Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

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RJDG14
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Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by RJDG14 »

I've noticed that the majority of formerly sodium streetlights with long arms (if my terminology is correct) have had them truncated by a significant amount or altogether when the lamppost unit has been switched to LED. Does anyone here know what the reason for doing this is, as I'd imagine a new LED lamp unit will typically fit fine onto existing arms at the top of posts? I suspect it could be something to do with LED lights having a wider/more focused angle for the area they light, but could be wrong. You also virtually never see long arms on newly installed streetlights in the UK anymore, however they still seem moderately common for LED streetlights in other countries (for instance, the US and Russia, where from the pictures I've seen, most upgrades seem to have only involved the replacement of the lamp unit and no modifications to the existing post).

I've made a couple of quick comparison drawings showing the kind of thing that I've seen happen to existing posts in the UK in recent years before and after they were changed from sodium to LED lamps:
LEDlighttruncation.png
LEDlighttruncation.png (9.49 KiB) Viewed 1652 times
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Re: Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by Bryn666 »

In short brackets cost money - the reason they're chopped is it reduces the risk of fatigue and structural failure. It looks better on some columns than others.
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Re: Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by Jonathan24 »

I've often wondered the same thing and this particular site makes me wonder if it's more than just about money and fatigue.

All of the lanterns on this site have been replaced by LEDs (at the same time) but they removed the arms on the main road only, whilst leaving the arms on the side roads intact (the side road on the opposite side is exactly the same).

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.85319 ... 312!8i6656
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Re: Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by L.J.D »

I hate how the new LED installations are ruining alot of nice brackets. Look at the state of these it looks absolutely awful how they've installed those.
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Re: Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by RJDG14 »

Bryn666 wrote: Thu Mar 31, 2022 18:56 In short brackets cost money - the reason they're chopped is it reduces the risk of fatigue and structural failure. It looks better on some columns than others.
Quite a lot of lights were upgraded from SOX to SON in the 1990s to early 2010s in some areas though, and I don't believe many brackets were cut then. I don't think they've been chopping them in a lot of other countries where there have been mass LED replacements either. Did the authorities have more money to spend on brackets in the past, or were they needed more with pre-LED light designs?
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Re: Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by RJDG14 »

L.J.D wrote: Thu Mar 31, 2022 23:58 I hate how the new LED installations are ruining alot of nice brackets. Look at the state of these it looks absolutely awful how they've installed those.
These look particularly terrible - they look much nicer on the old Street View imagery which was taken when they had SOX fixtures. I don't understand why they couldn't have just replaced the fixtures, but instead they seem to have cut off the entire top bracket section and replaced it with an aesthetically inferior one.
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Re: Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by RJDG14 »

Jonathan24 wrote: Thu Mar 31, 2022 21:03 I've often wondered the same thing and this particular site makes me wonder if it's more than just about money and fatigue.

All of the lanterns on this site have been replaced by LEDs (at the same time) but they removed the arms on the main road only, whilst leaving the arms on the side roads intact (the side road on the opposite side is exactly the same).

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.85319 ... 312!8i6656
Thinking about it, I know that Northern Ireland replaced quite a lot of their curved lampposts from the 1960s/1970s with bracketless ones in (I believe) the late 1990s and early 2000s, which predates the trend we've been seeing in many other areas of the UK by nearly 20 years. In this case I think they were replaced instead of modified, though.
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Re: Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by AlexBr967 »

It's a real shame in some cases. Like here where this unique incredibly long arm was completely replaced. No way the replacement reaches the other side of the road
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Re: Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by MotorwayGuy »

KCC cut a lot of the brackets when replacing the lanterns, likehere where they gave up half way and didn't bother with the rest.

All of the central ones on the A299 were cut but most of the slip roads were left.
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Re: Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by Jonathan24 »

RJDG14 wrote: Fri Apr 01, 2022 00:26
Jonathan24 wrote: Thu Mar 31, 2022 21:03 I've often wondered the same thing and this particular site makes me wonder if it's more than just about money and fatigue.

All of the lanterns on this site have been replaced by LEDs (at the same time) but they removed the arms on the main road only, whilst leaving the arms on the side roads intact (the side road on the opposite side is exactly the same).

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.85319 ... 312!8i6656
Thinking about it, I know that Northern Ireland replaced quite a lot of their curved lampposts from the 1960s/1970s with bracketless ones in (I believe) the late 1990s and early 2000s, which predates the trend we've been seeing in many other areas of the UK by nearly 20 years. In this case I think they were replaced instead of modified, though.
Yes, that's correct, the when there was a widescale conversion from Alpha 3's, the curved section of the bracket was replaced with a straight section - it did make me wonder whether the trend to position the lantern closer to the column was more to do with modern lanterns being better a directing light to the desired location on the road.
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Re: Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by haymansafc »

It is an interesting one, for sure... Initially I thought it may be down to LED's being more efficient and perhaps could disperse more light out where it's need, but from my experience LED's are similar to later SON units where they seem to be more 'pin pointy' when it comes to light dispersal compared to the old SOX units. I know this is described as 'light pollution' but I always liked the way SOX units dispersed light around. It seemed you needed less of them to do the same job.

