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Author Topic: Better Streetlights for Tulsa  (Read 458219 times)
patric
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« Reply #510 on: June 24, 2022, 08:00:28 pm »

KTUL: “Adding these 113 new LED streetlights improves both the quantity and the quality of lighting in this area – with LED representing the latest technology,” Bynum said. “The new LED lights are designed to reduce glare and improve safety for motorists, pedestrians and people riding bicycles.”


But the version of the streetlights PSO ordered arent the ones that cut glare. 
Nor are they the "Dark Sky Certified" that make cities feel good about buying them.

Think the mayor knows? 
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"Tulsa will lay off police and firemen before we will cut back on unnecessarily wasteful streetlights."  -- March 18, 2009 TulsaNow Forum
patric
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« Reply #511 on: August 26, 2022, 09:57:24 am »

TULSA, Okla. (KTUL) — The Public Service Company of Oklahoma began replacing every street light in Broken Arrow with new LED models this week. Feedback has not been universal, but it appears residents are warming up to the change.

One Broken Arrow-centric Facebook group saw 200 comments, both attacking and defending the new lights, in just one day.

“What doesn’t make sense is the blinding BRIGHT WHITE LED’s [sic] now installed right in front of my house,” commented one angry resident, “versus the nice orange hue-ish light at the end of my street (the correct color and what it has been since the middle 80’s).”  “Thank you,” added another resident. “It’s nice to read someone else complaining about this besides me. I couldn’t agree more!”

PSO spokesperson Wayne Greene said if they had the technology to make street lights bright white in the 1980s, they would have.  “The new LED lights provide clearer, brighter light,” he said. “They’re more efficient, last longer, take less time to warm up, and they eliminate that eerie yellow glow of the old HID lights.”

While the yellow hue may be comforting or nostalgic for some, it is bad for visibility.


* FALSE. The Color Rendering Index for both the Blu-ish lights PSO chose and the Warm-ish lights they should have chosen are the same: 70 CRI.  Now 15 years ago that would have been true but LED technology has greatly improved and warm-white LEDs have the same visual efficacy as the "daylight" LEDs PSO is installing. This is a fact lost on PSO, who apparently cant read their own spec sheets:   https://www.cooperlighting.com/api/assets/v1/file/CLS/content/003736e4ca3945afb4e2ad410072f619/streetworks-arch-m-archeon-medium-spec

For reference:
4000K = Daylight (cold, eerie look. bad at night)
2700K = Incandescent (warm, comforting look, good at night)

The new white lights have the same color temperature as sunlight. Greene said he knows some people may prefer the color of the old lights, but he can’t please everyone.

While the new street lights are definitely brighter, they should not be blinding. In fact, they’re designed to eliminate light pollution, which means they will not make the night sky any brighter. But they shouldn’t make anyone’s bedroom brighter, either.


* FALSE.  The manufacturer of the new LED lights offers a configuration that greatly reduces glare and light pollution, THIS IS NOT the configuration PSO has chosen.  Blue-rich light (like PSO's new lights lights) are cited as a major contributing factor to light pollution. https://www.darksky.org/wp-content/uploads/bsk-pdf-manager/8_IDA-BLUE-RICH-LIGHT-WHITE-PAPER.PDF
Its an easy fix: Just order the correct version instead.


“If people have problems with the lights, if we’re lighting up their home instead of the street, we need to hear about that,” Greene said. “Give us a call. Call our customer service department.”

PSO began installing LED street lights across the state in April. Broken Arrow is their largest undertaking yet, Greene said, in terms of both population and number of lights.

All of the city’s 5,100 street lights, Greene said, should be replaced by the end of 2022. The project will help them understand how to tackle their biggest undertaking: re-lighting Tulsa.

