Dear Editor:
While navigating the quilt work of road patch repairs and emerging potholes on Washington Street, I counted the excessive number of ineffective street lamps on Washington Street. On some blocks there are seven, eight, and nine light poles. Many are broken completely off at the base, others are burnt out, and some do not shut off in the morning daylight.
In the redesign of Washington Street that the RBA Group presented at the Oct. 8, 2014 City Council meeting, I learned that one quarter of the $14 million required for this plan would go to replacing the lights. This cost could be much lower if they did not follow their current plan of replacing the light fixtures on the existing pole foundations. That plan is idiotic since there are far too many light poles on Washington Street. The solution is not to maintain the numerous and ineffective existing light poles, but to replace them with a lamp style designed to provide efficient lighting.
Since I suffer from chronic migraines, I would never suggest intensely bright lights anyway, but the problem with the current ridiculous pseudo-gaslight poles is that they only offer glare and glow and that is no good. These short poles should never have been erected on a heavily residential street since they shine into the second floors of buildings where many residents live above businesses. These lights were initially too bright for these residents so they had to be hooded and the intensity of their brightness was lowered. Before these inappropriate fixtures were erected, there were four-story tall Westinghouse type OV-25 Luminaires “Silverliner” cobra-headed arc lamps that numbered five poles per block, did not shine in anyone’s face, and effectively illuminated the street for traffic and pedestrians without being an annoyance. This type of light was phased out, but we should return to using a four-story light fixture, five-per-block, which would reduce the cost of the lighting as well as effectively illuminating the street without causing light pollution to the residents.
By increasing the height of the poles, you solve the problem of needing eight or nine poles per block. That only clutters up the street and this redesign is already too cluttered with concrete barriers, bike tracks, and curb extensions proposed at the intersections. Plus throw in the proposed backlit “way-finding” signs, which will be a distracting competing source of light, the unnecessarily large number of short light poles is even more ridiculous.
Hoboken’s evening traffic survived effectively for four decades with tall arc-type lamps. Let us not get wrapped up with quantity but concentrate on the quality of the future lights for our main street. The proposed plan is to use LED fixtures because they cut energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions, but there are downsides. They cost more to use and their brightness does not yet compete well with other lighting options, so they are not widely used for streets and sidewalks. Let us not blow it again in the lighting department.
Mary Ondrejka