How long before all streetlights in most areas are LED?

[brummie_rob]

The streetlight opposite my house has just been replaced with an LED lamp. The road is now clearly lit, but nothing else is. The illumination is very tightly focused on the road and the pavement, with no bleeding either side. This now means that I have to walk up my short garden path and try to connect key to keyhole with pretty much no help from the streetlight, whereas before it was clearly lit and a lot easier and safer, but without being so bright as to be an annoyance. To me, that makes the LED lights a retrograde step.

It may be a retrograde step for you, but the council aren't paying to light up peoples driveways. This is a common complaint from people commenting on Stokes replacement to LED. The simple but costly solution to that is buy a light that detects you walking to the door (I picked one up for £10 recently in Aldi that is solar powered).

[brummie_rob]

Here in Cyprus I've not seen any LED lighting. Most is of what I call the, "Salmon Pink" variety as frequently encountered in the '90s.

The rest are rather period looking "hooks" with standard energy saving light bulbs fitted attached to wooden poles.

I've seen LED in Cyprus, the A2 from Larnaca Airport to Aya Napa has LED on stretches.

[Fenlander]

The streetlight opposite my house has just been replaced with an LED lamp. The road is now clearly lit, but nothing else is. The illumination is very tightly focused on the road and the pavement, with no bleeding either side. This now means that I have to walk up my short garden path and try to connect key to keyhole with pretty much no help from the streetlight, whereas before it was clearly lit and a lot easier and safer, but without being so bright as to be an annoyance. To me, that makes the LED lights a retrograde step.

I had the opposite problem, the old light was on a on a pole right outside my house but the light from the lamp was sheilded by the pole so no light fell in a wedge shape behind it, which included the whole front of my house and the front door. The new LED head on it is much wider than the pole so there's no shadow cast backwards, our driveway, front of house and front door is very well lit now, so much so that you can't really tell if our outside light is on or not.

[Focus 2]

Here in Cyprus I've not seen any LED lighting. Most is of what I call the, "Salmon Pink" variety as frequently encountered in the '90s.

The rest are rather period looking "hooks" with standard energy saving light bulbs fitted attached to wooden poles.

I've seen LED in Cyprus, the A2 from Larnaca Airport to Aya Napa has LED on stretches.

Thanks! I should have said, "Here in Paphos", not the country in general.
I've corrected my original post.

[Helvellyn]

It may be a retrograde step for you, but the council aren't paying to light up peoples driveways. This is a common complaint from people commenting on Stokes replacement to LED. The simple but costly solution to that is buy a light that detects you walking to the door (I picked one up for £10 recently in Aldi that is solar powered).

Or a torch. I'd regard not having the front of my house lit up as a big improvement.

[kevjs]

It may be a retrograde step for you, but the council aren't paying to light up peoples driveways. This is a common complaint from people commenting on Stokes replacement to LED. The simple but costly solution to that is buy a light that detects you walking to the door (I picked one up for £10 recently in Aldi that is solar powered).

Or a torch. I'd regard not having the front of my house lit up as a big improvement.

For now.... Round our way more and more security lights are popping up - as you walk down the street plenty of security lights pop on lighting the way. Just as well as the street lighting now seems to light up the lamppost and little else.

[Brenley Corner]

The streetlight opposite my house has just been replaced with an LED lamp. The road is now clearly lit, but nothing else is. The illumination is very tightly focused on the road and the pavement, with no bleeding either side. This now means that I have to walk up my short garden path and try to connect key to keyhole with pretty much no help from the streetlight, whereas before it was clearly lit and a lot easier and safer, but without being so bright as to be an annoyance. To me, that makes the LED lights a retrograde step.

This issue was brought up in Kent in response to their LED programme and the response was similar to above. Streetlighting is provided by public funds solely for road and/or public footway lighting; any overspill lighting (beneficial or otherwise) onto private property was just incidental.

Tony

[ravenbluemoon]

I think SOX light pollution is the least bad for astronomers as it's a few frequencies.

That's pretty academic in reality. Serious optical astronomy is most done on mountain tops above the bulk of the atmosphere and most amateurs don't have the equipment to filter frequencies. Even when you do its a partial solution at best. Cambridge University still has its astronomical site on the Madingley Road but all the serious optical work is done overseas. The telescopes are now most used by students and they also have public observation nights. The last time serious reaearch work happened on site was in the 1930's.

As for LED street lights we had our SOX lamps replaced by LED's last winter. They are actually a great improvement as they are much more directional. I can sit out in my back garden and actually see many more stars now than used to be the case with the all pervading orange glow gone.

(My bold)
You should see some of the images that some of the members of our Astronomical Society come up with. They may well be amateurs as such, but the photography is top end. One member in particular wins Photo of The Month in various magazines here and abroad, yet he operates from a back garden in sub-urban Nottinghamshire! Granted, he has a lot of special kit, good filters and multiple image processing using various parts of the spectrum. One of his images could take several hours to take, but a couple of days to process. Thankfully he's automated a lot through his laptop, so can sit inside in the warmth with a brew

Mansfield seems to be going through the conversion to LED quite rapidly, but in patches. Several streets around me have been done, with new poles as they were knackered out, but there's no pattern as to whether they do residential streets or main roads. The new lamps have a very good cut off, barely any light seems to go upwards. It'll be nice to see the great orange nebula seem to the south of the Observatory disappear one day, if they don't develop the land between us and the MARR with industrial units first...