« Last Edit: August 26, 2022, 10:05:07 am by patric » Logged

"Tulsa will lay off police and firemen before we will cut back on unnecessarily wasteful streetlights."  -- March 18, 2009 TulsaNow Forum
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« Reply #512 on: October 06, 2022, 05:08:24 pm »

It looks like AASHTO is advising some very blue-rich lighting standards for pedestrian facilities. They call for 3000K-4000K LEDs. It will look especially horrible in any sort of fake history streetlight, pedestrian scale or not. Someone should've told AASHTO that you shouldn't be trying to drive pedestrians away at night. That means fewer friendly eyes on the street. People hate 4000K, and they barely tolerate 3000K. You also shouldn't be trying to drive cyclists away, either. For them, safety in numbers and physically separated facilities are what really matters.

https://highways.dot.gov/sites/fhwa.dot.gov/files/2022-09/Pedestrian_Lighting_Primer_Final.pdf

What they should really focus on is slowing the cars down at ped crossings, and they need to make it safe during the daytime to cross. Things like fewer car travel lanes, refuge islands, and chicanes can help immensely.
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patric
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« Reply #513 on: October 06, 2022, 05:35:06 pm »

It looks like AASHTO is advising some very blue-rich lighting standards for pedestrian facilities. They call for 3000K-4000K LEDs. It will look especially horrible in any sort of fake history streetlight, pedestrian scale or not. Someone should've told AASHTO that you shouldn't be trying to drive pedestrians away at night. That means fewer friendly eyes on the street. People hate 4000K, and they barely tolerate 3000K. You also shouldn't be trying to drive cyclists away, either. For them, safety in numbers and physically separated facilities are what really matters.

https://highways.dot.gov/sites/fhwa.dot.gov/files/2022-09/Pedestrian_Lighting_Primer_Final.pdf

What they should really focus on is slowing the cars down at ped crossings, and they need to make it safe during the daytime to cross. Things like fewer car travel lanes, refuge islands, and chicanes can help immensely.

Its why we should be paying attention to ANSI/IESNA standards instead of the politically-influenced AASHTO.  Given the LED luminaires that Tulsa chose, it costs no more to select the right color temperature and cutoff optics (glare-proofing) than the bad ones.  Maybe the plan is to install LED streetlights twice at taxpayer expense?



These LED floodlights are the same color temperature as the new, glare-prone streetlights. The truck in the photo had just fatally struck a pedestrian.

Investigation of fatal crash involving pedestrian closes Pine near Mingo, Tulsa police say

https://tulsaworld.com/news/local/accident-and-incident/investigation-of-fatal-crash-involving-pedestrian-closes-pine-near-mingo-tulsa-police-say/article_024e9782-456b-11ed-88c5-3b2805cc7d0b.html

"Mayor G.T. Bynum said “The new LED lights are designed to reduce glare and improve safety for motorists, pedestrians and people riding bicycles."  https://www.fox23.com/news/city-tulsa-installs-113-led-streetlights-along-north-peoria/L4CSFRANZZDSXAGHJPE45YJRGQ/

MOSTLY FALSE.  Some versions of this model are capable of reducing glare, but the version PSO is installing is not.  Why arent they?

« Last Edit: October 08, 2022, 08:45:00 pm by patric » Logged

"Tulsa will lay off police and firemen before we will cut back on unnecessarily wasteful streetlights."  -- March 18, 2009 TulsaNow Forum
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« Reply #514 on: October 06, 2022, 06:00:17 pm »

So it's the feds? That's the reason why they're STILL pushing 4000K? Btw, their visibility study didn't test 2700K and 3000K only 2200K, 4000K, and 5000K.
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« Reply #515 on: October 06, 2022, 11:43:12 pm »

So it's the feds? That's the reason why they're STILL pushing 4000K? Btw, their visibility study didn't test 2700K and 3000K only 2200K, 4000K, and 5000K.

Somebody has a bunch of 4000K and 5000K lights left over somewhere.  I they tested the 2700K, they couldn't sell the left-overs.

