and say it:  Low Pressure Sodium (LPS) is obsolete.

That type of light has its uses, such as near waterways, nature preserves, zoos or astronomical observatories, but nowadays that can be better accomplished with amber LEDs. 

They are marketed as "Turtle Friendly" lighting, and have a narrower color rendition than the orange/gold HPS streetlights most commonly found in Tulsa.

The big rush to spend federal grant money updating to LED streetlighitng means that we are going to be stuck with a lot of early-model, blue-rich LEDS that cast a cold, uninviting light.  Manufacturers sell the blue lights hand-over-fist to municipalities who dont know to ask for the warmer (but slightly dimmer) 3000K LEDs, whose color is indistinguishable from an incandescent bulb.

I have to ask. Is it cost effective to light neighborhoods and residential collectors? If  neighborhood and residential streets were guaged against an avenue or arterial for street lighting upgrades,  what should receive the upgrade?

Cost effective compared to what?   Need a little more context.

I can say that when a municipality installs a streetlight, it assumes more liability than if it hadnt.
When that light burns out, or someone complains the lighting is "too dim" because it's overwhelmed by nearby glary commercial lighting, the city is on the loosing end if someone is hurt there.

If there were no light there to begin with, the city can fall back on the fact that streetlights are not legally required in Tulsa.

Lighting at intersections of residential-arterial does make practical sense.  More sense than, say, mid-block residential streetlights, mainly because they are high conflict areas between cars and pedestrians.   But that's policy, not ordinance.

This is offered as an example (and not necessarily an endorsement).
 
http://www.acuitybrandslighting.com/library/AEL/DOCUMENTS/SPECSHEETS/ARDCL%20LED%20SPEC%20SHEET.PDF

The incandescent-looking 3000 Kelvin (3K) versions put out only 6% fewer lumens than the blue-ish 4K and 5K versions, so there's no excuse to still be installing blue streetlights.

There's a Blue-Light Backlash, where some cities were too quick to install older, bluish LED streetlights before investigating the availability of warmer-looking alternatives.

After the city installed 650 new LED lights in May designed to save money, citizens complained about them, so Davis city leaders will spend $350,000 to replace the lights.
http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2014/10/21/davis-will-spend-350000-to-replace-led-lights-after-neighbor-complaints/

Coming to a street near you - the lights that keep you awake and could make people ill...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2609957/Coming-street-near-lights-awake-make-people-ill.html

Seattle’s new LED-lit streets: Blinded by the lights
http://crosscut.com/2013/03/streetlights-seattle-led/

Im going to bet TPD is going to pull out all the stops on this one, and glare from nearby businesses is going to get some serious looking into:

A 43-year-old man died at a Tulsa hospital after being struck by a marked Tulsa Police patrol unit early Sunday, a police official announced.
James Moore of Tulsa had left the Mad Murphy's Bar, 5939 S. Lewis Ave., and was walking south on Lewis Avenue around 1 a.m. Sunday, Cpl. A.D. McPherson said in a release. The officer, who was not identified, was driving south on Lewis Avenue while en route to a call, the release states.
"The pedestrian was wearing dark colored clothing and crossed the roadway, at which time the officer's marked patrol unit struck the pedestrian (at 6000 S. Lewis Ave.)," McPherson said.
An investigation into whether the officer was speeding at the time of the collision is ongoing. The release did not state whether the patrol cruiser had an active dash cam.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/man-dies-after-being-struck-by-tulsa-police-patrol-car/article_79f2a586-d09c-11e4-841b-e381b6abb06e.html

Do TPD patrol cars have "inactive" dash cams?

http://www.kjrh.com/news/local-news/investigations/investigation-tulsa-police-department-dash-cams-are-installed-but-many-arent-operating

Well that's just stupid-assed.

Highway street lights around Tulsa are now major target for copper thieves, according to city officials.
http://www.ktul.com/story/28814948/copper-thieves-targeting-tulsa-highway-lights

No way!  Everyone knows street lights scare away criminals...

/S

I was looking into it, and I thought it really deserved some attention--mercury vapor street lights. There seems to individuals waxing nostalgic about them and how just wonderful they were. Well they are still being used on a wide scale in Japan.


http://wordpress.mrreid.org/2014/05/10/why-tokyo-looks-different-from-space/

http://wordpress.mrreid.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/tokyo-street-604x402.jpg

http://f.fwallpapers.com/images/tokyo-mount-fuji-night.jpg

http://desktop.freewallpaper4.me/view/original/2489/tokyo-at-night.jpg

Look at, "The Beauty of Mercury Streetlighting"


http://www.lighting-gallery.net/index.php?topic=1062.0

I love the sort remarks that switching HPS somehow created skyglow. Well I got news. The only difference between Tokyo, a city predominantly lit with mercury lights, and an average American city is that Tokyo's skyglow is an odd blue green.

http://7-themes.com/data_images/out/70/7012858-tokyo-at-night.jpg

I also just love the remarks equating HPS to "crime lights", *sarcasm*.

Patric I'm curious, have you ever seen a 3000k cobrahead, be it induction or led, in person?

The "Rayleigh Effect" is the reason the sky is blue... its because atmospheric moisture tends to scatter more blue light than light of any other color.
As it turns out, this also works at night, and is the reason blue-rich light is about 3-4 times more of a "polluter" than redish lighting like sodium.
Simply put, take a mercury light and a sodium light of the same intensity, and the mercury light will easily produce more skyglow.

On a slightly different note,
The U.S. Department of Energy published "Coming To Grips With Glare" on its website:

http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/06/f24/postings_06-29-15.pdf

Chicago has a very orange-yellow-ish glow at night that is very harsh.  Obnoxious really.

Tulsa's is more of a mix that doesn't seem to intrude quite as much.  It could still use improvement.  We could (should?) start trying some of the newer lights in areas to see how they work - as experiment or test sites.  No point of going all in until there are verified, tested results.  This would be modest cost and reasonable time.

You might not be surprised to discover there are many cities further ahead of the curve than we are, who have gone "all out" for years that we can draw data from.  Tucson has been a Tulsa-sized prime example for decades.

The proposed Tulsa zoning draft calls for shielding, which would be a dramatic step.  If you add my proposal to include new and replacement municipal lighting in that, it would vastly improve ones ability to see clearly on the streets as well as in the skies.

Nope...no surprise at all !  In fact, I would believe that most cities - except Chicago - are further ahead of the curve than we.  Also in many more ways than lighting!  (But at least we still aren't OKC!!)


Shame we couldn't work with the fair to get lighting venues set up for different areas of the fair to get some feedback from people during the fair.  Kind of like the themed "lands" at Disney.  Wonder if that short a run would provide any feedback on people's reactions on everything from food choices/consumption rates (easy to track by revenue to fair), on to frequency of 'disturbances' under different lighting schemes.  Maybe this has already been done in other cities, but we could satisfy our "show me"-itis.

Have it indoors (IPE building) as well as outdoor to see if there is a different response.

http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2015/06/12/phoenixs-new-lights-lead-brighter-future/71139248/


Cities that rush into LED conversion projects face a potentially sharp public backlash. Residents of cities across the U.S. have complained about the harsh quality of new (blue-) white LED streetlights. In some cases residents have demanded the removal of new lights at great expense to the taxpayer.
Witness the cautionary tale of Davis, Calif.: After the city installed 650 new white LED streetlights last year, resident complaints resulted in the lights' complete replacement at a cost of $350,000 to taxpayers.

In the name of fiscal prudence (Phoenix, AZ) is rushing toward the installation of bad street lighting on a schedule that allows for no compromises. Its preferred lighting fixtures are overly bright, create significant glare threatening public safety, and emit unnecessary amounts of harmful blue light into the nighttime environment.

While we applaud Phoenix for installing streetlights that direct light only down, the blue light emitted by new white LED lights will actually worsen light pollution.

Badly designed outdoor lighting creates glare that can temporarily blind motorists, compromising public safety and making our roads more dangerous for pedestrians and bicyclists. This problem is even worse for older drivers.

Poor outdoor lighting has also been shown to diminish the security of people and property, making cities less safe. Finally, light pollution wastes energy, contributing to climate change and making our country more dependent on foreign sources of fuel.

The color characteristics of the proposed Phoenix street lighting system are consistent with previous International Dark-Sky Association guidance we now know to be inadequate. Scientific understanding of the environmental impacts of blue light at night is advancing rapidly, and last fall we updated our lighting recommendations to further reduce the amount of blue light emitted into the night.

New lighting products minimize the emission of blue light while providing good color rendition, a quality identified by the Phoenix Police Department as key to achieving its public safety goals. The Department's concerns can be properly addressed if the city invests time into finding the right solution.

Shocker from across The Pond:


Reduced street lighting at night does not lead to an increase in crime or car crashes, a report suggests.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33692675

The heavy reading:
http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2015/07/08/jech-2015-206012.short?rss=1


Summary:  Street lighting can serve a good purpose, once we discard the urban legends and marketing hype and understand how it actually works and what we actually need.

Speaking of blue rich white light have a look at some of these pics of refitted cobraheads with blue rich white light.

http://il8.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/4993637/thumb/1.jpg?i10c=img.resize(height:160)

I know HPS seems to be maligned, but the blue rich leds are soo unsightly. It's to bad we can't have more of this.

https://colorsinla.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/20130606-022902.jpg?w=774&h=516

I kinda miss hps.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GGJa3FPWAmc/VeW_uAUUf_I/AAAAAAABkAc/z3afV5tlF0k/s1600/nobody-walks-in-la-by-alex-scott-3.jpg

The irony of this story (where people complain the city is helping criminals by not installing lights that chase away crime) is that it was originally a story about thieves stealing copper from streetlights.

http://www.fox23.com/news/news/local/tulsa-city-council-moves-forward-street-light-task/np5ZY/

Two things come to mind. Who is buying this copper and why is it so easy?

