Dutch Town Uses High-Tech Streetlights To Keep Their Bats Happy

Since streetlights disturb bats' internal sensors and rhythms and affect their feeding patterns, inner compasses, and general nocturnal behaviors, the Dutch town of Zuidhoek-Nieuwkoop is taking action. The town is using special streetlights that emit a red color and use a wavelength that doesn't interfere with a bat's internal compass and lets them feed undisturbed. The Next Web reports: The lights [developed by Signify and the University of Wageningen and other NGO's active in conservation], being both beneficial for bats and humans alike, are also proving to be extremely energy saving, and is therefore also a big plus for the environment and the town's carbon footprint. The lights are connected LED lights that can be controlled remotely. This means that if there is one particular neighborhood in need of more or less light, this can be adjusted as needed.

Zuidhoek-Nieuwkoop, due to their specific natural surroundings, is keen on being a sustainable town. The town and its surrounding area are part of the nature-protection network Natura 2000, which protects breeding and nesting areas for rare and threatened species all over Europe.

Comments

Not the town that cancelled it?

[austinpoet]

Is this a different town than the one where people got annoyed at the red lights, saying they didn't like the color and didn't like how they were 'experimented' on without prior knowledge and thus the red lights were switched out?

Re:Not the town that cancelled it?

[austinpoet]

https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/...

Re:Not the town that cancelled it?

[Anonymous Coward]

volgende halte - conservative centraal. next stop - conservative central. don't they still have the biggest or 2nd biggest church in the netherlands?? Red lights = impure thoughts apparently?

Re: Not the town that cancelled it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just going to ask how they keep their population of pensioners happy without ultrawhite ultrabright flak lights. I guess that answers it.

Re:Not the town that cancelled it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The obvious solution is to turn the lights off. Street lights are not necessary. Cars have headlights, bikes have headlights, and pedestrians can carry flashlights if there's not enough moonlight for walking. At the very least, they can make the street lights motion-activated.

Re:Not the town that cancelled it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm Dutch. Most towns and cities do just turn all lights off ( Gelderland, like Nijmegen and many in "de Achterhoek" (area)).

Re:Not the town that cancelled it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most smaller towns do, cities with any population and crime rate do not, they use timed lighting to decrease the costs (on x minutes, off x minutes)...

Re:Not the town that cancelled it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people feel unsafe in the dark. As soon as a street is dark they imagine the bushes are full of robbers and rapists. My neighbours have enough lights in their gardens to make street lighting completely superfluous, i could read a book at night by the combined glow of light pollution and they garden lights.

Re: Not the town that cancelled it?

[Anonymous Coward]

They do not call it the Red Light District for nothing.

Re:Not the town that cancelled it?

[magarity]

Many people feel unsafe in the dark. As soon as a street is dark they imagine the bushes are full of robbers and rapists.

The ultra hard shadows created by street lights make great places for robbers and rapists to hide in.

Re:Not the town that cancelled it?

[cayenne8]

The obvious solution is to turn the lights off. Street lights are not necessary.

Well, it certainly makes a better environment for the muggers....

Re:Not the town that cancelled it?

[thegarbz]

Sigh even a people as liberal as the Dutch have a retard belt (commonly referred to as a bible belt in politer company).

Re:Not the town that cancelled it?

[green1]

See, the problem is that you're conflating what people "feel" with reality.

Many people do lots of things that make them less safe, but FEEL more safe. This is but one example.

Re:Not the town that cancelled it?

[Anonymous Coward]

You want more Trump? Cause this is how you get more Trump.

Re:Not the town that cancelled it?

[silas_moeckel]

Muggers, if they are a problem maybe you should solve those root issues rather than put in street lights.

Re:Not the town that cancelled it?

[cayenne8]

Well, one this we do to keep criminals from having places to lurk, hide and attack from it....you guessed, it....LIGHT the area!!

It's an old tried and true deterrent.