[Ben302]

It also means that the approach to our front door, previously well lit from the spillover, is now notably dark.

The lanterns chosen by Kent for our area also only focus light downwards and our entire estate has changed outlook since our Vectras were swapped for Phosco P852s on one day in January. Kent quite clearly stated that lighting was provided for the road and pavements and anything else was incidental so would not be recreated; the houses and gardens are now dark whilst the road is fairly well lit.

The P852 invasion has reached the Larkfield/New Hythe area and I noticed today that the road which recently had 24 LED 3x12 lanterns installed have now themselves been replaced with P852's also Axia's which were installed last year have been replaced in the Lunsford park estate nearby

[WHBM]

It also means that the approach to our front door, previously well lit from the spillover, is now notably dark.

I wrote in March that the lanterns, but not poles, had been changed over, and we had this difference. Now, this month, and separately, the poles have been changed. The new ones are twice as high as the old ones (in a cul-de-sac), now well above upstairs window level, and we now have spillover into the front bedrooms way beyond what we had originally.

Whatever for ?

[Brenley Corner]

The P852 invasion has reached the Larkfield/New Hythe area and I noticed today that the road which recently had 24 LED 3x12 lanterns installed have now themselves been replaced with P852's also Axia's which were installed last year have been replaced in the Lunsford park estate nearby

The residential and side roads should have been completed in Summer; the choice of lantern was part of the contract with different areas getting different lanterns - in our area as with most it was P852, but in other areas such as Dover and Swale a different non-Phosco lantern was used. Its a shame the Urbis Axia lanterns could not have been kept give their short lifespans but Kent did assure me they would not be junked.

The contractor has now started to replace main road lanterns and again a Phosco lantern (P862) is the one of choice, and they seem to working erratically from North and West of the county to the South and East; just this month swap-outs have started to be done on a random road basis in Swale and Sheppey.

[Worcestershire Wolf]

This issue was brought up in Kent in response to their LED programme and the response was similar to above. Streetlighting is provided by public funds solely for road and/or public footway lighting; any overspill lighting (beneficial or otherwise) onto private property was just incidental.

Tony

Was concerned about this this week as Worcestershire have started a very slow upgrade of lanterns from SON to LED on the A449 in Kidderminster on existing cololums. Thankfully the one closest to my abode still shines onto my front door so I can still see to put my key in the door. Phew!

[scott125]

Noticed the M74 through Glasgow has had LED fitted .

[AutoUnder]

Some new lighting columns have been put on on the M58 at junction 5 (Pimbo) which are LED (Philips Luma 2 to be precise). They are replacing the old columns with SOX lantern on them

[tipsynurse]

I thought they'd replaced the SON lighting on my road with LED but on closer inspection the bulb appears to be dozens of tiny SOX lamps painted white.

[Ben302]

The Kent LED programme has now reached the Medway boundaries P862's are on most main routes up to the boundary and side roads are running P852's Meanwhile Medway are sporadically replacing lanterns with Lumas, The A289 has a couple of sections that have them, The strand Roundabout and Gillingham Gate being two and the Western approach to the Medway Tunnel also being recently done. and just last week the section of A289 where the Upnor Road and the new Parsonage Lane Li-lo interchanges are, the thorn Alpha 2000's in the area have been replaced with Luma's

[Divine]

Doncaster removed some Alpha 3's in the town centre and a few MA50's. Shame to see them go. Barnsley have replaced a lot of SON with LED and left SOX. I know Sheffield have gone over the top and replaced almost everything with LED. A few SOX/SON remain in Sheffield, but they're difficult to find.

[scott125]

South Lanarkshire is mostly LED now very few SOX left

[sotonsteve]

Well, on the South Coast Street Lighting PFI (Southampton, Hampshire, West Sussex), most new schemes are now using LED, whether this be residential developments or road improvement schemes. Obviously, there aren't many new schemes now given that these areas were almost entirely relit during the core investment period (2010-2015). However, it is not 100% of new schemes that are using LED. Some road improvements on main roads are still using (or reusing) Philips Iridiums, some residential developments are still getting Philips Libras, and some residential developments are even using heritage lighting with SON (which is strange as SON is now all but exclusively reserved for main roads) and over 99% of residential roads are white light. Casual replacements also tend to be like-for-like to an extent, although there is some sloppy workmanship where you will find a 60W Cosmo Arc replaced by a 36W PL-L Libra.

[Dave908]

Locally to me, the replacement of the remaining SON and SOX street lighting started in December, and is due to be completed in the next three weeks. There's only a dozen or so streets left to do, after the rest (including ours) were done in a separate phase in Autumn 2015.