Task Force Wants to Know What It Will Take to Get Tulsa Street Lights on Again

http://publicradiotulsa.org/post/task-force-wants-know-what-it-will-take-get-tulsa-street-lights-again (http://publicradiotulsa.org/post/task-force-wants-know-what-it-will-take-get-tulsa-street-lights-again)

Been evangelizing that since 1997, speaking to neighborhood groups, countless Councillors, peer-reviewed the IESNA Model Lighting Ordinance, drafted portions of the Form-Based Code as well as the old zoning code.  You can find language I wrote in lightning ordinances across the U.S. but this party I wasnt invited to.

I suggested to some members here in private conversation that our quickest and least expensive alternative would be to focus on high-mast lighting at interchanges and conflict points, instead of trying to maintain the increasingly expensive continuous, end-to-end systems more suitable for city streets.

What some people call "moon towers" can be installed with cutoffs that keep the light out of neighborhoods, are less likely to be hit or vandalized, are safer (and cheaper) to maintain, and dont make expressways look like city streets you can just walk across the way "continuous" systems do.


(http://cf.mp-cdn.net/20/81/7ea209b0997a168a2cdfef259487-do-you-prefer-high-mast-lighting-yes-or-regular-street-poles-only-no-on-highways-why.jpg)

(http://www.airport-suppliers.com/wp-content/uploads/legacy-images/suppliers/Airport_High_Mast_Lighting_Supply_Installation_and_Maintenance_1.jpg)

(http://www.ledsmagazine.com/content/dam/leds/migrated/objects/news/10/3/14/cooper_Chubbuck.jpg)

(https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8519/8586169599_19b87a51dd.jpg)

(http://globaltechled.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/IMAG0295-e1380895975489.jpg)

They would almost certainly be LED today, but not blue-rich LEDs (since warmer, more natural color LEDs that are indistinguishable from incandescent can be found anywhere these days).

1) I drive down the BA and am amazed by a couple of things:

A) we light the thing such that you don't need headlights and could easily read a book anywhere along the path, and
B) Randomly huge sections of lights just don't work.

Why do I need my path day-bright to drive down a multi-lane highway? I've never got that. And why continue to build systems we seem incapable of maintaining.

2) I heard on the radio this morning that 30 miles of copper cable have been stolen from our street lights.  With each light being 50 feet tall and having 3 wires, am I to assume that's 50,000 street lights?  Surely not. Are they steeling the wire out of the conduits between the street lights? HOW?

Also, what low-life metal scrapping facility is buying industrial copper cable from Billy-Bob with no point of origination information?

3) We pay a flat fee service for our street lights?

Well damn. Forget steeling the copper, the real racket is in tapping into the power grid of the street lights and powering up your entire neighborhood. Apparently they'll never know!

4) Knock 'em down. Light up interchanges and some dangerous on ramps, otherwise my car comes with special lights so I can see where I'm going.

The city's franchise agreement with PSO includes a Municipal Street Lighting (MSL) rate that, lacking a meter, doesnt take into account whether or not the fixtures billed to the taxpayer actually work.
https://www.psoklahoma.com/global/utilities/lib/docs/ratesandtariffs/Oklahoma/Municipal%20&%20Governmental%204_30_2015.pdf


Meanwhile, The Street Light Task Force met again to discuss how to pay for $2 million of new wire for existing expressway lights, and to streamline a way for residents to get new streetlights installed in front of their homes (but get taxpayers to foot the bill).  Yours truly was not invited.

$1 million of that is expected to come from the Improve Our Tulsa fund, which was intended to fix streets and bridges.
http://www.fox23.com/news/local/city-of-tulsa-tackles-streetlight-problems/114304738

http://www.fox23.com/news/tulsa-woman-takes-alternate-route-after-city-stalls-light-installation/210023733

Yes Virginia, the electric company will gladly install a third-world grade NEMA High-Pressure Sodium "security" light for anyone with an electric bill.
Oh, and yes, they are the same as what the city rents for residential street lights, the only difference is the rate charged (Municipal Street Light rate Vs. Non-Roadway Lighting rate).

Thinking that the taxpayers should foot the bill for a leased light in your front yard is just another form of entitlement, but seriously, these sort of glare-bombs should be banned regardless of who pays.

I noticed that during the rebuild of I-244 between the IDL and Memorial that they were replacing lighting and new signpost gantries (using the new monotube gantries).  They appear to be white LEDs but note I'm not an expert.  Instead of posting the new lights on the shoulders, these share a post mounted in the middle of the medians.

https://goo.gl/6hh0eu

Remember when the Broken Arrow expressway was like that?  Didnt hear much about the wire being stolen back then.

Chicago's massive streetlight initiative:


Dear Citizens,

Given the recent advances and price decreases in LED lighting technology, Mayor Emanuel has requested the Chicago Infrastructure Trust (CIT) seek out information on performing energy efficient upgrades to 270,000+ existing Chicago lights throughout the city. It’s important that we do NOT use bright white/ blue-rich spectrum lighting as it has serious negative effects on human health, the environment, and the ecosystem.

If done incorrectly, Chicago, which is already rated the number one most light-polluted city in the world, could become 5 times brighter than it already is! Please note, we are not advocating for no lights. We advocate for lighting that is responsible and no brighter than necessary, with a maximum correlated color temperature (CCT) of 3,000K and only pointing light on the ground where it is needed -- never sideways or upwards, which can cause unnecessary skyglow. With current technology, research findings, and a plethora of resources, we can have both necessary street lighting AND starlight in Chicago. Please see what Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/delight-pittsburgh-city-night-lights-tickets-24605838726) and its Office of Sustainability is doing with their De-Light Pittsburgh initiative to spread awareness of light pollution in their city and restoring starlight over the city.  

We do not want to go through the same issues the citizens of Phoenix, Arizona went through early April, or the citizens of Davis, California did in 2014. There were many complaints by both Phoenix and Davis residents. Phoenix townspeople complained that the new bright white LEDs made their neighborhoods seem like a “prisoner of war camp” or “a sterile hospital waiting room.” Many residents of Davis believed that the new fixtures were “too bright, producing too much glare and light trespass, increasing skyglow and light pollution, and resulting in potential negative impact on human health and wildlife.” Chicago can learn from these case studies and avoid installing bright white, blue-rich spectrum LEDs before there is a demand from citizens to reinstall the lights with warmer LEDs.



https://www.change.org/p/rahm-emanuel-bring-back-chicago-s-starry-night-with-responsible-city-lighting

http://www.chicagotribune.com/ct-chicago-brighter-street-lights-20160418-story.html
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2016/04/09/phoenixs-led-streetlights-spark-light-pollution-debate/82634420
http://volt.org/lessons-learned-davis-ca-led-streetlight-retrofit/

Flew over Chicago at night a few months ago...it is truly an amazing sight, still.  And orange-ish!!

Houston citizens petition city to change LED streetlight revamp to something less blue:

https://www.change.org/p/city-of-houston-tx-centerpoint-energy-led-street-lights-feel-like-the-aliens-have-landed-need-better-choice/u/15035034

Looks like true warm white, 3000 kelvin, led streetlights are finally gaining something in the way of traction. Lake Worth, Florida warm white led streetlights.

http://www.lakeworth.org/topics/2016/05/03/lightsapproach/

It definitely looks something more like your bedside lamp rather then your tv. Looks like a Leotek fixture actually.

(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Hh_wtwlFYj8/V2vFIHtWbJI/AAAAAAAA20k/d0h4GQ7O1fotr_fpqJ8VLezs8X_HMI1yACLcB/s1600/the%2Blight.JPG)

Definitely a far cry from the first generation blue rich models.

A little bonus, some of Northampton's warm white LED street lighting.

(http://www.gazettenet.com/getattachment/df6af643-4ef1-406c-8c4e-4f017a97a7a4/A1hamplights-hg-052116-ph2)

(http://www.gazettenet.com/getattachment/dd6582ae-de87-429c-8398-9e58a4bdc232/A1hamplights-hg-052116-ph4)

(http://www.gazettenet.com/getattachment/91e757a7-5c09-4d62-adb6-0fd4caeb7539/A1hamplights-hg-052116-ph5)

Perfect city grid.

Thanks for this picture, it demonstrates the "cutoff" were supposed to have under the new ordinances (as well as the difference between "warm" and "cool" lighting which we still dont get).

I really don't like Chicago at all, but gotta admit, flying over it is very impressive.  Almost "pretty".   Flying over the northeast corridor is pretty amazing, too...hundreds of miles of solid light, 100 miles wide!   I can never tell which town is which.  Baltimore has a dark band on it's south side, so I can tell where it must be, but can't really pick it out...

Chicago blends right into Milwaukee.  Its simultaneously beautiful and grotesque.
(http://news.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/news/photos/000/695/69541.ngsversion.1422284343313.adapt.885.1.jpg)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/07/130720-night-dark-light-pollution-science-stars/

Imagine what the orange sodium light will look like when it is replaced with blue-rich welding-torch-like LEDs.

Doesnt have to be that way... Installing warmer-color LEDs would be the BEST PRACTICE (...ahem).

Yeah.  It's like flying over a giant orange 'spider web'....

City of Northampton goes warm white LED for street light refit.

http://ma-northampton.civicplus.com/1688/LED-Streetlights

"-The City checked one last time with the contractor that will install the lamps on whether a warmer white LED had recently become available that would be eligible for a utility rebate. The contractor looked into it and responded that none had.

-Based on community input and the available technology that is eligible for a utility rebate, the city has specified that all LED lights are to be the warm white version.

-Historically, there have been a handful of residential streets that have had slightly brighter street lights than the majority of residential streets. Based on the community's input and after conferring with the city's Police Department and DPW regarding safety concerns, the city has reduced the specified brightness level for several of these streets to match the majority of the city's residential streets."

It's interesting to see that while the city presumably tested 3000 kelvin warm white models, there seems to be a possible preference to the even warmer 2700 kelvin LED. That's just speculation based off of Davis though.

It also looks like certain neighborhoods may also have been over lit, and now they're bringing the output down to more reasonable levels based off of actual community preference.

Finally, what's also interesting to note is the fixture optics of which are specifically designed to restrict light trespass into people's houses and instead send that light out into street, light where it's needed. The pictures just posted above are of the lights that were trailed. New York certainly has a thing or two to learn from Northampton...

