Better Streetlights for Tulsa

[heironymouspasparagus]

I personally am really excited about this. A would genuinely feel comfortable living next to something like a 2700k RSW. Especially more so given the refracting lenses on that fixture allow the LEDs to be tucked up into the fixture without compromising optical controls.

By the looks of the new crib sheets for the RSW they're also still pushing around 100 lumens per watt even at 2700k. There really is no reasoning to be still installing the 4000k glare bombs.

I think I mentioned before, but one of the places I stay has the 5k daytime clone lights.  I sleep under one with about 30 ft lateral separation.  Have woken in the middle of the night and thought it was morning, but really doesn't bother me too much.  Not pretty or at all complementary to the surroundings, but evening gunfire in the distance usually takes my mind off the lights...

[Cetary]

Blue-rich white light has its place in society, but it doesn't belong anywhere near people at night. We just need to keep pushing. Meanwhile in PC Amber LED news...



... a citywide deployment. O.O

http://www.lighting.philips.es/proyectos/proyectos/carreteras-y-calles/realejos-led-pc-ambar



https://www.cazurro.com/2017/03/06/led-pc-ambar-en-los-realejos-tenerife/

Now if we could get our elected officials to install these low impact night lights without being pressured by an observatory. That is unless you're a certain US city that has no concern for protecting scientific jobs, I'm looking at you San Jose, with your blue-rich 4000k lighting.

[patric]

Blue-rich white light has its place in society, but it doesn't belong anywhere near people at night. We just need to keep pushing. Meanwhile in PC Amber LED news...

Now if we could get our elected officials to install these low impact night lights without being pressured by an observatory. That is unless you're a certain US city that has no concern for protecting scientific jobs, I'm looking at you San Jose, with your blue-rich 4000k lighting.

If we could just get it along the river, we would look like a city with our act together. 
I still havent seen the lighting plan for The Gathering Place but if its the same welding-torch theme as the bluish LEDs on Riverside...

[Cetary]

I stumbled across an interesting picture from Chicago. It seems that for a while they were installing incandescant looking  2800k ceramic metal halide . These are some of those lights at dusk. Bear in mind the optics are wayy too out of date, but it shows how they've come full circle. Looks almost like a better alternate timeline in which the warm white color and color rendering quality of incandescent never left us.



Against actual incandescent street lights of 50s vintage before the icky blueish-green mercury vapor.





I just hope these pictures put to rest, to any of the remaining skeptics still out there, that we can efficiently match the color qualities and characteristics of incandescent lighting with modern efficient sources.

[patric]

I just hope these pictures put to rest, to any of the remaining skeptics still out there, that we can efficiently match the color qualities and characteristics of incandescent lighting with modern efficient sources.

But everyone's so proud of spending that federal energy grant money on first-generation (and now obsolete) LED streetlighting that turned the streets into one big Blue Light Special.
OK, some of those civic leaders had their heart in the right place, but their research was off.

Which brings me to this


A risky fix to repair a city's gutted streetlight grid
http://www.newson6.com/story/35744709/a-risky-fix-to-repair-a-citys-gutted-streetlight-grid

Its a story about expressway lighting (which is not the city streetlight grid, Justin) but I want to address the random uninformed person-on-the-street comments that seem so vital to TV news:

' Tulsa is scrambling to make patchwork repairs to its decimated grid, opting for a quick fix to appease frustrated motorists, including 48-year-old resident Bill White, who says broken streetlights could become a liability for the city and a hazard for drivers. '

There's no statutory requirement for the city to light streets or expressways.  If anything, municipalities take on liability by adding streetlights and then not maintaining them, so it make sense for the city to not add streetlights just on the whim of someone who thinks it would be neat to have one in their front yard.