 Sad



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patric
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« Reply #516 on: October 07, 2022, 11:00:31 am »

Somebody has a bunch of 4000K and 5000K lights left over somewhere.  I they tested the 2700K, they couldn't sell the left-overs.

 Sad

Maybe we are getting the lights removed from other municipalities?  Crap rolls downhill; let dumb Okies deal with it. /s

An email from the AEP PIO (that had a condescending grade-school "what is color temperature" infographic) indicates they chose the higher color temperature based on outdated DOE recommendations dating back to the earliest days of LED streetlighting when the technnology was still emerging. At that time there was a huge gap in efficacy between warm and cold lighting that doesnt exist today. If they had bothered to look at their own cutsheets they could have seen that.
Citizens have begun to complain, just as they have everywhere else that is bathed in the cold, blue-rich light, and been successful in having the city re-do with warmer color LEDS. Maybe the utility is rushing forward with the bad lights so they can get paid again for changing them to the good lights?
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« Reply #517 on: October 07, 2022, 03:48:16 pm »

Maybe we are getting the lights removed from other municipalities? 

Maybe the utility is rushing forward with the bad lights so they can get paid again for changing them to the good lights?

Neither of the above would surprise me. 
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heironymouspasparagus
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« Reply #518 on: October 10, 2022, 09:00:45 am »

.

Gee.... I wonder why we are always left out of serious consideration from big companies to move here?    Just another little piece of the puzzle.

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dbacksfan 2.0
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« Reply #519 on: October 11, 2022, 02:14:40 pm »

.

Gee.... I wonder why we are always left out of serious consideration from big companies to move here?    Just another little piece of the puzzle.



Probably because people at CoT rarely get out of the office and see things done differently.

From a post Patric made after the pedestrian was struck and killed on 15th Street last year:

Quote
After a pedestrian was struck and killed in a dark crosswalk on 15th Street near Urbana, officials have proposed installing Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons in the area. RRFBs allow pedestrians to push a button to make warning lights flash while they’re crossing the road. Tulsans might be most familiar with them from high pedestrian traffic areas, like Cherry Street and Brookside.

City Traffic Engineer Kurt Kraft said such inventions were not available in the early 2000s when the road was enhanced, but they're on their way to becoming an industry standard, usurping the old-style constant flashing warning lights, which drivers eventually ignore.

RRFB's and other overhead warning lights and systems were being installed around the Phoenix metro starting in 2005 for the RRFB's with yellow strobes in lane turtles along the crosswalk across the street to overhead stop signals on streets with higher speed limits.

These are the types that were being installed then





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patric
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« Reply #520 on: November 12, 2022, 01:12:59 pm »

Somebody has a bunch of 4000K and 5000K lights left over somewhere.  I they tested the 2700K, they couldn't sell the left-overs.

 Sad

This is what PSO had been installing in residential areas.

Note the light-scattering refractor. This is about as far from "low glare" as you could possibly get. It is far worse than what it replaced, because instead of having glare from orang-ish Sodium light its now glare from blue-rich, night vision-destroying 4000K light.
You DO NOT want this outside your bedroom window.


Houston, we have a problem.


UPDATE:  The PSO PIO assured me that these were only temporary lights until the "real" LED streetlight conversion could replace them. That was the first of January. The contractors skipped over them when the conversion began, and by the end of February the contractors told PSO the conversion was complete in my neighborhood. Yesterday the contractor was in the neighborhood again but ignored the glare-prone "Caretaker" lights, so this isnt over.

« Last Edit: March 10, 2023, 10:34:09 am by patric » Logged

"Tulsa will lay off police and firemen before we will cut back on unnecessarily wasteful streetlights."  -- March 18, 2009 TulsaNow Forum
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« Reply #521 on: March 10, 2023, 10:40:22 am »

Our city leaders failed us on our streetlight conversion, and we have the blues.

