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UK To Dim Highway Lights To Save Money
Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that street lights on thousands of miles of major roads in England will be dimmed during quiet periods to save money and reduce carbon emissions. The Highways Agency has already turned off the lights on more than 80 miles of the motorway network and will soon begin a survey of where this can be done on the 2,500 miles of A roads it controls. Nigel Parry, of the Institution of Lighting Professionals, says that technology enabled lights can be controlled individually and remotely. 'The idea is that when traffic is busy, such as during the morning and evening rush hour, you have them at their brightest. When the traffic disappears you can dim them. You can maintain safety and use half as much energy.'"
welcome our new dark overlords.
Korma: Good
I doubt that highway lights are an actual safety improvement, considering that the german Autobahn don't have them at all.
bickerdyke
I always felt that lights were less necessary when the highways are illuminated by all of the cars on the road.
if this makes for less light pollution then even better.
now if we can get warehouses to shut off their lights at night even better - security my ass - have they not heard of IR / lowlight video cameras - that would help even more...
who where what when now?
Disclaimer: no expert in this area! I remember hearing stories that for electricity generating companies, the highway lighting was one way of consuming the excess production of electricity at night (knowing that a nuclear power plant does not have a big red control lever to lower electricity generation at night). Where will this electricity go now, just in the earth (all non-used electricity is wasted!) ? And who will pay for this, the UK consumers who will see a raise in their electricity bills for more wasted electricity at night?
Why not just turn them off if there's no cars? Ok, current lights I'm sure take time to warm up, but if switch to these new lowpower thingies, aren't they near instantaneous?
Or....
Glow in the dark paint on road sides.
As cars travel by with their lights on, it'll 'charge up' and provide a clear path for the next car! Just one or 2 lights where needed at junctions (and as a heads up that there IS a junction up ahead), and catseyes/glowinthedark paint everywhere else! Save a fortune, increase road safety!
Or solar panel charged LED lights for road edges like you get at garden centres. Power up in the day, gently glow at night.
Ok, next plan...
Glow cars. Seeing as body panels these days are plastic anyway, why not make them slightly translucent, and attach lights inside the panels to make the main car itself glow? You'd be able to see cars far easier, dim headlights, giving cyclists/motorbikes clearer visibility (same brightness on their lights).
As cars brake, not just their rear brake lights, but the whole car illuminates/changes colour.
All in the name of saving power.
(posting so I've something to refer back to for prior art one day).
Waiting for an amusing sig.
"Hello lamppost,. What cha knowing?. I've come to watch your flowers growing.. Ain't cha got no rhymes for me?. Doot-in' doo-doo,. Feelin' groovy.."
gets a completly new meaning then...
bickerdyke
Long answer: street lights reduce the glare from oncoming vehicles, which is at its worst at busy times. On 'A' roads, they also let you distinguish motorcycles from our increasing number of one-headlamp drivers. On the other hand, I've seen the result of the Porsche that overtook me once doing at least 200k at night meeting the Polish artic with tiny lights covered in mud. With street lights, the Porsche driver might have seen the truck in time. As it was, Darwin claimed another victim.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
In the US in the 1930s it was common for major cities to turn off traffic signals in the middle of the night, also to save money on electricity costs. The criminal element quickly learned to use these times for their getaways, since they could cross town quickly without attracting the notice one gets when running red lights (cf. The Valachi Papers).
I know there are few traffic signals on A roads but, as this is the UK, I can't decide whether "in for a penny, in for a pound" or "penny wise, pound foolish" is the more appropriate idiom.
Why wouldn't you turn the lights off during rush hour? More cars mean more car lights, which automatically illuminates substantial portions of the road, whereas during trough hours, there are few cars.
It would thus make more sense to not have lights during high traffic times.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
The biggest problem is that LED (CREE etc) based streetlights have not yet been ratified by the EU and so cannot be used on public highways in the UK. If they do become ratified then there will be huge power savings. In China, they have whole motorways lit up using this technology. Not only do they burn less power, but the lantern lifetime is much longer than the standard sodium units that have a warranty lifespan of 3 to 5 years.
One of the problems about dimming lanterns is that the lamp post spacing is all based around the lamps at a certain luminenscence and so dimming may create dark zones, or over bright zones. So some careful analysis will be needed about how the lamps dim and whether they dim uniformly or not.
I'm sure the lights were not designed to be turned on and off as often as they would be under this scheme. It would be interesting to see how much money is actually saved over time, once the increased wear on the lights due to the frequent on-and-off cycling is considered. How many more light replacements per year will now be required?
The deterring argument has been proven wrong..... In a dark area, a burglar needs to use a flashlight that is likely to get noticed. In a well lit area, you're even providing him with illumination for his deeds.
You need movement sensors and someone who notices the lights going on and check accordingly.
bickerdyke
In a dark area, a burglar needs to use a flashlight that is likely to get noticed.