Re:Not the town that cancelled it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in NL, the real "bible belt" party has 2% of the votes, so it's not that bad, but they concentrate in certain areas.
(The 3 parties that believe they have anything to do with jesus have 14% together, but they are not all this crazy).

The liberal party has just 22% of the votes. And although they say they are for small government, they voted to ban shrooms, contrary to advice of the government medical advisory group they asked to research it.
You cannot even have them occurring naturally on your own land.
Oh how liberal we are, just don't eat what we don't like ok?

It has been explained to me, the US has a small "mainstream" which is accepted, and outside of that, a huge area which is tolerated. While NL has a relatively big mainstream which is accepted, but outside of that, not much is tolerated.
So NL might seem quite free at first glance, but it is more nuanced than that.
Just because we have some cannabis and prostitution, which is really not that relevant to most people (except the millions of tourists that visit the few acres that is the amsterdam red light district), doesn't make us free all of a sudden.

Re:Not the town that cancelled it?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not terrifying at all. You need a better headlight. LED headlights have made great improvements, not just over the old halogen lights but also over first generation LED headlights. Also, I have an LED flashlight that makes car headlights look dim. It was not expensive either. If you haven't looked into lighting technology lately (no pun intended), please do.

Re:Not the town that cancelled it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Light creates shadows. Just meters from the lit path, where the victim is, there is darkness behind a bush, a parked car, and any number of other things that cast shadows. You feel safer in the light, but you're not.

Re: Not the town that cancelled it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Woohoo! Itâ(TM)s all one big red light district. (:

Re:Not the town that cancelled it?

[Cederic]

Yeah, my village tried turning off streetlights after midnight. Junctions and the main roads kept the lights, the rest went dark.

Some stupid women complained that they didn't feel safe.

The crime rate stayed flat throughout. Now I get shitty light pollution again, the crime rate hasn't dropped and the women probably still don't feel safe because they're stupid.

Re:Not the town that cancelled it?

[silas_moeckel]

Light, especially at the level of street lights, means you blind to anything not lit by it. It's a poor solution to fighting crime. You are giving them more hiding places while instilling a false sense of security. It's even worse for driving you can no longer see around corners via oncoming lights dimly illuminating tree etc.

Re:Not the town that cancelled it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely they'd have a hard time seeing what they are doing (or they could use a torch/flashlight, which makes they very visible). Even criminals need light to work in.

alternative red light district

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe this is part of Amsterdam's policy&effort of keeping 'certain' tourists out of the city, by creating a new competitive red light district.

Re:alternative red light district

[Anonymous Coward]

"a new competitive red light district"

After importing the good old UK tradition of "asian" child prostitution rings they at least have to provide a welcoming atmosphere for them to operate in.

Ah Well

[Notabadguy]

Yes, this is the vampire haven we've all been craving...

Re:Ah Well

[Oswald McWeany]

Yes, this is the vampire haven we've all been craving...

Holland, red lights... I'm not 100% sure the sucking is coming from Vampires. Vampires don't usually ask for a few euros first.

Amazed

[Lennie]

Always amazed when my fellow countrymen come up with these things. I think it shows the great attention to detail we spend on building infrastructure.

This is the same country where certain traffic lights for bike lanes would get preference when it was raining so people on bikes could get home quicker.

Re:Amazed

[JaredOfEuropa]

Now if only they could sort out the shambolic accident magnet that is the remodelled A4 highway near Leiden. And the Schiphol rail tunnel. And the Nieuwe Botlek bridge. And all infrastructure around Utrecht. Sometimes we need to apply less attention to detail and more to just getting the basics right.

Re:Amazed

[Anonymous Coward]

The worst of the problems you mentioned above is the least of the problems we have in Belgium.

That's like someone saying 'my job is bad sometimes' and then you ask 'why?' and the person says 'because sometimes i have to sit through 3 hour meetings'. Its all subjective. ;)

Re:Amazed

[Anonymous Coward]

> And all infrastructure around Utrecht
Amen to that.

Re:Amazed

[thegarbz]

They did get the basics right, they dug a tunnel under the Botlek. Seriously who cares if the bridge doesn't work anymore.