I've always preferred bracketed lamp posts from an aesthetic perspective. We lost near enough all what we had left of surviving top-entry brackets on the side streets when LED's were installed. The columns were sleeved and fitted post-top. The side-entry ones installed on existing sleeved brackets, I will admit however, do look a little awkward in comparison.
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Re: Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by Patrick Harper »

I thought they did it because it's cheaper/faster to chop off a small portion of bracket affixed to a lantern, than to detach a lantern from a bracket, which might be difficult if the securing screws/whatever are seized from age. Unfortunately this has often been done to fairly new brackets so it seems we're set to live with this for at least 50 years.
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Re: Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by Truvelo »

Shortening brackets started when SON become widespread in the 90s. Plenty of motorway brackets were shortened when MA60s were replaced with SON.

Post top variants of regular lanterns have been around for a while. I remember these being installed in around 1988 and thought how tall and weird they looked compared to the swan necks with Revo Belltops and no.7 brackets with Diadems they replaced. https://goo.gl/maps/QFFQ8bPbEdGu8jjM7
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Re: Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by AndyB »

I think it’s down to the angle of the beam. Even SONs have a lot of backspill, but LEDs tend not to so on the one hand the lanterns have to be brought closer to the footway, and added to that, they can spread across the road more effectively.
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Re: Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by Chris5156 »

Patrick Harper wrote: Sun Apr 03, 2022 11:43 I thought they did it because it's cheaper/faster to chop off a small portion of bracket affixed to a lantern, than to detach a lantern from a bracket, which might be difficult if the securing screws/whatever are seized from age. Unfortunately this has often been done to fairly new brackets so it seems we're set to live with this for at least 50 years.
That would certainly get the lantern off the pole, but you’d have a nightmare with the wiring.
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Re: Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by AndyB »

I saw them doing this a couple of years ago. Cut the bracket, and make sure that they cut the wires longer so it can still reach the lantern.
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Re: Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by RJDG14 »

AndyB wrote: Sun Apr 03, 2022 17:16 I think it’s down to the angle of the beam. Even SONs have a lot of backspill, but LEDs tend not to so on the one hand the lanterns have to be brought closer to the footway, and added to that, they can spread across the road more effectively.
In areas which have almost completely switched to LED, the sky no longer tends to have the brown glow at night that it used to when the lights were sodium. This was the case with both SOX and SON but probably to a greater extent with the former.

Even with newly installed lampposts, the majority now seem to lack brackets. While bracketless lampposts have existed since at least the 1990s when SON became popular and you stopped seeing many new lampposts with very long brackets around this time, you stopped seeing new ones with any form of bracket almost altogether (with the exception of very short brackets on some major roads) around the time LED became popular.

As of April 2022, are there any parts of the country where the majority of lights (excluding patches) are still sodium? Streetlights are generally a local authority matter so the rollout of LED lighting varies widely from area to area. I know that some local authorities were carrying out mass LED replacement schemes as far back as c.2014 but the number doing so seems to have increased a lot since about 2018, I think largely on climate or energy saving grounds.

Most of the LED lights in Bath are fairly aesthetically pleasing and have a similar visual appearance to newer SON fixtures, and I think the same is true in certain other areas, but the LED lights being used in most of the country they look (in my opinion) quite ugly compared to previous types of lighting.

Interestingly, some people have been claiming that the LED lights being installed in their streets are too bright, but in my experience the LED streetlights which were installed in my street about a year ago are dimmer than what the SON/SOX predecessors (much of my area was built in the 1980s and was still using SOX lights until the council replaced them with LED, though the lights in my close were SON; in my experience they were very similar brightness-wise) were. I think they have a higher maximum brightness but unlike sodium lights can be dimmed.
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Re: Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by AndyB »

Northern Ireland. You will find plenty of SON lighting, but there is a long way to go in the LED rollout.

I think I'm 1.5 miles from the nearest road with continuous LED lighting.
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Re: Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by RJDG14 »

AndyB wrote: Mon Apr 04, 2022 19:10 Northern Ireland. You will find plenty of SON lighting, but there is a long way to go in the LED rollout.

I think I'm 1.5 miles from the nearest road with continuous LED lighting.
Much of the lighting in Strabane has been replaced with LEDs since about 2017 (I recall when I was there in 2016 that I didn't see a single LED light), however I'd agree that there are still definitely areas with SON lighting and some minor roads which still have SOX lights. Am I correct that there was a relatively extensive scheme about 20 years ago to replace a lot of old curved columns from the 1960s and 1970s with the bracketless SON columns that you see a lot of there?
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Re: Why have long arms of streetlights usually been shortened when upgraded from sodium to LED?

Post by AndyB »

Actually, my nearest road with LEDs is less than half a mile away... I forgot one...

You're probably right - Wesley would probably know off the top of his head. Of course, the problem is that LEDs require different spacing from SON or SOX. I will not miss SOX at all.
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