There was a good story on "State Impact Oklahoma" about the blue LED.
https://stateimpact.npr.org/oklahoma/2016/07/21/as-cities-in-oklahoma-update-streetlights-with-leds-doctors-warn-about-road-ahead/

What they never mention is why cities want the blue lights?

They are told that by the vendors who sell them, and they dont research further.

The argument lies in the energy savings motive to upgrade; until recently the blue-rich LEDs produce more Lumens-per-Watt so hey why not get more bang for the buck?   The citizens will be so happy we are saving electricity they wont mind having an arc-welder outside their window.

The technology behind LEDs continues to advance, and the efficacy gap between warm white LEDs (think incandescent or candlelight) and the blue-rich LEDs continues to close.   Right now, there is much less energy justification to use older blue-rich technology, but the vendors keep pushing "Oh you want 'white' light, right?" despite the growing body of evidence that the blue-rich light at night is not only biologically adverse but aesthetically unfavorable.

Before it was dumped, the Form Based Code called for lighting to be 3000K or less (degrees Kelvin, or the "color temperature") with lower numbers containing less blue spectra... but that FBC boat was torpedoed.


One of the TNC members sent me a pic of when Tulsa switched from Incandescent streetlights to Mercury Vapor, and everyone was pissed at loosing the warm street look to the sickly blue-green pallor of progress.  With LEDs we can get that back.
Its just a matter of picking the right fixtures and not putting all our decisions in the hands of someone on commission.
 

Drifting a bit to show some cool drone video of the LED lights at the TransOk building downtown:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ky1hfyuUoE

The building was always known for its exterior lighting, but I should point out that old photos show the building lit from the top down.

I strongly prefer the bluer LEDs--  on the "K" scale that's 5000K & up I don't like the yellowish incandescent look. As for the street lights and  road construction the  street lighting has been a mess under Dewy since he took office  toss in homeless  people begging and sleeping at freeway ramps part of the reason I supported GT over Dewy.

Judging by some of these posts, I'm just guessing the people of Brooklyn aren't really digging their blow-torch like 4,000+ kelvin LED lights.

http://pardonmeforasking.blogspot.com/2016/03/lets-hear-it-brooklyn-neighbors-what-do.html?m=1

"The harsh and cold light makes the neighborhood feel alienating and ugly. The lights themselves are painful to look directly into. I don't see how these are even safe. It is totally unacceptable.."

"The new LED lights are clinical and bright that distract from the historic character of neighborhoods they have been installed. "

"This definitely could be executed so much better than it has been. There could be additional shading, different color LED bulbs or more care so the lights are directed down rather than angled in a way so light is streaming so directly right into buildings. Right now everything is bathed in a sickening blue/white glow."

I stay at a place that recently replaced the old golden bulbs for LEDs.  I dont know the temperature, but they are pretty bright, so must be 4k or 5k.  So far, in the parking lot environment they are in, I don't really see any problems yet - so far it hasn't affected driving/walking around the lot.  Seems brighter than before, but that can be affected by a lot of things.  I am gonna ask about temp next time I go there.

Also, I bought some of the 5k LED fluorescent replacement fixtures for workbench use, and a plant table.  Working under that fixture has been very good so far, but that is also not a driving scenario.

That's a good use for blue-rich lighting... that and daytime reading.  It not only enhances visual acuity but you actually need that blue light during the day to sync-up your Circadian rhythm.

At night, its not so good, and it definitely shouldnt be used for streetlighting.

The parking lot lights are Cree.   e-al1l315nz led luminaire.   4000k.  10,880 lumens.  Appears to be obsolete.

Not quite 5k but still pretty "white".


Cree also makes a 3k in their XSP2 series that looks promising.

The lighting industry is upset that the AMA commented on the health effects of blue-rich street lighting.

http://volt.org/ama-guidelines/

Thought I'd chime in with another example of warm white full cutoff LED light. It's hard to find good examples of warm white light installations outside.

(http://ida.darksky.org/assets/media/LaEncantada1.jpg)

It doesn't look too bad at all It looks really inviting. It would make a very nice standard to use for all outdoor street lighting with its reduced circadian disruption over very blue 4k to 5k light. 2700-3000 kelvin lights in New York would've been such a better choice then the cold blueish 4,000 kelvin lights the city chose especially considering all the light trespass almost inevitable in that city with such close proximity of buildings to street lights.The warm white light certainly would've far better complimented the classic architecture,imo.

Looks like the warm white LEDs are gaining forward momentum in Lake Worth, Florida. Looks like the went with 2700 kelvin.. I didn't even know Leotek made cobra heads that warm. Very nice to see not everyone is refitting with 4100k lights.

http://www.lakeworth.org/topics/2016/08/30/ledlighting/

It looks as if they're adding light...but at least it's a very appropriate color temperature through, I'm assuming, shielded optics.

The American Medical Association issued a warning in June that high-intensity LED streetlights — such as those in Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, Houston and elsewhere — emit unseen blue light that can disturb sleep rhythms and possibly increase the risk of serious health conditions, including cancer and cardiovascular disease. The AMA also cautioned that those light-emitting-diode lights can impair nighttime driving vision.

Similar concerns have been raised over the past few years, but the AMA report adds credence to the issue and is likely to prompt cities and states to reevaluate the intensity of LED lights they install.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/some-cities-are-taking-another-look-at-led-lighting-after-ama-warning/2016/09/21/98779568-7c3d-11e6-bd86-b7bbd53d2b5d_story.html

What are they using here now?  I'm especially curious about what they've been replacing along I-244 for the stretch they rehabbed last year.  They've been on and off during the day sometimes and I don't travel much at night anymore..well, at least until hockey season starts back up.

Smatterings of 4000K-5000K, first-generation stuff.  The price we pay for being early adopters.

Most of my home lighting is 2700K which is indistinguishable from an incandescent light, for example.  3000K = good.

Are those cutoff lights?  The type that at least try not to be light polluters?  I'm trying to educate myself the best I can.  I've been replacing all my non fluorescent light fixtures here lately with all LED.  I still have three 36"x2 fluorescent fixtures; I will likely replace them once the ballast resistors go bad.  Two of them I think are on their last legs.

Over the weekend I installed 2700k LED lights. They look identical to their incandescent bulbs they replaced. If anything, the 4 Watt replacements are a touch brighter than the 40 watts. But the color is spot on. No one will know that they are LED (not that I'd care if they did).

Cot was $7 per bulb, which is 4x the cost of the same incandescent bulb. The incandescent bulbs lasted one year like a religion. These should last 10 times as long. If I get half of that, I come out ahead and don't have to change the lightbulbs 5 times (minor inconvenience, but I was changing out street lights...).

What brand did you buy?

Kichler. (http://www.lowes.com/pd/Kichler-Lighting-Decorative-3-5-Watt-40W-Equivalent-2-700K-Candelabra-Base-E-12-Soft-White-Dimmable-Decorative-LED-Light-Bulb/1000082915)

The one reviewer on the Lowes says their bulb didn't work, I'm 4 for 4. The bit about the base being exposed is true, I took one of the socket covers off to make sure it was seating all the way, which it was. Not a big deal for me as it is in an overhead light fixture. Not sure it would bother me anyway, just different.

These are my favorite at home

(http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2014/01/philips-slimstyle-led-lightbulb-photo-01.jpg)

Home Despot has had them for $5-6 depending on when you buy.  2700K.  A bluer version is available at higher cost.

For streetlights,
LEDs offer a lot more advantages than tubes and bulbs as far as aiming and controlling glare, while some dont seem to even take that into account.  Buyer beware.

There are fixtures ("luminaires") available that let you dial in your cutoff and distribution patterns.  One example comes in all sorts of color temperatures (even down to 2K which is amber...perfect for rural settings, the zoo, Woolaroc etc.) but 3K is the goal.

(https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4c0e6f_109457431ee647a4a319fcc7585e6664.png)
http://www.nightwise.org/single-post/2016/03/09/Finally-a-Better-LED-Streetlight

http://www.kimlighting.com/products/warp9
 

I'll look into those Phillips.  I had been buying Cree, but with no knowledge of what K I should get.  Does it say anywhere on the packaging?

Flipside

(http://www.ruralking.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/p/h/philips_60w_equivalent_slimstyle_a19_dimmable_led_soft_white_light_bulb_5_.jpg)

It's interesting you mentioned the Kim Warp 9 as they use those on slip fitters in place of the usual cobra heads where I live. On a side note, they also produce a PC Amber model.

(https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/fr/cp0/e15/q65/13516254_1057854147623493_113753875168615984_n.jpg?efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9&oh=ad631bfb34dae780db1738abbd227cd6&oe=58A98749)

Id be interested in seeing a different photo of that, or where it is.  Maybe PM?

Sure, here's a pic. of the PC amber installation at night.

(https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/t31.0-8/fr/cp0/e15/q65/13523004_1057853957623512_4700503304457486236_o.jpg?efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9)

It may look totally monochromatic, but most PC amber LEDs actually have a emissions spectrum of about this.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CCzYRtPWAAAR37A.png)

They have  a CRI of about 40 as a result. I can PM you pics of the daytime cobra-head slip fitters in my area. The ones in my area are really blue 5000k models with heavy glare shields on their lips.

Here's another PC amber fixture, this time from Phillips. Very orangey and mellow. PC amber LEDs are said to look similar to HPS albeit with a substantially higher CRI.

http://idaquebec.org/fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Lumec-ambre.jpg

For our nature lovers in Midtown, I might add that amber lighting is also owl-friendly...

http://myfwc.com/conservation/you-conserve/lighting/

Yeah, well, they chopped down their habitat so moot point.

Yes it was selfish of them.  Now we also have this ecosystem in the form of a river, where bald eagles roost and other critters migrate.

For the time being.