Though my record is taking 3h to get home one day because both the bridge and the tunnel were closed. .... Well technically the bridge was "open" as confusing as that language is.

Re:Amazed

[houghi]

I wonder that if you have a whole neighborhood with this, would you call it a red light district?

Re:Amazed

[johnsie]

What did people do before the bridge and the tunnel?

Re: Amazed

[Evtim]

Agreed. The Shiphol tunnel has inflicted great pain in my life (commuter A'dam - Delft).
However I'm still gobsmacked occasionally by the attention to detail....not only in infrastructure.
When you realize that in Amstelpark the stones and shells on the ground match the color of the tree's blossoms....that's when you know you are in NL.
Love your country, guys, let's make it better! Don't listen to those who try to shame you for your success!

Re:Amazed

[thegarbz]

Complained about the old bridge :-)

You're not from Holland are you? Every bridge here opens for water traffic. The highway grinds to a halt when that happens. The tunnel predates the new bridge, but it was all part of a large project to massively expand the Port of Rotterdam, on a shitton of reclaimed land.

The reality is, that many people didn't actually need to go there in the past, because there was just water :-)

Good!

[jouassou]

I hope this spreads. Not just for the bats' sake, but because white light (and the blue frequencies in particular) tend to disrupt the sleep patterns of any mammal, including humans. Red lights let us see where we're going without keeping us awake.

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope this spreads. Not just for the bats' sake, but because white light (and the blue frequencies in particular) tend to disrupt the sleep patterns of any mammal, including humans. Red lights let us see where we're going without keeping us awake.

Since when is keeping people on roads awake a bad thing?

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

the trend of bright white led street lights needs to be stopped. they're too harsh and too bright.. for ordinary humans. i can't imagine how bad it is for animals who see light differently.

the tech is there to make led lights that mimic the pale yellowish hues of the old lights; but of course that would cost a little more than cheap bright white chinese-made led lamps.. so something better is not considered by most governments in charge of street lighting and we're stuck with the blinding white lights instead.

Re:Good!

[JaredOfEuropa]

Keeping you awake is a good thing if you're on the road. Less so if you happen to live near the road.

Re: Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

Since 1980, San Jose/Silicon Valley city lighting has preferred the yellow-orange glow of low-pressure sodium (LPS) for both energy conservation and ostensibly to help Lick Observatory (on Mt Hamilton, run by UC Berkeley) observe the celestial sky, sans light pollution. http://www.sanjoseca.gov/DocumentCenter/View/3865 (PDF)

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure people put blinds on their windows for rooms that they sleep in. If they don't, well, they should look into that before someone looks into their windows...

Re:Good!

[Ol Olsoc]

I hope this spreads. Not just for the bats' sake, but because white light (and the blue frequencies in particular) tend to disrupt the sleep patterns of any mammal, including humans. Red lights let us see where we're going without keeping us awake.

A few points -

We really want to do whatever we can to keep bats happy and healthy. They eat things that are bad for us.

Blue light, the headlight color du jour, is the absolute worst color for visual acuity. The human eye's lens is a simple convex lens, and doesn't focus all colors exactly. And blue is the worst.

Red focuses pretty fair. If visual acuity is paramount, you would want green.

But keep the bats happy is really good. And keeping them happy will keep the numbers of biting insects down.

Re:Good!

[aaarrrgggh]

Some people are very light sensitive, and blinds are not blackout curtains.

Generally for streetlights though, it is better to just have lower color temperature white light with good color rendering than monochromatic or “spiked” lamps like the old mercury vapor. You also should limit light levels to the minimum needed, and dim when there is no motion in the area.

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

the tech is there to make led lights that mimic the pale yellowish hues of the old lights; but of course that would cost a little more than cheap bright white chinese-made led lamps..

No it wouldn't. The cost would be the same.
The reason we aren't doing it is because we didn't select the yellowish hue because they were ideal to being with.

Now that we can actually control what light we want we went for white since it lets us see better compared to the old yellowish lamps.