Here's how Kansas City listened to its voters and got it right:

Kansas City makes adjustments to its streetlight conversion plan
https://www.thepitchkc.com/after-pushback-from-environmental-groups-kansas-city-makes-adjustments-to-its-streetlight-conversion-plan/


Maggie Green, media relations manager for Kansas City, said there were many reasons the city ultimately chose to move forward with 3000K lights instead of the 4000K that was initially proposed.
“We do have a desire to create a more natural light—on the actual color scale the 3,000k is warmer or more natural than 4000K,” says Green. “Another reason was wanting to have a unified color temperature across all the streetlights and the conversion project instead of a hybrid between two. And, of course, minimizing the impact and interruption to wildlife is another reason that we ultimately decided to pursue 3000 Kelvin.

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« Reply #522 on: December 05, 2023, 08:36:52 am »

Not much real information from Channel 8 here:

TULSA, Okla. (KTUL) — Street lights on the West side of Greenwood Avenue, north of Archer are getting an upgrade.

"I got an email last week, I want to say that they were going to come out I did see someone working on a pole. I'm not sure to the extent of the work," said Regina Wells, the owner of The Loc Shop and A Blonde Bail Bonds.

"Anyone at any time can jump out at you. And you not even know because the vision is so poor," said Wells.
"A lot of my clients, you know, they try to make their appointments up in the day because they're afraid to be down here because it's so dark at night," said Wells.


Got to make the bail bonds place as crime-free as the rest of downtown...


Wells says that trees are covering up the light poles.
"I really think somebody made a big mistake when they planted those trees not understanding that these trees were going to be really huge and it's just not a good fit really for downtown," said Wells.


...and PSO pretty has one strategy for dealing with trees, even if its taxpayer-funded landscaping.


Brian Kurtz, the President &CEO of Downtown Tulsa Partnership sent us a statement saying that it coordinated with PSO to install a new transformer to separate the street light utilities.
And while no new lighting will be added, the changes will brighten the existing lighting.


Its magic. Anyone have any insights as to exactly how this is supposed to work?
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dbacksfan 2.0
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« Reply #523 on: December 05, 2023, 10:55:36 am »

Not much real information from Channel 8 here:

TULSA, Okla. (KTUL) — Street lights on the West side of Greenwood Avenue, north of Archer are getting an upgrade.

"I got an email last week, I want to say that they were going to come out I did see someone working on a pole. I'm not sure to the extent of the work," said Regina Wells, the owner of The Loc Shop and A Blonde Bail Bonds.

"Anyone at any time can jump out at you. And you not even know because the vision is so poor," said Wells.
"A lot of my clients, you know, they try to make their appointments up in the day because they're afraid to be down here because it's so dark at night," said Wells.


Got to make the bail bonds place as crime-free as the rest of downtown...


Wells says that trees are covering up the light poles.
"I really think somebody made a big mistake when they planted those trees not understanding that these trees were going to be really huge and it's just not a good fit really for downtown," said Wells.


...and PSO pretty has one strategy for dealing with trees, even if its taxpayer-funded landscaping.


Brian Kurtz, the President &CEO of Downtown Tulsa Partnership sent us a statement saying that it coordinated with PSO to install a new transformer to separate the street light utilities.
And while no new lighting will be added, the changes will brighten the existing lighting.


Its magic. Anyone have any insights as to exactly how this is supposed to work?


Read the article on Channel Lates site and it did say that the city was going to trim the trees in the area, I'm sure that took at least a half dozen meetings and a couple of environmental research grants to come up with that brilliant idea. 

Adding a seperate transformer? Smoke and mirrors. It's like having a broken gate and to keep the animal in you paint the barn.
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« Reply #524 on: December 05, 2023, 08:16:11 pm »

Adding a seperate transformer? Smoke and mirrors. It's like having a broken gate and to keep the animal in you paint the barn.

Maybe not smoke and mirrors if the existing transformer is over-loaded.

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