It looks like GE is finally offering 3000 kelvin versions of their Evolve cobrahead series. It really wasn't up until recent their best offering was 4000k.

http://www.gelighting.com/LightingWeb/na/solutions/outdoor-lighting/street-roadway/evolve-led-streetlight-erl1.jsp

(http://www.gelighting.com/LightingWeb/na/images/GE-LED-Lighting-ERL-Outdoor-Evolve-On-LightingNoPole-855x600_tcm201-91683.jpg)

A 3000K maximum is a good compromise for city streetlighting, since it is "whiter" than the sodium lights we've been using the past 40-ish years, but if I were private sector or lighting an upscale subdivision, Id be salivating over the warmer looks of the 2000K - 27000K offerings. 

Frankly, it would be a crime against nature to be using anything bluer than 3000K at The Gathering Place or near the river in general.

I agree, but I also think that communities looking to revitilize historic commercial districts of downtowns or even historical parts of town would also benefit from an extra low CCT about in that neighborhood. Even 4000 kelvin colored light looks cold and uninviting when used en-masse, not a good thing for attracting those friendly eyes.

From behind the curve:



TULSA, Okla. (KTUL) – At a time when all Oklahoma governments are facing tough financial times, the City of Tulsa is taking steps to save on the city’s lighting bill.

Efforts are underway right now to convert one-third of the city’s downtown street lights to LED bulbs.
The idea was tested in a small park at Archer and Main and the result showed huge savings.

Thomas Baker of the Tulsa Downtown Coordinating Council said it can make our tax dollars go further.
“Right now the pedestrian lighting, which is predominately the acorn lighting in downtown, costs about $50,000 a year, and we can drop that by 60 percent by converting to LED," said Baker.

City Traffic Engineer Kurt Kraft says they are using LED lights on all new highway construction.
In addition to saving on electricity, there should be less demand for manpower when compared to traditional bulbs.
"The lamps for LED should last about 2 1/2 times as long as the high-pressure sodiums, so there's less maintenance just changing them out," said Kraft.
Work on converting more downtown lights should begin in the not-too-distant future.

Baker said they're simply trying to select the best possible conversion kit so when the LED lights are installed they will be as maintenance-free as possible.

In some cities, people have complained about the light emitted by LED bulbs because it has a blue tint.

Baker said they’ve asked people in the test area and no one noticed any change.



Ahem (cough, cough) welcome to TulsaNow.

Not all LEDs have a blue tint.  Maybe if you got the ones that dont, we wouldn't be repeating other city's mistakes.  But the warmer-color LEDs are a few lumens less you say.  Not as much as before, and the blue ones are much much brighter than the "adequate" Sodium lights they replaced so it isnt really a significant loss.  Certainly not significant enough to turn Tulsa's streets and parks into a pale blue mausoleum at night just to pick up a few extra lumens-per-watt.

Color is just as important as intensity and placement in determining perceptions of safety and attractiveness.  ...and the American Medical Association says there is a public health component, as well.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/some-cities-are-taking-another-look-at-led-lighting-after-ama-warning/2016/09/21/98779568-7c3d-11e6-bd86-b7bbd53d2b5d_story.html

We should get together and talk over lunch.  What's your favorite Taco Truck?
(Ive been looking for an excuse to make it to The Park In The Pearl since last weekends Eat Street event)

So you want to convert the Acorns?

So do I.  What a great opportunity to do something cool if we do some digging first.  First, the color.  Lets make them the same color that they were in the 1920s.  You can do that with LEDs.

LEDs with a color temperature of 2700 Kelvin are indistinguishable from the incandescent streetlights of yore.
That should be an easy choice to make.

The second part is harder... matching the intensity and ambiance of early Acorn streetlights is going to mean we cant use the Acorns as the sole source of lighting.  You should be able to look directly at an Acorn light at night without discomfort, because the higher-intensity lighting (doing the actual job of street lighting) should be done by color-matched, shielded (low glare) fixtures mounted much higher.

I wish you much luck with your effort to educate the city about lighting. I would suggest however that you repress any ego and reinforce the concept that this was their idea in the first place. :)

It may very well be they have a completely different approach that has the potential to end up at the same destination.  Works for me :-)

Id love to see their ideas.

Glare pours onto the street from a gas station and other commercial businesses where a pedestrian was killed, but the blame is anecdotally placed on a streetlight being out.  This is a good example of how poorly people understand how dangerous disabling glare can be. 

http://www.fox23.com/news/pedestrian-killed-crossing-the-street-near-21st-and-sheridan/458542006

It looks like PC Amber LED streetlights are more then just lighting company lip service at this point.

http://www.ignialight.com/pimages/578280200-jpg-4EA/content/projects/29/iluminacion-led-vial-santa-pau-ignialight-copia-jpg.jpg

http://www.ignialight.com/pimages/578280200-jpg-2EF/content/projects/81/iluminacion-ambre-led-ignialight-2-jpg.jpg

(http://ricemm.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/PNMM_St-Ludger_RBoucher.jpg)

Interesting.  The High-Pressure Sodium streetlight at the end of the block looks slightly pinkish next to the amber LEDs.  Most people dont know HPS has blue and green spectra because the red/yellow is so dominant.

I like how the photo illustrates shielded lighting in the two streetlights just before the end of the block.  Those would be classified as "Full-Cutoff" (FCO).
If Tulsa had shielded streetlighting it would go a long way to improving night vision and safety by reducing glare.

For practical reasons, I wouldnt push amber LEDs everywhere, though.   Residential areas, agricultural areas, zoos and wildlife areas sure, but entertainment and business districts I would go with 3000K max.  Thats "white light" for us bipeds.

If memory serves that blue spike comes from the mercury light within the sodium arc, and it's that mercury within the lamp that helps give HPS a higher CRI then monochrome low pressure sodium. There's also a variant of regular HPS, White SON, which is very much white light. White SON has an excellent 2700 kelvin CCT and a very adequate CRI of around 80. I think they use SON lamps in Britain. It might explain the lights on this bridge. They look like warm white lights. The sheilding on the fixtures is quite poor.

http://cdn1.share.slickpic.com/u/LondonHikes/NightLondon/org/IMG_2937/web.jpg

These are a bit better. I'm pretty certain they're SON lamps, or they could probably be ceramic metal halide. The color of the light is very reassuring. The color looks very nice, not like the ghastly blue gray palor of Los Angeles's 6th Street Bridge refit.

http://media.gettyimages.com/videos/time-lapse-of-traffic-on-london-bridge-and-the-shard-at-night-video-id477776300?s=640x640

An added bonus, here's some smaller scale warm white metal halides from GE.

(http://www.gelighting.com/LightingWeb/emea/images/8cs_lrg_Olympic_Parl_465x300_tcm181-23983.jpg)

http://www.gelighting.com/LightingWeb/emea/projects/olympic-park.jsp

Side note, there are actually three amber LED lights whose sources are not visable before the end of the block.

Just found some more warm white LED streetlights. These are very warm 2700 kelvin lamps. About the lowest I've seen yet in the warm white department. Meanwhile they're in the process of installing the garish 4000k lights from Phillips where I live. Why can't we have these nice lights? I just shake my head and wonder why in the world 4000k is becoming so widespread. I'll see if I can get these posted without the links.

http://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=2558&pos=12&pid=102005

http://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=2558&pos=17&pid=98740

http://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=2558&pos=18&pid=98721

http://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=2558&pos=19&pid=98714

Looks like Phoenix is going 2700k with its LED refit, impressive for such a large city. I really look forward to seeing the before and after shots, mostly the after shots though.

http://www.azfamily.com/story/33850377/phoenix-to-replace-all-90k-streetlights-with-leds

https://www.phoenix.gov/news/mayor/1575

"Mayor Greg Stanton and the Phoenix City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to move forward with a citywide effort to replace all of the city’s street lights with energy-efficient LEDs.  

The Council approved a $30 million plan to convert approximately 100,000 street lights to LED over the next two years – which will save the city a net total of approximately $22 million through 2030 in reduced energy and maintenance costs.

“Modernizing our street lights is one of the many ways we’re making Phoenix a more sustainable city, and doing our part to combat climate change,” said Stanton. “The fact that we’re saving millions of taxpayer dollars also shows how becoming more sustainable and more efficient is simply good business.”

The Council also revised the city’s standard color temperature (kelvin level) for street lights from the current 4,000 kelvin to 2,700 kelvin, which is considered a “warmer” color temperature for LED lights. The revision in the standard color temperature (kelvin level) for street lights was based on American Medical Association guidelines and extensive community input, potential environmental issues, technical lighting standards, and projected energy savings."

Looks like we really can do this.

I was able to get at "3000K or less" provision in the now defunct Form Based Code, but when the City revamped the zoning code for 2016 it was not among the suggestions I submitted that were approved.  At least we got some shielding requirements in to cut back on the glare.

I saw warm-white LED 2700K cobra-head streetlights all over St. Louis my last visit there.  Maybe we need a city council road trip.

Looks like PC Amber LEDs are gaining ground in Florida. While the main reasoning for the primary beneficiaries of these new lights are sea turtles, they still directly benefit people as these lights have little to no blue content thereby protecting circadian rhythms. I believe that PC Amber light should really be looked into more.

(http://www.gulfpowernews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/sea-turtle-lights-1-Daugherity-224x300.jpg)

http://www.gulfpowernews.com/turtle-friendly-led-lights-installed-for-nesting-season/

Extra bonus, some more PC Amber LED street lights. Patric, I believe you wanted some dusk shots of some PC Amber lights? For those that aren't familiar with Phosphor Converted Amber LEDs note the very high operating power, 100 watts to a fixture. Regular old amber LED technology wouldn't be viable at that power as the LEDs would end up overheating with their light output falling sharply without heavy cooling. PC Amber LEDs use that traditional blue LED just like white LEDs, but the phosphor coating is so heavy it converts all blue light into longer wavelength yellow, orange, and red light. This helps to explain why PC Amber LEDs have a much smoother spectral output then HPS and partly why their CRI is significantly higher.

