New York City to retrofit 250,000 street lamps with LED bulbs

[Shawn Knight]

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan recently announced plans to upgrade the city’s 250,000 street lamps from traditional bulbs to LEDs. The transition, said to be the largest LED retrofit in the country, should be ready by 2017 and will save the city and taxpayers $6 million in energy costs and $8 million in maintenance each year.

Bloomberg said LEDs are the wave of the future because they last a long time and use a lot less energy. True enough, many LED bulbs can last 20 years or longer before needing to be replaced. That’s a lot longer than the six year lifespan of existing high-pressure sodium street lights.

In addition to energy and maintenance savings, the LEDs will produce a whiter light that will help illuminate the city’s 6,000 miles of roads and 12,000 miles of sidewalks. If a recent rollout of LED bulbs in Boston is any indication, however, not everyone will be thrilled with the new light sources. Some residents complained the light given off by the LED bulbs resembles what you’d find from a floodlight.

New York and Boston aren’t the only cities switching to LED technology. Earlier this year, Los Angeles completed a rollout that replaced more than 140,000 bulbs with their LED counterparts.

LED lighting has already been installed along Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, along FDR Drive and in Central Park’s pedestrian paths. LEDs have even found their way to the East River bridges, city officials said.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/54459-new-york-city-to-retrofit-250000-street-lamps-with-led-bulbs.html

 

[t3chn0vamp]

Good move.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Congrats New York!

Now if my low populated, piss poor, lost in the boondocks town would get wise and do the same. We might need 250 for the whole town.

 

[wastedkill]

So how much are they spending on maintenance and energy costs without the LED bulbs?

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Since when did wax candles & gas street lamps become obsolete?

 

[cliffordcooley]

So how much are they spending on maintenance and energy costs without the LED bulbs?

I honestly don't know but to make a funny out of it. It may not be much if our dog catcher is the one that replaces them.

Unlike New York (hearsay), we wait until the bulbs burn out before replacing them. Places like New York have contracts were the bulbs are replaced at specific times regardless. Which increases maintenance cost but at the same time puts a little order in having maintenance crews spread out across the map.

 

[Logic Overflow]

W00t! What the city should do is get the MTA to do the same in the subway. There are some stations that have LED lights, which makes the station much brighter, but others still use fluorescent lighting which not only has to be changed more often, but doesn't brighten up the station as much either.

 

[mctommy]

Some of the neighborhoods in our city has changed them and they are darn bright! And nice and white too!

 

[tonylukac]

They last 20 years? They said those flourescents last 5 years. I've seen them burn out in 2 weeks.

 

[Guest]

What do they do with the old bulbs?

 

[avoidz]

I hope they don't use those LEDs that I've seen burn out in about six months. Made somewhere cheap in China no doubt. 20 years, my ***.