It would be better if the lights faded out gradually at midnight rather than sudden light to dark which is distracting to the driver. The same principle could be applied at 5am but the light could fade in instead. Or is this too expensive to implement?

I don't think vapour lamps can be dimmed. They're either on or off. Also, vapour lamps take a while to warm up, so you wouldn't suddenly be instantly dazzled by fully lit SON, if they were to come on. The bigger problem is them going off. I've always though that when a lit section of motorway is coming to an end, they should step the lights down, perhaps by wattage or by distance of the lamposts, so that the transition is more gradual. Perhaps they could do this when turning them off. Say, turn a third off first, then another third, then the final third.

Of course, they could just use SOX for motorways. It's less dazzling, so it doesn't feel as bad when plunged into darkness. It turns on very gradually ie the pink stage emits virtually no light at all and it uses about half the energu of an equivalent SON or metal halide lamp, probably meaning you could well get away with not having to turn them off at all at night.

I am led to believe that on the Dutch motorway network the lights are grouped into sections which can be set at 0% (ie off), 50% and 100% output, with the ability to go to 200% in a particular section if an accident has occured, to allow emergency services to work better, and without having to set up their own lighting.

How does one drive in pitch darkness on a lit motorway ?

Pitch Darkness as in...a black sky.

I never understood why this entire stretch is continuously lit when for most of the time, apart from rush hours, the road is relatively empty. It's pretty much dead straight, D4M, and can't have many accidents. If they selectively switched it on during dark rush hours and in reduced visibility, they'd doubtless make significant savings.

I suspect this wheeze will come to a fairly abrupt end the first time there is a serious multi vehicle pile up in heavy fog on a stretch that has the streetlighting switched off.

nahhh They'll just blame it on the speed limit!

This section is run as a PFI, so the cost of streetlighting will be rolled up into the fees paid to RMS, the concessionaire. Having RMS switch the lights off probably wouldn't save the HA any money.

Nahh just GO BACK TO SOX! Save some money! Plenty of other European countries are still using it on major motorways/autobahns/highways, and China is on the brink of using them mass as well! Stockpile tens of thousands of Philips SRS201's and plonk them on existing columns! Really, what more could you ask for?

180W vs 600W should be justify it well enough. That would outweigh the cost of the lamps themselves! And last longer!

It's reported today that there has been no significant increase in accidents following the complete switch-off of lighting on the M66:

http://menmedia.co.uk/manchesterevening ... ing-on-m66

Indeed, and that's on a motorway prone to serious congestion and featuring two lane drops!

I'm well in favour of rolling out lighting switch-offs elsewhere despite my views of several years ago.

Indeed. Lighting on plain line sections of most major rural roads outside of peak hours is unlikely to bring any benefit to the casualty stats in almost all likely situations.

Yes no doubt there will be the occasional situation where lighting may have helped, but to be honest they are few and far between.

Major accidents where there is no lighting at all have not lead for many calls for new installations, so why should existing installations remain when there is little likelihood of it being of much benefit 99.9% of the time?

Considering that budgets are only going to get tighter, trimming the unnecessary fat from the infrastructure is a useful place to start toward re-investing where lighting IS necessary.

The M5 between J3-4 is one of the stretches to be in darkness from midnight-5am. With the current work taking place to replace the metal barrier with concrete I'm surprised to see new lighting columns go up. Surely the cost of the columns will outweigh £75k or whatever the savings are by switching them off.

The lighting on the M53 between junctions 8 and 9 have ALSO been removed. I am actually surprised this has not been posted before. They have installed new concrete barriers on this stretch. The old slip road lamps have however, been retained and have new Urbis Sapphired retrofitted replacing the wonky and ma60s which were in place.
The section south of junction 9 also has some ma60s-about 25/30 of them. I have a feeling when these are 'culled' they themselves will not be replaced.........

We've been doing several trips on the M65/M66 last couple of weeks, including some trips after 11pm. Saw some big "STREET LIGHTING NOT IN USE" signs hanging about, especially at junctions joining the motorways.

No lighting didn't bother me, but there were some very dramatic changes in reflectivity of white lines and cats eyes in various sections. Some sections it was almost impossible to see the lane markings; others they were heading towards being dazzling!