(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/7206224fc063e601061782654f48e7ae29b3cb6c/c=288-0-3477-2398&r=x483&c=640x480/local/-/media/2015/01/29/Pensacola/Pensacola/635581604299523931-turtle-lights-3.jpg)

(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/2c7f37337b7501c2bc26c65893957757eb5fae50/c=235-0-6656-4828&r=x393&c=520x390/local/-/media/2015/01/29/Pensacola/Pensacola/635581604376900923-turtle-lights-7.jpg)

(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/c485b05e56e8e18bccae493f2096653a0bfd139b/c=0-1833-4912-5526&r=x483&c=640x480/local/-/media/2015/01/29/Pensacola/Pensacola/635581604364576765-turtle-lights-5.jpg)

(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/f501a806bf74cfdc0609cfa949c3080a334f054a/c=402-0-6754-4776&r=x513&c=680x510/local/-/media/2015/01/29/Pensacola/Pensacola/635581604391097105-turtle-lights-8.jpg)


Link to more PC Amber LED shots.

http://www.pnj.com/story/news/local/environment/2015/01/29/turtle-friendly-lights/22544943/

Found this interesting webpage on the inner workings of a modern warm white LED cobra head. Has some interesting looking close-ups.

http://www.streetlightonline.co.uk/MiniIridium_photographs.htm

Thanks,

In case you missed it, another member here discovered one of the poorest installations of LED lighting I have ever seen

http://www.tulsanow.org/forum/index.php?topic=18723.msg314002#msg314002

On the road next to the Arkansas River.  Blue-rich Environmentally-unfriendly high Color Temperature, waaaaay over-lit, and really serving no real purpose for that amount of light (except to keep the electric bill the same?)

Just an update... Tulsa's solution to copper theft has been to replace the copper wiring with aluminum with he belief that thieves dont steal aluminum.

KOTV reported that thieves last week stole the new aluminum wiring along 244, which shouldn't be surprising because of the number of cases where thieves had been stealing the aluminum poles.

Plan "C" ?  Do what other communities do and switch from "Continuous" to "Interchange" lighting, where you only light areas of conflict like ramps, cloverleaves and under/overpasses.

You save electricity, maintenance, and possibly lives (by highlighting the areas that need extra driver attention) and end up with fewer spots thieves could work.   As it stands now, catching the thieves working in broad daylight doesnt seem to be working.

All my questions still stand...

It is not unusual to scrap wire torn out of buildings.  But at 40 cents a pound (https://www.cmcrecyclingtulsa.com/current-pricing/) this is a bulk business.  How can someone walk in with 3,000 pounds of fire ($~1300) and just plop it on the counter and some scrap dealer goes "sure, seems legit?"  Clearly no one with a license or reputation would risk it for $2500...so we are likely talking about Billy Bob and with a trailer.

How can someone just walk up to a street light, disconnect the hot electricity, go down the line and do the same thing, and just spool it up without anyone noticing?  Can't we have some kind of very basic sensor that tells when the circuit has been broken - ergo know exactly when a thief is steeling tens of thousands of dollars worth of wiring?  We aren't talking a few pennies, we are talking tens of thousands of dollars.

Couldn't we secure the wire at several places along the conduit... it could be as simple as looping it around an eye bolt halfway between each pole, inside the conduit, and then pouring a bag of concrete over the cap.  Pain in the donkey if anyone wants to access it - but more so if you are trying not to be noticed and don't want to drag a sledge hammer along with you.

Couldn't we just go to solar with a battery powering an LED and skip the wiring entirely?

Ignoring the ability to skip this entire issue by not needing lights everywhere at all times.

Ahhhhh!  I hate thieves.  I hate wasting money.

They do it during odd hours. They are often mistaken for utility workers. I saw a small pickup parked next to a pole early am in the dead of winter. With no traffic to speak of he had the area to himself. Right now from 41st street west on I-75 south to 81st has no lights on at all in that time of the morning. That includes the I-44 cloverleaf and the area where the garbage truck went off the road last week.

Even if they can't market the materials locally, they can still truck it to outlying areas or out of state. These guys have a pretty good network that was already dealing in cars, tools, trailers, etc. This is no sweat to move.

Patrick's idea makes sense but just like the I-44 clover, they will overcome any obstacles provided since they likely have contacts within the city.

We might as well shut down all the lights and wait for the next target.

Several European nations are way ahead of us on this. 
The technology that makes possible dimable streetlights (by time of day and traffic-sensing) and real-time maintenance reporting can also detect a line break as it happens.

Networked street lighting ("Smart City") infrastructure is a reality in other parts of the world, but too esoteric for us to consider... unless we found ourselves in a position where we were loosing tens of thousands of dollars...

Yes we can.  But then again, that costs money, too.  Your car can tell you when a light bulb is out in the tail lights...this kind of circuit is trivial - add a wifi or other radio network and you have an alarm monitored system.  It ain't rocket science...

Could go that one extra step and after detecting event at pole, just connect high voltage to the pole they are holding - light them up like a Christmas tree!

Looks like some Canadian communities are taking the warm white 3000k route for their LED refits.

http://m.newhamburgindependent.ca/news-story/7051849-energy-saving-led-street-lights-coming-to-wilmot-and-wellesley-much-cheaper-than-expected

"I’m pretty excited about this project” said Barry Fisher when the LED upgrades were discussed back at a December council meeting.

These are 3,000k lights on the Kelvin colour temperature scale, meaning they have a warm yellow tinge, not a bright blue or white colour.."

To add to that it also appears the small community of Moffat in Scotland has also sent the warm white route actually selecting the warm white Phillips Iriduim LED light I just linked. Interestingly, it might be possible to even adapt the Iridium for stateside use on our cobraheads with a driver for 120 volts as opposed to 240, though it really shouldn't be necessary all the available 3000k cobrahead  models we have now.

On a different note I had the opportunity to travel to Tucson, and they've gone the 3000k route on their massive citywide street light refit. I've got to admit though, while I metered the lights at a bit over 3000k, bit they appeared to be as blue as the 3500k parking lot refits used around town. In fact the cobraheads Tucson used almost visually appeared like 3700k lights dimmed. I have pictures if anyone is interested.

Found another pic of a well shielded low mounted PC amber LED setup. It's like night and day, pardon the possible pun, to the lighting install Patric linked.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CavWsryUEAAXu2w.jpg)

I believe lights in the background are HPS. The PC Amber LEDs in the foreground are running at a candlelike 1800 kelvin albeit with lower cri.

There's a big difference between the colors of 3000K and 3700K;  the former should be considered the upper limit of allowable blue light.
2700K would be closer to the incandescent lights of yesteryear (for those wanting that warm, nostalgic look).

FWIW I think our expressway lights are 440 volt but ill have to verify.

Hmm. Here are some pics of the refit. HPS in the foreground as a baseline the "3000k" LED cobra is offset to the left center and is pretty close to the color I observed in person.

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2fHBiEQTxTKUzE1NElVNEtlSHM/view?usp=drivesdk

Another couple pics looking down the street with the street having a moderate horizontal illuminance of about 7-8 lux. These pics came out slightly warmer then the real fixtures, but are otherwise pretty close to the real thing. They are using 93 watt fixtures to illuminate their arterials btw.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2fHBiEQTxTKcWdMSFBGUTNPc1U/view?usp=drivesdk

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2fHBiEQTxTKckZobnkzOTlrOE0/view?usp=drivesdk

Contrast these "3000k" cobraheads to the 3500k parking lot lights which the pics came out very true to life. You can see they seem almost the same color temp. You can also finally see just how blue the old standard of 4300k+ is when the 3500k is the white light.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2fHBiEQTxTKSWp6TklBU20zc0U/view?usp=drivesdk

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2fHBiEQTxTKMTN0MU5hUjVaS0E/view?usp=drivesdk

Sorry it wouldn't let me link the images directly this time. I did find this pic, and it's pretty close to being representative of the lights in person against HPS. They just seem kinda high in the kelvin range.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CzXhSCnUcAELg9t.jpg)

I guess if 3000k really looks like this maybe then I'd really like to see a 2700-2900k standard luminary. Or they might be light as blue as 3700k. On a side note, I did meter some outdoor CFLs that had a very pleasing color at about 2800-2900k.

Btw, barring voltages I think the warm white Iridium would make a fine refit for many a fixture here in the US.

FYI, Montreal goes 3000k for its large LED refit.

http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/goodbye-lighting-blues-mayor-opts-for-warmer-led-street-lights-1.3246605

Chicago has also said that they will opt for the lower kelvin rated LEDs, under 3000k, but no word yet on shielding.

Latest finds. Here's a Kim lighting Warp 9 in 3000k. It can be fitted in place of the usual cobrahead with a slipfitter.

(http://www.kimlighting.com/content/products/product-zoom/warp9/2.1.jpg)

And here's another with bad optics, but it's a metal halide at 2800k. It's part of Phillips CosmoWhite line of ceramic metal halide lamps.

(http://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/albums/userpics/10515/normal_Philips-Iridium-60w-Cosmowhite-Street-Light-2.jpg)

AEL now offers their Autobahn series of fixtures in 3000k. These are the fixtures Tucson has went with and now Pheonix potentially to as they're going through the same contractor. They used these fixtures in installs all the way up to major intersection lighting.

http://www.acuitybrands.com/products/detail/344812/american-electric-lighting/autobahn-atbm/led-roadway-luminaire/

FWIW the picture on the bottom would be considered a "bad fixture" because of the glare-prone optics (the "drop lens" bubble).  Good optics in this case would be a flat lens, but I understand he's just showing it to demonstrate light color.

Tulsa-sized Tucson still has a requirement that streetlights be Full-Cutoff (the flat lens) and you can see so much better there as a result.

And yes, the amber LED streetlights would be the best choice (environmentally and human-vision-wise) along the river for The Gathering Place but where are the plans for that?

Looks like GE is at it again. Over 100 lumens per watt with their newest high mast LED...and all in 3000k to with their new Evolve High Mast.

http://www.gelighting.com/LightingWeb/na/solutions/outdoor-lighting/street-roadway/evolve-led-roadway-high-mast-erhm.jsp

It's good to know they aren't even openly offering 5000k+ with that fixture. To see a high mast LED at 2700k with an efficiency of over 100 lumens per watt would be awesome, and it might happen sooner then later to.

