Gallery of Lights
The Site => General discussion => Topic started by: chapman84 on July 24, 2017, 08:15:58 PM
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Duquesne Light "I don't have to tell you what that says about them today. "The street light situation has come to the point that even if we wanted to buy parts to replace the (incandescent) lights we couldn't find them," Timberlake said. As a result of Duquesne Light's policy, some street lights have been out since 1979, and the number of complaints from residents about the situation has been steadily increasing. About a half-dozen residents went to council last week to complain about lighting. One resident told council the lack of lighting on his Lincoln Park street has made the homes far more vulnerable to crime. "My lights went out four months ago in mid-block. You can't see two doors from the intersection. There's no light at all," he said. "My home has been broken into three times since the light went out," he added, "and I don't want to see it happen again." But in Herrman's opinion, it is better to light a few unattractive lights than to curse the darkness. The idea of reducing the number of street lights in some areas is sure to be politically risky, Councilwoman Christine Altenburger believes. But she points out that the distribution of street lights in Penn Hills has never been equitable. In the past, whether or not a neighborhood received lights seemed to have depended on political, clout. . "What we have in this community are a lot of political street lights. A great many areas have a great many more lights than they need and some areas have none," Miss Altenburger said.
In the last two years or so, even those neighborhoods once smiled upon by government have been getting darker. That is because Duquesne Light Co., which has been trying to convince communities to convert to sodium vapor for some time, now refuses to replace any incandescent bulbs that break. "In 1965, these things were relics, inefficient, an obsolete source in terms of street-lighting technology," said Gerald Timberlake, director of industrial Penn Hills Council last week approved a plan by Manager Donald Herrman that could resolve one of the municipality's most persistent problems the installation and maintenance of street lights.
Herrman wants to replace the municipality's 1,370 incandescent street lights with sodium vapor lights within a few years. The advantage of sodium vapor lights lies in their energy efficiency. Bulb for bulb, sodium vapor lights cost slightly more than incandescent lights. But the amount of light they provide is so much greater than other forms of lighting that administrators hope fewer street lights will be needed. In that way, Penn Hills may be able to save enough money on its ever-increasing utility bills to install new lights elsewhere. Of the more than 3,000 street lights in the municipality, a little more than 100 are sodium vapor. About 1,800 are mercury vapor lights. The major disadvantage of sodium vapor lights is that they emit a yellow glow that many people feel is unattractive.