UK spending on street lights

[bothar]

This sequence of tweets shows some interesting data. It seems that NI has been spending on street lighting but the money has now run out and they are proposing turning them off in Winter.

https://twitter.com/peterdonaghy/status ... 0587917317

https://twitter.com/peterdonaghy/status ... 1868608512

[tom66]

Why switch off street lights in winter? That is the worst possible time to do so, given the shorter night and likely inclement weather. If they wanted to pick an optimisation, no street lighting in summer might not be too bad, given it's not civil twilight until past 8pm for most of the summer season. It's still a bad idea regardless, but doing it in winter is even worse IMO.

[Chris5156]

What has NI been doing that's pushed their street lighting budget up so sharply in the last couple of years? Surely their LED rollout isn't this expensive?

[Chris Bertram]

With this being Norn Iron, might the contractors doing the installations have "connections"?

[Jonathan24]

What has NI been doing that's pushed their street lighting budget up so sharply in the last couple of years? Surely their LED rollout isn't this expensive?

I presume the figures quoted include not only the routine energy costs but also capital costs of providing the street lighting in the first place. If so, it would explain why NI's figures have increased so sharply in the last couple of years - the typical NI approach is to do nothing until at least 5 years after it absolutely needed doing and so with much of the street lighting stock 50-60 years old, it all needed replacing and there have been huge investments in column replacements, along with conversion to LED. You wouldn't would to look to hard to find a road which has now got some shiny new columns on it.

[bothar]

Why switch off street lights in winter? That is the worst possible time to do so, given the shorter night and likely inclement weather. If they wanted to pick an optimisation, no street lighting in summer might not be too bad, given it's not civil twilight until past 8pm for most of the summer season. It's still a bad idea regardless, but doing it in winter is even worse IMO.

you don't save much money in June by turning off lights.
I expect that they won't turn off the lights, this is a "propose something really bad and then people won't complain about your actual measure".

[KeithW]

Why switch off street lights in winter? That is the worst possible time to do so, given the shorter night and likely inclement weather. If they wanted to pick an optimisation, no street lighting in summer might not be too bad, given it's not civil twilight until past 8pm for most of the summer season. It's still a bad idea regardless, but doing it in winter is even worse IMO.

Last time I checked nights in winter were longer than in summer

Where I live the streetlamps come on when the light levels fall below a set level, they use photocells to detect that. Most of the lights on residential roads go off between midnight and 5 AM as a cost saving measure and its also said to be beneficial to the wildlife. The lights on the A172 stay on all night as its a major route to Nunthorpe, Stokesley and the A19. This was all reviewed in 2017 when a pedestrian around here was hit by a car but walking down the centre line was not a great idea.

[tom66]

Why switch off street lights in winter? That is the worst possible time to do so, given the shorter night and likely inclement weather. If they wanted to pick an optimisation, no street lighting in summer might not be too bad, given it's not civil twilight until past 8pm for most of the summer season. It's still a bad idea regardless, but doing it in winter is even worse IMO.

Last time I checked nights in winter were longer than in summer

Where I live the streetlamps come on when the light levels fall below a set level, they use photocells to detect that. Most of the lights on residential roads go off between midnight and 5 AM as a cost saving measure and its also said to be beneficial to the wildlife. The lights on the A172 stay on all night as its a major route to Nunthorpe, Stokesley and the A19. This was all reviewed in 2017 when a pedestrian around here was hit by a car but walking down the centre line was not a great idea.

Call that a braino. Longer nights in winter .

[Jonathan24]

Why switch off street lights in winter? That is the worst possible time to do so, given the shorter night and likely inclement weather. If they wanted to pick an optimisation, no street lighting in summer might not be too bad, given it's not civil twilight until past 8pm for most of the summer season. It's still a bad idea regardless, but doing it in winter is even worse IMO.

you don't save much money in June by turning off lights.
I expect that they won't turn off the lights, this is a "propose something really bad and then people won't complain about your actual measure".

I agree that this is what will end up happening. It's really a nonsense measure anyway, as they only expect to save about £4.5m from turning every street light off (which is pittance in comparison to the overall budget). It it also expected to cost about £1.4m to actually turn them all off (don't know if that includes turning them back on again, or if that is an additional £1.4m). So, really, it would end of saving very little but would no doubt increase costs by many multiples elsewhere e.g. through greater accidents, crime etc.