Excuse me if this has been discussed before but what is the protocol for downed street lights in the city? I see a lot of them lying on the side of the roads or highways for months at a time. Most appear to be unusable. Not only are they eye sores but it seems they would be a nuisance to the mowers in the summertime. It doesn't seem like it would require much resources to go around and pick them up.

ODOT for Interstates, Tulsa Public Works for expressways.

Its scrap aluminum, im sure people would volunteer...  ::)

Keep in mind the south and east legs of the IDL are covered by ODOT as it is technically an interstate.

Thought I'd share another PC Amber LED installation. I'd imagine this sort of lighting would be quite appropriate for the Gathering Place. I'd also like to see the potential inclusion of PC Amber LEDs in a more general use role, like possibly in residential lighting.

(https://adlt.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/IMG_7110-620x413.jpg)

(https://adlt.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/IMG_7104-e1400542819849.jpg)

More pics and the company responsible for the install.

https://adlt.com.au/case/tooway-bridge/

Vendors in years past convinced cities to get rid of their "yellow" lights in favor of "white" lights that arent really white.  That was mainly because what they were marketing was blue-rich light and everyone was supposed to be happier with the blue than the yellow.  Of course, when they started making the warmer-white light they dropped that spiel.

On the banks of the Arkansas River, we have endangered avian critters, so turtle-friendly lighting would not be just for turtles.  Given the insanely bright blue-rich LED lights they have already installed on Riverside Drive, I dont know if wildlife was ever a consideration of The Gathering Place lighting.

Looks like San Diego is using the 3000 kelvin version of the GE Evolve,

I linked it, the pic is massive

http://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content/dam/sdc/dpw/SPECIAL_ASSESSMENT_DISTRICTS/docs/LED_Streetlight_Replacements_M_Krosky_Cropped.JPG

but...only within a 30 mile radius of the Palomar Oberservitory, sigh. They're using 4000 kelvin everywhere else en masse downtown and everywhere else. I bet it took some serious arm twisting on the part of the observitory to even get 3000 kelvin. It's really bad that the appropriate and good looking warm white light isn't standard citywide, but instead one has to have the privilege of living near the observitory to get.

Apparently these are warm white LEDs. The lights are supposedly mounted in the bottom of each fixture shooting light upwards to a diffuser/reflector. They look really pleasant. They look like the warm 2700 kelvin light.

(http://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/albums/userpics/11976/normal_DSC01993.JPG)

Btw, Leotek will provide 2700k cobraheads upon request. The warm white lights beats the pants off the old blue-rich mercury vapor/LED technology.

http://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=98713&fullsize=1

It's a bit easier now to see why people like the warm white lighting the best. Shame on New York and Seattle for going with the prison yard-like 4000k+ light. It's like civic vandalism, imo.

I found another installation of the PC Amber LED in street lighting. People have compared the look of PC Amber to HPS, and no these are not the "before" pics. they are the after pictures after the icky blue-rich mercury vapor lamps were retired. I'd actually say they look closer to the so called mercury free HPS lamps that have a bit more yellowish coloration. I would link the pictures directly, but they're a bit too large.

http://www.carandini.com/en/news/post/led-zonae1/

City of Monterey loses lawsuit over streetlights

The city of Monterey might have to turn down the lights. Monterey County Superior Court Judge Lydia Villarreal ruled Dec. 20 that the city violated both the California Environmental Quality Act and the Brown Act when it started to install energy-efficient LED streetlights in 2009.

A suit was brought against the city in 2012 by a group of residents calling themselves Turn Down The Lights, who claimed the LED bulbs were significantly brighter than the ones they replaced, and that the city had failed to conduct an environmental review before making the change.

“The judge’s decision is an important one,” says Molly Erickson, an attorney who represents Turn Down The Lights. “It addresses the issues of public notice and citizen participation when it comes to environmental impacts.”

Erickson also notes the June 2016 statement issued by the the American Medical Association warning of adverse consequences of blue-rich LEDs that increases nighttime glare and reduce the sleep-hormone melatonin, which can lead to sleep problems.

Turn Down The Lights is not opposed to LEDs and energy-efficient lighting, Erickson says, but the group believes that there are different LED formats and lighting temperatures a proper review would have likely found more appropriate.

The city of Monterey had claimed the new lights and fixtures were exempt from CEQA, which the judge found to be incorrect. In the process of litigation, the city was also found to be in violation of the Brown Act.

“[T]he city of Monterey’s agenda omitted key information concerning characteristics with potential environmental impacts,” Villarreal wrote in her intended decision.

And because the city's agenda failed to show officials were treating the lighting change as exempt from CEQA, “It violated the Brown Act,” the judge concluded.

As of July 2016, the city of Monterey had saved roughly $70,000 annually in energy bills since 2012 by switching to LED streetlights. Yet, during that same time the city incurred $80,000 in legal bills fighting Turn Down The Lights in court. Having lost the preliminary ruling, the city will likely be on the hook for the plaintiff's legal fees too.

The Monterey City Council will consider the city’s options—which could include filing an appeal—in closed session at the Jan. 17 meeting.

Villarreal’s final decision, expected in the coming months, will likely require the city of Monterey to conduct public environmental reviews for the LED lights installed in 2012 and prior.


http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/blogs/news_blog/city-of-monterey-loses-lawsuit-over-streetlights/article_89e8e764-d3b2-11e6-b53b-935d775754e7.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-led-streetlights-spread-some-critics-look-for-dimmer-switch-1473818463

I hate to be an ad for Philips lighting, but here are some of their warm white Master Class LEDs. The light levels are a bit high, and the color temperature I still feel is a bit high, but otherwise a big improvement over the daylight 4000k+ LEDs.

(https://farm5.static.flickr.com/4128/4837553862_c03651ac77_b.jpg)

They won't let me link these directly.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/philipsoem/4839658293/in/photostream/

Btw, I went to Monterey personally. They were a really early adopter then of the blue-rich​ technology. It looked awful, I assume it still does since the switch from HPS. Interestingly, one of the early arguments from Turn Down The Lights was that the nighttime asthetic was ruined by the 5000k+ lights particularly in the spanish historical downtown district. Though they had to drop that as they couldn't, at the time find any tangible evidence that ugly lights would hurt the city. Though, with what we know, an argument from the asthetics standpoint, one could well argue that creating a hostile and uninviting nighttime environment reduces friendly eyes thus compromising security from natural surveillance. Further, there may also be some merit to an argument that un-attractive nighttime lighting also costs businesses lost customers, though that would be a bit harder to quantify for a court.

Always alternatives to Acorns:

http://www.caribonigroup.com/en/products/urban/post-top/agathos-post-top/

These come in color temperatures all the way down to 2200K (which are ideal for riverside) and are "learning" fixtures.

Looks like the blue-rich 4000 kelvin LED street lights are making inroads into Rome, and not everyone is happy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/world/europe/rome-streetlights-led-lights.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

ROME — As far as guided tours of central Rome go, this one was a downer.

“Look over there, at that ‘Virgin and Child,’ with that ugly lamp above it, casting such a harsh outline,” said Nathalie Naim, a municipal council member, pointing to a framed image on a wall.

Near the Colosseum, another outrage. “This used to produce a light with a golden halo, that soft and welcoming light that envelops you,” Ms. Naim lamented, nodding to one of the cast-iron lampposts

that dot the city center. Alas, no more.

“I don’t want to make this personal,” Ms. Naim said, dramatically covering her eyes while passing through a bar-lined piazza, “but these horrible lights, mamma mia!..”

The worst part about this all is that could've all been easily avoided by the choice of low CCT LED, 2200k-2800K, and they still would have saved energy. It still can as they're in the process of swapping out the lamps to. 

I just want to point out that this conversation has been going for 8 years and 6 months.

Do we have better streetlights yet?

The more things change, the more they stay the same....


Actually, they don't change - they just stay the same.  Ex. Bynum same as Dewby....

Yes and no.
We have made some inroads --
We now have a zoning ordinance that recognizes "Light Trespass" and glare, and allows you to complain about some bad lights (but streetlights are exempt).
We have replaced some glare-prone streetlights with shielded lights, but its the exception, not the rule or a plan we can rely on.
We have jumped on the LED energy efficiency bandwagon for some streetlight replacements (but they are older technology that produces poor color) and we have interpreted the increased energy efficiency as a way to keep the energy consumption about the same but ratchet up the brightness to unnecessarily high levels.

What hasnt really changed is the city still gets its lighting expertise from vendors anxious to unload their product.
Otherwise we would be paying more attention to the quality of the light, than how bright we can get or how pretty the fixtures are in the daytime.

We have the opportunity to re-create the look and feel of the early incandescent lights you used to see in oil-boom neighborhoods like Maple Ridge; not just the brightness but the color and optical effect.  
With some glaring exceptions, I suspect the city is holding off on residential areas because they are aware of the failures of other cities when installing welding-torch-like lights closer to people's bedroom windows.  Having to go back and swap out blue-rich lights for warmer lights pretty much wiped out their initial savings.

The new unshielded, over-spec'd, high color temperature streetlights on Riverside Drive south of 41st are a good example of a bad direction that needs to be re-evaluated immediately.

The first phase of the Broken Arrow Expressway will be from Peoria Avenue to roughly the 21st Street exit. Plans call for LED lighting and aluminum wiring.
http://publicradiotulsa.org/post/city-tulsa-takes-steps-get-highways-relit-faster

Granted most of the continuous (end-to-end) lighting us really unnecessary (accident rates dropped slightly with the lights out when motorists sped less), starting from scratch is a good opportunity to get it right "the first time."

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE dont line the BA with blue-ish glare bombs.

I'm all for passive road lighting measures now that I've witnessed a state DOT invest in expensive continuous expressway lights and neglect their road markings. In the dark and winter we were having is was impossible to where you were going on the roads even during the daytime when the only thing covering the road was mostly a layer of just water, as a testiment to how badly detrioted the markings were. I genuinely felt unsafe even during the daytime not being able to see any of the markings. Yet some seem to think that the answer is somehow blue rich LEDs, a mostly cosmetic safety feature on highways when compared to REAL traffic safety device like RPMs and retro-reflective paint.