The thing that would cost more but that is feasible now is to have lights that shifts color depending on time or even depending on if someone is using the street.
Smaller residential roads could have a different configuration compared to larger more trafficked roads.

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

The white LED street lights need to go. I mean yeah its great to have a greater CRI. But it's not that beneficial in the end and its probably causing more problems than it solves. At least with the old sodium vapor lights, the light pollution was kept to specific wavelengths that say people like astronomers could filter out. The move to daylight white LED street lighting must be driving them nuts. Daylight white lighting is not needed on the streets, they should have just stuck with amber LEDs to keep the same orange glow people have been used to for the last 50 or so years. Not to mention using LEDs of a specific wavelength you will probably be getting more lumnens per watt than the white LEDs blowing all that energy over the entire visible light spectrum. This is one of the reasons sodium vapors were so energy efficient compared to say mercury vapor lights. all the energy the bulb was consuming was being output over a tight small wavelength rather than the entire spectrum.

I am still not convinced that these new LED street lights are any better in the long run either. The old sodium vapors had magnetic ballasts that pretty much lasted forever and the lamps probably only needed replacing every decade or so. Now these LEDs are almost certainly build down to a price in some sweat shop in china. Almost certainly the electronic LED drivers in these things are going to be no where near as reliable and since most white LEDs operate on the same principle as mercury vapors, a blue/uv LED exciting phosphors to create white light, the color temp of the LEDs will shift as they age, especially with how hard the LEDs are likely being driven. This is why mercury vapors were always associated with that ghastly green glow, they pretty much started out as daylight white, and as the phosphors aged more of the mercury vapor glow would come though as that nasty greenish white light. The LEDs will almost certainly do the same, but probably lean more towards the cooler white spectrum as the phosphors age and more of the blue/UV led source seeps though.

I suspect over the next decade or so the power companies/municipalities will start figuring out these things are not going to be providing the savings they expected. They are also no where near as resilient when it comes to power surges/lighting strikes. I recently saw in my city an entire several block stretch of these LED lights were flickering and when you looked up at them you could see where lots of the LEDs in the array were blown. I can only suspect the circuit they were all sharing took a direct strike or surge and blew the shit out of the electronic drivers. All those street lights were replaced with newer LED lights.

Added Bonus

[Anonymous Coward]

You can develop black and white film by streetlight

Re:Added Bonus

[Oswald McWeany]

You can develop black and white film by streetlight

Please don't. Chemicals for developing black and white photos have been proven to cause cancer in bats in the State of California.

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

So when I was a kid, in the summertime the bats would feed around the streetlights at night starting at dusk. Catch all the insects hanging around the lights.
Either the bats, or the people observing them, have gotten stupider in the interim apparently.

Re:Huh?

[RatherBeAnonymous]

Depends on the species of bat. Some bats hunt at dusk and dawn and do fine with the streetlights. Some bats hunt in the dead of the night and are driven out of areas with streetlights. Artificial white light is effectively the same as habitat destruction for those species.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. You were a kid and assumed they were bats. More likely Nightjars.

Re:yo0 FAIL it.6..

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to buy a Goat C shirt!

Bats are wonderful!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think people should realize - especially those who think any environmental protection is some liberal snowflake luxury - that many bat species eat nocturnal bugs.

Like mosquitoes.

And unlike chemical pesticides, it doesn't affect bees and other pollinators.

AND some bat species are ALSO pollinators.

Protecting the environment is protecting ourselves and our way of life.

Streetlights?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bats are affected by streetlights? Or are they affected by those shitty LED streetlights with the harsh bluish light(high color temperature) and the atrocious CRI that are being installed everywhere?

I haven't noticed any impact on bats from white mercury vapor or orange High-pressure Sodium(also poor but better than most LED CRI) streetlights.

On a tangential note, shouldn't the Dutch only use orange high-pressure sodium? Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Re:Streetlights?

[gx5000]

Oh cripes I long for those Orange lights...
The Light pollution has been insane since they switched to the LED's in our area...
I'd take a BB gun to them but you know, being a law abiding citizen and all...