Why, do crims have particularly bad eyesight? Most of the time it's easy enough to get around at night with ambient light. And even in a particularly remote area where there isn't much of that, plenty of nights have moonlight.
Hoping that it's dark enough to require a flashlight seems like the worst security policy I've ever heard.
No they're not. They do mark out lanes and road edges, but they are a completely different principle. They use glass beads with mirrored backs to reflect light back at the driver. Like a actual cat's eyes do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat's_eye_(road)
Maybe where you live, but where I live, we have reflectors buried in the pavement with metal to protect them from snow plows. (I've never heard the term "Botts' dots")
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Even ignoring that, a motion sensor is a better solution. Saves energy and reduces light pollution, has the security advantages of visible light (bystanders could see burglars) and draws attention to movement better than a flashlight, and better than the changeless always on/nightvision solutions.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
In fact experiments are already taking place with LED streetlights, which are variable in output and last longer the more they are dimmed. There is a roundabout lit with them not far from where I live. Although the payback compared to conventional lights is about 8 years, that is pretty good for an infrastructure project as is getting better as costs fall.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Except that the headlights only use power when the car is on the road, which for most people is less than 10% of the time, only have to light a small area, and represent a tiny proportion of the energy being consumed (in my car, an average of around maybe 0.5%). And you are only required to have them on overnight or during precipitation. The running lights nowadays are mostly LED and use a tenth of the power of the headlights. This is a straw man argument.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
You know what would deter crime? Sentry guns.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ordinarily I would not care about the street lights, but these days there are cars with VERY powerful headlights, probably Xeon etc. and they look like someone has left their main/high beam on, dazzling oncoming traffic. And there are drivers that insist every day is foggy and the front and rear fog light dazzles you. And then there are the drivers with one headlight working, not bothering to fix the other one making it hard to guestimate how wide they actually are.
At least with street lights, it helps to lessen the contrast between the lights and darkness, and helps you see how close you are to on coming traffic. The UK has some pretty small roads, not the kind of wide roads the US have (if you look at Google Earth).
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Personally, I find my normal night vision + my headlights + tail lights of other cars is more than adequate to drive safetly at 70mph on a motorway or main road.
I find that (unless its an obvious danger spot) occasional lit stretches of road probably cause more danger than help as it takes maybe 30 seconds to get your night vision back to full capability after passing through them.
If they want to make motorways safer at night, then they should do more to reduce the effects of eye fatigue caused by repetitive momentary blinding from headlights of oncoming traffic.I suggest more natural light-blockers between the roads, such as planting hedges.
No, the problem is just as bad here on the plains. Our roads have bumps too, braking causes vehicles to dip and rebound, acceleration causes them to rise and fall back, you can't tell the difference between a focused beam sweep and a highbeam flash, and the whole thing is significantly distracting when you really need to be paying attention to other issues, such as the facts that your iris is now contracted more than you're used to, your vision into darker areas more impacted, and your risk factors are now higher.
Street lights are an old idea, now essentially or at least potentially obsolete. Cars: uniformly mount headlights and backup lights. People: can carry flashlights, which are much better than streetlights, as they put the light anywhere you want it, instead of in a fixed position that provides guaranteed hiding places and uncertain passage within fixed shadows. Streetlights are hugely overrated, and there are many communities, as I'm sure you know from your dark sky research, that get along just fine without them, likewise nighttime area lighting, etc.
Not to mention that areas that cling to this outmoded technology loses sight of all this.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
In Montana, when during a short and unusual period of rationality we had somewhat unlimited daytime driving speeds, nighttime driving was still constrained to relatively low speeds because there is no safe driving regime that includes over-driving one's headlights. And while during the day it was kind of difficult to get a ticket when driving reasonably, at night, they could nearly hang you at the side of the road if you stepped out of line. IMHO, that was driving heaven. Accidents declined below Montana's previous levels, and other than gas milage, the side effects were pretty much uniformly positive.
Personally, we (my family) bought a relatively high-powered sports car capable of long-term high speed runs, and intentionally focused on traveling during the day, as one got to the destination faster, the driving was a lot more fun, concentration was better as more things happen faster, and said concentration, easier or not, didn't have to be maintained for as long a period.
As an aside: Daytime driving is safer here because the animals generally keep their heads down or they get shot off by our not very lovable rednecks. Often heard here: "Wanna go bust some 'dawgs?" This is a euphemism for going out and "popping" prairie dogs, and anything else that might show its eyes or ears, with a high powered rifle. This is about as popular as drinking. and often the behaviors are combined. Anyway, it leads directly to a very cautious daytime wild animal population.
Alas, the feds applied significant pressure by threatening to withdraw highway funds, our state legislators invented nonsensical justifications to accommodate the idiot feds without exactly looking like they were accommodating them, we lost our driving paradise, accident rates went right back up, and there you have it.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.