(http://www.globallinemarking.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Raised-Concrete-and-Road-Reflective-Markers-Gold-Coast-Brisbane.jpg)

Notice how because of specular reflection most of the horizontal luminance is ineffective while the vertical retro-reflectivity is still effective. Specular reflection is what happens when roads get slick from rain, most of the light bounces forwards making the road surface *seem* darker then on a dry night. It also helps to explain increased glare on rainy nights. Bear in mind verticle target luminance is still effective because of the the light hitting a target vertically should still mostly bounce back to the observer though not as effectively as the retro-reflectors. Patric can correct me on this.

Found a couple more pictures of some warm white lights. These are ceramic metal halide from Philips the CDM-TT with a warm color temperature of 3000 kelvin. Bear in mind these are only meant to show off color temperature not optics. The correct optics for these lights would have the bulbs tucked up into the fixture.

(http://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/albums/userpics/10029/P1070726.JPG)

(http://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/albums/userpics/10029/normal_100_1301.JPG)

Found some pictures of some more PC Amber LED fixtures. These have the prismatic optics on them like the GE Evolve ERS line except these fixtures are a nature/circadian friendly amber light.

https://goo.gl/images/I1JQWb

It's so shocking that those fixtures aren't HPS. I really like the tight optical control of the fixtures. It looks like the went with an asymmetric forewords distribution with the lights in the first picture. What that means is that the bulk of the light the fixtures are producing is getting sent one direction, forwards, creating a fixture that "throws" light forwards when the fixture is mounted level. The more correct term would be distributes light forwards. I bring these in particular up as some of the main thought processes behind continuing to justify glaring and largely ineffective house based flood lighting is that the low glare fixtures don't "seem" to throw light out forwards which this first picture helps to illustrate is false logic. It's a matter of appropriate choice of fixture optics.

(http://static.wixstatic.com/media/adba33_dd631b84347541f3b8b2ad85cc1db41d.jpg_srz_1282_855_85_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_jpg_srz)

(http://static.wixstatic.com/media/adba33_70ab174138d843fe8e00996a19f466ad~mv2_d_5346_3564_s_4_2.jpg_srz_1282_855_85_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_jpg_srz)

(http://static.wixstatic.com/media/adba33_499628cf1bb348a4b46f4e4505519ec5.jpg_srz_1282_855_85_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_jpg_srz)

https://goo.gl/images/FWxkrz

https://goo.gl/images/wxWjwB

https://goo.gl/images/uJTbQ7

These fixtures are from a vendor known as Innolumis. They appear to serve the European markets, maybe kindly asking and they would supply fixtures with drivers that would work on the US mains?

I just had to share this ad from Cree. Mmm, boy does it really give a visualization of what I almost feel I want to do when I see the high glare blue-rich white junk, sarcasm added.XD

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wgi9uPvNHY  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wgi9uPvNHY)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmD94UlUfQU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmD94UlUfQU)

For the most part that Philips Iriduim is pretty much beaten in the US market by the RSW, it's not to say that the Mini-Irdium is a bad fixture, it isn't, it's just that for small scale residential, the RSW is our domestic go to.

Locally, Ive noticed Tulsa County is trying to make the Golden Driller golden again.  
They had recently switched from High Pressure Sodium to "white" LEDs and it was gawdawful (blue).
Ill have to look closer next time but they are trying to get his proper color back again, either with amber LEDs or some gel filters.

Much improved.

Filters on top of cool white LEDs results in a really ugly greenish light. Going down a couple hundred kelvin seems to yield much better results. This is about what to expect when filtering blue rich LEDs down several thousand kelvin

(https://www.led-professional.com/resources-1/articles/the-value-of-dark-skies-about-environmentally-friendly-lighting-by-the-international-dark-sky-association-ida/@@images/759fc2d6-e199-4b07-84b3-a021c244d554.png)

The picture also contrasts against the PC Amber LEDs to the right which you can see have no green-ish color.

Most of the restriping done in the last 5 years was done with what seems like basically white spray paint. It's a super thin layer that fades in just a few months and doesn't have the thickness and reflectivity to be of any use in rain and only of little use at night.
It is scary and I have no idea how that meets any safety requirements.

Certain state DOTs, like Arizona DOT, will actually use retro-reflective tape instead of paint that has better retro-reflectivity and durability then just retro-reflective paint. They'll even recess the tape to protect it from snowplows. Btw, in climates with snow, restriping the paint should be performed about once every year or once every two years with a setup that only uses paint and no countersinking of the stripes.

https://www.azdot.gov/mobile/media/blog/posts/2013/01/25/transportation-defined-recessed-pavement-markers

Rumble strips are also overlooked and if correctly implemented are a real boon as they can even be effective in whiteout conditions. They had a setup in California I really liked that had the double yellows really wide, had a rumble strip down the middle and retro-reflective raised pavement markers flanking the center strip with the double yellows on the very outer edge. It definitely felt like one of the safest setups of a two lane I've ever been on.

I've heard of people describing freshly equipped roads with new RPMs and rr-striping as being on a "runway".

(https://dawn2dawnphotography.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/lost-highway_8845.jpg?w=950)

In places you can find the Polyurea/thermoplastic markings, but for the most part its the white spray paint with glass beads.
The later do need to be maintained more than we currently do.

The Broken Arrow Expressway was just re-marked.  In the absence of the overhead Sodium lights (thanks, copper thieves) the thick reflective markings really pop.


Now changing lanes briefly...

How do you solve the issue of individuals who believe taxpayers should subsidize their yard light?
http://www.fox23.com/video?videoId=518719231&videoVersion=1.0

More incandescent like ,2700-3000k, warm white LEDs They blend quite nicely with the classic architecture.

(http://www.blog-we-ef.fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/lumi04-02.jpg)

To continue off of that, Chicago has elected to go with warm white LEDs, 3000k>, for its citywide refit.

http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/April-2017/Its-Really-Hard-to-Figure-Out-What-Color-a-Citys-Streetlights-Should-Be/

I find Toronto's determined resistance to the cold and metallic mercury vapor lighting particularly intreguiging. A true widespread holdout of the incandescent street lighting technology.

I think they are asking about neighborhood street lights rather than yard lights.

The light count in my neighborhood is half what it was when we moved in.  Probably still adequate - it's such a poor little area that burglars tend to drop stuff off in pity, rather than take it away!

I was making reference to some folks elsewhere that objected to their city shielding streetlights because they didnt light up their front yard as well... as opposed to people who would practically give up their firstborn just to have the opportunity to decide how their property was lighted.

Oh, man....was giving up first born an option??   Geez, I wish I have known before making THAT investment!!  How about 2nd?    (Don't tell them I said that...!!)

Found another interesting article on color temperature from the IES.

http://www.iesphl.org/single-post/2017/01/04/Lighting-for-Seniors-Study-Produces-Startling-Results

I realize that this is about indoor lighting in a senior care facility, but the same principles of melatonin and associated ciricadian effects still apply to streetlighting​. Though, depending on one's proximity to blue-rich LED street lights and their intensity, ymmv.That being said they used a system that reduced kelvin rating at night. Here are some of their results..

*agitated behaviors such as yelling and crying decreased among three residents studied;
* the need for psychotropic and sleep medications was significantly reduced for one of the residents;
* the number of recorded patient falls decreased in the corridor studied; and
* according to ACC staff, residents whose rooms were located elsewhere were now “hanging out” in the LED-illuminated corridor.
 

Looks like the industry is taking note. GE appears to no longer be openly marketing 5000k streetlighting on their spec. sheets, thank gosh 5000k is awful everywhere at night. A first for a manufacturer as well! Cree is now the first manufacturer to offer 2700k for its cobrahead models, the RSW, without the city having to "special order" it.

http://volt.org/cautiously-optimistic-live-from-lightfair-2017/

I personally am really excited about this. A would genuinely feel comfortable living next to something like a 2700k RSW. Especially more so given the refracting lenses on that fixture allow the LEDs to be tucked up into the fixture without compromising optical controls.

By the looks of the new crib sheets for the RSW they're also still pushing around 100 lumens per watt even at 2700k. There really is no reasoning to be still installing the 4000k glare bombs.

I think I mentioned before, but one of the places I stay has the 5k daytime clone lights.  I sleep under one with about 30 ft lateral separation.  Have woken in the middle of the night and thought it was morning, but really doesn't bother me too much.  Not pretty or at all complementary to the surroundings, but evening gunfire in the distance usually takes my mind off the lights...

Blue-rich white light has its place in society, but it doesn't belong anywhere near people at night. We just need to keep pushing. Meanwhile in PC Amber LED news...

(http://www.lighting.philips.com/b-dam/b2b-li/es_ES/cases/realejos_led_pc_ambar/Header-los-realojos-S.jpg)

... a citywide deployment. O.O

http://www.lighting.philips.es/proyectos/proyectos/carreteras-y-calles/realejos-led-pc-ambar

(https://www.cazurro.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/PanoLosRealejosNoche.jpg)

https://www.cazurro.com/2017/03/06/led-pc-ambar-en-los-realejos-tenerife/

Now if we could get our elected officials to install these low impact night lights without being pressured by an observatory. That is unless you're a certain US city that has no concern for protecting scientific jobs, I'm looking at you San Jose, with your blue-rich 4000k lighting.

If we could just get it along the river, we would look like a city with our act together. 
I still havent seen the lighting plan for The Gathering Place but if its the same welding-torch theme as the bluish LEDs on Riverside...

I stumbled across an interesting picture from Chicago. It seems that for a while they were installing incandescant looking  2800k ceramic metal halide . These are some of those lights at dusk. Bear in mind the optics are wayy too out of date, but it shows how they've come full circle. Looks almost like a better alternate timeline in which the warm white color and color rendering quality of incandescent never left us.

