MY COUNCIL IS NOT SO DIM

So what's the point of having street lighting?

Our village doesn't have any street lighting but where we are (out of the village) we have three lights in two miles of road.

 

I think there is a need for Street lighting for safety and security reasons. The problem is that just about every city, town and village in the UK, Europe and the Americas has charged in over the decades without thinking of the consequences of energy, cost, light pollution, the unknowing drop in the quality of Life due to not being able to see the Stars in the skies as they should be seen. If proper thought had been given to the design of Street Lamps so that the light would be directed only downwards and into a defined area so that reflected light would be minimal things might have been better. But we all know that there are too many Street Lamps in streets and roads and those Lamps are badly designed that light goes in all directions but most of us are too busy dealing with Life's pressures and problems to be worried about it. Hopefully now, pressure groups from all interests are making the Government and Local Authorities more aware of the Light Pollution problems with the pressure of economics and the saving of energy also driving the change.

 

@ARMANDII I agree about the safety and security reasons.

My comment was referring to Jiffy's one where he said his lights go out when it gets dark. He's since qualified it by saying that their only lighting is the sun

@Jungle Jane You're right about jumping to conclusions. Our three street lights don't go out at midnight and they're run by a Tory Essex council. Not that we actually need them after midnight where we are!

Just as an aside: the District Council that is in charge of Shineyland, and the street lighting, doesn't have anything to do with the constituency that we vote in! The Council that administers our road (not the County Council) is a District Council that is not the one that runs the lighting or our services and is not the one that our constituency is in.

 

I have some footage off the car camera that should show a good comparison between sodium and LED lights pre-5am this morning.

I am just heading out but will try to post a clip or two later this evening.

 

As promised, some footage from this morning - each video is 1 minute in length;

Video 1 - Sodium lights in a fairly built up area - here

Video 2 - Sodium lights in on a more rural road - here

Video 3 - LED lights on a semi-rural road - here Note the skyward 'glow' in the third video from sodium lights in the distance.

 

LED by a considerable margin. Much less glare than sodium lights, whilst giving a more 'usable' light at street level, which is exactly where you want it.

There are some other lighting technologies that are also reasonably good - the street I live in has what look like white fluorescent tube lights, and each light is connected to a control centre (I believe its a wireless network of some sort), and from that control centre they can not only detect if a light is faulty, but they can also control the switch on and off times, and the most impressive feature is the ability to dim the lights after a certain time - its usually around 1130pm that they lower the light level but it varies depending on weather etc, and I must admit that it does make for a more comfortable nights sleep.

Having said all that, LED still wins for me - better quality of light, less light pollution/spillage, less energy consumed, less glare/reflection/refraction than sodium and a longer service life; the only negative that I can think of is that the cost of good quality LED stuff at the moment is generally more expensive than the sodium, halogen or fluorescent equivalents - but that additional cost increase should be quite quickly recouped in running costs

 

That's a great comparison, FC. Believe me there are a lot of amateur Astronomers who are dreading the introduction of LED street lighting because of there being very little comparison or information on the effects. At the moment they use what is called a narrow band filter to block the light from Sodium Vapour street light, which actually emits two wave lengths virtually side by side, which partially solves the problem of light pollution. However, LED lighting is broad band emitting light in nearly all wavelengths so the narrow band filter used at the moment is going to be useless in dealing with LED light pollution.
Your comparison though appear to show less light pollution from LED than sodium lamps which is heartening. I think it will all come down to the lamp design and how light is directed downwards and not upwards in a 360 degree fashion. At the moment I'm using a narrow band filter to try to deal with sodium light pollution when peering at the skies with the Telescope. If they change the street lighting in the lane at the bottom of my garden then things might change......time will tell.