Re:Streetlights?

[Ol Olsoc]

Oh cripes I long for those Orange lights... The Light pollution has been insane since they switched to the LED's in our area...

Many of the LED lights aren't installed correctly; hanging too low in the fixture. When they hang outside, the glare is incredible.

A streetlight isn't very useful when it looks like a point source so bright it causes your pupils to slam shut.

Re:Streetlights?

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't noticed any impact on bats from white mercury vapor or orange High-pressure Sodium

Without listing the experiments you have done, it's kind of meaningless to simply say you haven't noticed. People will probably just conclude that you didn't have a control group, leaving them an impression of your comment as vapid and empty.

OTOH if you explained how you would have noticed but also didn't notice, then it would mean something.

Re: While US [moon]bats rail at Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Illegals aren't welcome here. Split them all up and ship them back to different parts of their original country.

Rinse and repeat until they learn.

Libturbs and Dummycrats should just straight up be sent to prison.

Astronomy

[nitehawk214]

Having reddish streetlights would help astronomy by creating less light pollution in the more sensitive blue and green frequencies.

However, sodium vapor lamps are better, as they are easy to filter out since they produce a narrow frequency band.

Bats are NOT blind

[BilGe]

The article says that bats are blind. That is not true ... Bats have reasonably good eyesight. If they were truly blind, then streetlights would not bother them a bit.

"Blind as a bat" is completely wrong.

Forget the bats

[Anonymous Coward]

Red street lights? Screw bats; humans have wanted this since the invention of the street light!

yes

[cascadingstylesheet]

Red lights keep the nocturnal creatures in my town happy too ...

TheNextWeb.com is a crappy news source

[barakn]

And apparently, bats, although being blind, are bothered by streetlights.

Bats aren't blind.

Makkinga another example

[Anonymous Coward]

Makkinga removed all street signs, traffic lights, sidewalks, and fines, resulting in fewer accidents, increased safety, and nicer town. The dutch seem to care about science and data more than some other countries.

Your bigotry is leaking

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical progressive bigotry. Your hateful bullshit destroyed the DNC and cost us Trump.

Typical American.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people here *walk* most of the time. They are *pedestrian* lights.
Do you get the connection?

And even bicycle lights need to be much brighter to deal with no lights at all, killing your point. In Europe they are mostly designed for you to be visible. Not for you to see shit. Go try the 10 lux minimum the law demands. Useless.

Re:Typical American.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not an American and ride a bike wherever I go, thank you very much. You need a better headlight if you think that you need street lights. I use a B&M IQ Fly Premium and ride through a forest in total darkness occasionally, just for fun because it's such a great light. Flashlights were impractical just a decade ago, but LED flashlights are cheap, tiny, bright, robust and last many hours on a single charge. And if you still think this is impractical, although people are riding and walking where there are no street lights, then at least make the street lights motion activated. Light pollution is a problem, not just for bats.

Who the hell drives without headlights?

[Anonymous Coward]

Traffic does not belong in residential streets anyway!

And in Europe, with our tight cities, please for god's sake, use public transport! There is a station just 100m away! And something stops there every couple of minutes!
Cars are for cases when you actually need them! (And are of course fine then.)

Re:Who the hell drives without headlights?

[Cederic]

Right. So how do I get from Overloon to Berg en Dal at 9pm?

Shit, how do I get from the Openlucht museum in Arnhem to the water museum, out to the Airborne Museum Hartenstein, down to the titchy museum by the bridge then back out to the zoo in the same day by public transport, let alone with enough time to do things at all of those locations, not to mention getting to Arnhem in the first place.

Yeah, I drive in tight European cities. Fucking sue me.

Prostitutes

[Anonymous Coward]

How are you supposed to know where the prostitutes live now?

Maybe those people are ...

[CaptainDork]

... batshit crazy.

Gives a whole new meaning ...

[Anonymous Coward]

to the term "Red Light District". Sorry couldn't resist