(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4221/34506109233_f06bbb7d7f_b.jpg)

Against actual incandescent street lights of 50s vintage before the icky blueish-green mercury vapor.

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-StaOkjxWHT4/T42rCmlxg7I/AAAAAAABDZI/8DItPKENGyU/s1600/sunset_&_vine_hollywood_CA.jpg)

(https://68.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lp4chmEJBW1qlel45o1_r1_1280.jpg)

I just hope these pictures put to rest, to any of the remaining skeptics still out there, that we can efficiently match the color qualities and characteristics of incandescent lighting with modern efficient sources.





 

But everyone's so proud of spending that federal energy grant money on first-generation (and now obsolete) LED streetlighting that turned the streets into one big Blue Light Special.
OK, some of those civic leaders had their heart in the right place, but their research was off.

Which brings me to this


A risky fix to repair a city's gutted streetlight grid
http://www.newson6.com/story/35744709/a-risky-fix-to-repair-a-citys-gutted-streetlight-grid

Its a story about expressway lighting (which is not the city streetlight grid, Justin) but I want to address the random uninformed person-on-the-street comments that seem so vital to TV news:

' Tulsa is scrambling to make patchwork repairs to its decimated grid, opting for a quick fix to appease frustrated motorists, including 48-year-old resident Bill White, who says broken streetlights could become a liability for the city and a hazard for drivers. '

There's no statutory requirement for the city to light streets or expressways.  If anything, municipalities take on liability by adding streetlights and then not maintaining them, so it make sense for the city to not add streetlights just on the whim of someone who thinks it would be neat to have one in their front yard.

The standard is still a case in California where "Plaintiffs sued (the government) for allegedly failing to provide adequate lighting with overhead street lights" but the court found that there was no duty to provide lighting.

http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of-appeal/1604392.html

If anything else, at least we have plenty of examples of how not to do it. Meanwhile in San Francisco

http://www.ktvu.com/news/ktvu-local-news/263022747-story

So it looks like the municipal arm of San Fran. is making the switch to 3000 kelvin LED street lights, and by the looks of it the first fixtures are from Philips lighting, so they should have very nice color qualities. I will concede Philips has the most refined and advanced mainstream phosphors on it's chips. Another little nod to SF, is that they're actually in the process of buying back their streetlights so a power company no longer has carte blanche over an element of public infrastructure, good riddance. Furthermore, SF also dabbled with the very early 1st Gen Blue-rich LED street lights very early on. It could've gone very wrong very early. It's good to see that they saw the light.

You can certainly see the strong, at times logically overriding, physcological effects lighting at night has on people.

Some more warm white light, 2700-3200k.

(http://www.verlichting.nl/productengids/_images/1324323_443648205_01.jpg)

This one incorporates one of Patric's early ideas of using warm white tape LEDs as descrete low profile under lighting. And this is all in Italy the same country that desecrated nighttime Rome with the 4000k glare bombs several years later.

(http://socialdesignmagazine.com/mag/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Illuminazione-pubblica-a-LED-per-Bellinzona-lighting-design-Stefano-DallOsso-07.jpg)

(http://socialdesignmagazine.com/mag/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Illuminazione-pubblica-a-LED-per-Bellinzona-lighting-design-Stefano-DallOsso-04.jpg)

(http://socialdesignmagazine.com/mag/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Illuminazione-pubblica-a-LED-per-Bellinzona-lighting-design-Stefano-DallOsso-06.jpg)

Vs Rome several years later, for shame.

(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQEaXDGZWziwbAUzoBbMxIZoEGuJYMoe57R5SLbO1_qmLkcbGZogw)

I found some more warm white, probably 2800k, installations in Japan. In winter they believe that warm colored light is necessary to keep the extreme cold away and that cool light is needed during the summer months for the opposite. Now of course, with the information we know, the lights would remain warm white indefinitely. These first couple have a really rich color temp. I really like them.

(http://travelers.co.jp/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/136093404852913205878_NEC_2009_jpg丸の内イルミネーション１.jpg)

(http://promptreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/thumb5-300x200.jpg)

(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRnyhHwNha0AzBLfjCFcMeq0tVqYJsU2Fbd8zlUPIii8TKxI1Ip)

Do you remember that mercury vapor installation I posted a while back? Well, say goodbye forever to the cold gloomy blues.

(http://d13ucm2atqlvn6.cloudfront.net/75f58ba619364fc094ef4f964ba10dd5/images/69f8321524b44431b3650884e9d62603.jpg)

(http://agora-web.jp/cms/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/8196d24e-s.jpg)

It looks so much more human.

(https://news.walkerplus.com/article/68114/381207_615.jpg)

I stand by my original comment that the installation of blue-rich LED street lights is an act of civic vandalism.

Thought I'd share a video of this place without the Christmas lights so everyone could get a better idea of how these warm white fixtures all look in video. It's in 2160p. You can really see the stark contrast between the video patric posted earlier with the blue-rich install in Italy. It is an absolute smorgasbord of, at times, warm white outdoor lighting.

At about 24 minutes in, you can really see the benefits of the fully-shielded warm white fixtures. Make no mistake, these fixtures are not HPS, likely CMH given the high lamp failure rate.

At about 27 minutes in one can see the truly green mercury vapor at a construction site. In contrast with the warm white, it looks like something out of a horror movie. I can easily see why nearly everyone was pissed when they replaced incandescent street lighting with the vulgar mercury lighting.

One can see the contrast between the handsomely warm white pedestrian scale fixtures with the legacy HPS at about 32 minutes in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCYLQuiEuqU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCYLQuiEuqU)

It's a really nice video worth watching through, imo.

I also recently found out that the City of Los Angeles, the place that famously turned its streets into one big blue-light special, has changed its approved fixture list to only warm white lights. As I understand, Ed Ebrahmian, the principle in charge of the project at the time supposedly said recently something along the lines of, " If we were to do that conversion today, we would never pick lights that high a kelvin." His statement is clear as day in the new standards that call for only warm white lights for all future refits. A bit of history, when LA/BSL, Bureau of Street lighting, was approached by LED vendors, they wanted to offer Ed's team 6000k, likely 5700k, rated lights, but they said no to that. They didn't want their streets to look like they were filled with paparazzi and people taking selfies. His team did some research and found the CCT of the moon to be at 4000 kelvin, and the rest is history. To give some credit to his team, at that time, going down to 4000k was a bit of a technological jump with HPS, but ,then again, there were also alternatives to achieve that warm white light look as well at that time.

An extensive project to replace and add pedestrian lights along 16 blocks in the downtown Blue Dome District will start this week, city officials say.
On Friday, construction crews will begin removing the acorn-style street lamps that have become the downtown standard and replace them with LED fixtures.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/yearlong-project-to-implement-pedestrian-lights-in-blue-dome-district/article_ca2cf1de-aa5e-5335-b204-c5792615087e.html


OK, this could end up being very good, or very bad, depending on the fixtures they are replacing the Acorn lights with.

Tulsa, like so many other municipalities that adopted LED streetlighting, was sold on blue-rich lights reminiscent of looking into an arc welder.  
Horrible, night-vision destroying, ecologically irresponsible and aesthetically garish blue-rich lights.

...and so many of those municipalities have had to come back later and fix it with more modern LEDs that have warmer color, pretty much wiping out the money savings they were promised by their lighting salesmen.

The magic number today is 2700K.

Thats the "color temperature" of incandescent lighting.  The warm feeling of the livingroom lamp or a bright fireplace.
The "K" is for Kelvin, a somewhat confusing way of expressing light color in degrees (as in 2700 Degrees Kelvin).

Sadly missing from the story is any reference to optical performance or shielding (glare prevention) of the new fixtures.  The city is promising "night-sky friendly fixtures" but Im wishing they could have elaborated a bit more, since Ive heard those promises used to describe fixtures that arent so friendly.


Also: "There is a current project underway to convert the insides of all acorn lights to a "night-sky friendly LED fixture." It won't change the appearance of the lamps, he said, but it does succeed in directing light to the ground rather than the sky."

OK that would also be a dream come true... something Ive ranted about here for... how many years?
My plan has been more specific, though, to convert the decorative Acorn lights to lower, decorative intensities and use higher-mounted shielded lights for the actual lighting of the streets.  That addresses the glare problem we currently have as a result of using bright lights inside the poor optics of Acorn fixtures and expecting that to properly light streets.

If we're just replacing the Sodium or Metal-Halide lamps currently inside Acorns with the same intensity blue-rich LED we will actually make the problem worse, not better.  If that happens, it will be an expensive disaster.

Lets hope the retrofitted Acorns get clear lenses that allow for better aiming (the frosted or "refractive" globes scatter light and contribute to glare) and the LEDs are the more modern warm-white versions that closer resemble the color and intensity of their 1900's models.

I thought you would be thrilled about this news. I was wrong.  ;D It sounds like they are incorporating the kind of lighting you are adamant about. And the acorn night-friendly replacement also sounds exactly like they described in the article. I guess you are so jaded that you think even that might be a disaster and I don't blame you, the CoT has really screwed up quite a lot.

Sounds great improvement to me though. I have a bit more confidence because it isn't really "the city" and is a volunteer counsel trying to make improvements that most of the members benefit from also. It sounds like they are trying to do it right. If it was someone who was going to do it "wrong", they probably would've just installed the new acorn lights the one property owner requested and saved a lot of money.

I think you are right in that im a bit jaded by years of shell games by city leaders and lighting vendors, but I really do want something like this to work.

...and I do believe the volunteers want to do it right, but I realize that hinges on the accuracy of the information they get from salesmen, not other volunteers like myself.

I am thrilled, though, that some of the decision-makers are aware the existing Acorn lights produce a poor quality light and that 'night-sky friendly' lights might also help improve visual acuity by reducing glare.  Its much more a public safety issue than a tree-hugger issue, bit the environment still benefits from making the right choice.

The color-temperature issue is still a big deal, though.  Choosing bluer LEDs over warmer LEDs because you get a bit more lumens-per-watt is penny wise but pound foolish, especially if you have to come back later and change it because of the public outcry other cities are experiencing.