The standard is still a case in California where "Plaintiffs sued (the government) for allegedly failing to provide adequate lighting with overhead street lights" but the court found that there was no duty to provide lighting.

http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of-appeal/1604392.html

[Cetary]

If anything else, at least we have plenty of examples of how not to do it. Meanwhile in San Francisco

http://www.ktvu.com/news/ktvu-local-news/263022747-story

So it looks like the municipal arm of San Fran. is making the switch to 3000 kelvin LED street lights, and by the looks of it the first fixtures are from Philips lighting, so they should have very nice color qualities. I will concede Philips has the most refined and advanced mainstream phosphors on it's chips. Another little nod to SF, is that they're actually in the process of buying back their streetlights so a power company no longer has carte blanche over an element of public infrastructure, good riddance. Furthermore, SF also dabbled with the very early 1st Gen Blue-rich LED street lights very early on. It could've gone very wrong very early. It's good to see that they saw the light.

You can certainly see the strong, at times logically overriding, physcological effects lighting at night has on people.

[Cetary]

Some more warm white light, 2700-3200k.



This one incorporates one of Patric's early ideas of using warm white tape LEDs as descrete low profile under lighting. And this is all in Italy the same country that desecrated nighttime Rome with the 4000k glare bombs several years later.







Vs Rome several years later, for shame.

[Cetary]

I found some more warm white, probably 2800k, installations in Japan. In winter they believe that warm colored light is necessary to keep the extreme cold away and that cool light is needed during the summer months for the opposite. Now of course, with the information we know, the lights would remain warm white indefinitely. These first couple have a really rich color temp. I really like them.







Do you remember that mercury vapor installation I posted a while back? Well, say goodbye forever to the cold gloomy blues.





It looks so much more human.



I stand by my original comment that the installation of blue-rich LED street lights is an act of civic vandalism.

[Cetary]

Thought I'd share a video of this place without the Christmas lights so everyone could get a better idea of how these warm white fixtures all look in video. It's in 2160p. You can really see the stark contrast between the video patric posted earlier with the blue-rich install in Italy. It is an absolute smorgasbord of, at times, warm white outdoor lighting.

At about 24 minutes in, you can really see the benefits of the fully-shielded warm white fixtures. Make no mistake, these fixtures are not HPS, likely CMH given the high lamp failure rate.

At about 27 minutes in one can see the truly green mercury vapor at a construction site. In contrast with the warm white, it looks like something out of a horror movie. I can easily see why nearly everyone was pissed when they replaced incandescent street lighting with the vulgar mercury lighting.

One can see the contrast between the handsomely warm white pedestrian scale fixtures with the legacy HPS at about 32 minutes in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCYLQuiEuqU

It's a really nice video worth watching through, imo.

I also recently found out that the City of Los Angeles, the place that famously turned its streets into one big blue-light special, has changed its approved fixture list to only warm white lights. As I understand, Ed Ebrahmian, the principle in charge of the project at the time supposedly said recently something along the lines of, " If we were to do that conversion today, we would never pick lights that high a kelvin." His statement is clear as day in the new standards that call for only warm white lights for all future refits. A bit of history, when LA/BSL, Bureau of Street lighting, was approached by LED vendors, they wanted to offer Ed's team 6000k, likely 5700k, rated lights, but they said no to that. They didn't want their streets to look like they were filled with paparazzi and people taking selfies. His team did some research and found the CCT of the moon to be at 4000 kelvin, and the rest is history. To give some credit to his team, at that time, going down to 4000k was a bit of a technological jump with HPS, but ,then again, there were also alternatives to achieve that warm white light look as well at that time.

[patric]

An extensive project to replace and add pedestrian lights along 16 blocks in the downtown Blue Dome District will start this week, city officials say.
On Friday, construction crews will begin removing the acorn-style street lamps that have become the downtown standard and replace them with LED fixtures.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/yearlong-project-to-implement-pedestrian-lights-in-blue-dome-district/article_ca2cf1de-aa5e-5335-b204-c5792615087e.html


OK, this could end up being very good, or very bad, depending on the fixtures they are replacing the Acorn lights with.

Tulsa, like so many other municipalities that adopted LED streetlighting, was sold on blue-rich lights reminiscent of looking into an arc welder.  
Horrible, night-vision destroying, ecologically irresponsible and aesthetically garish blue-rich lights.

...and so many of those municipalities have had to come back later and fix it with more modern LEDs that have warmer color, pretty much wiping out the money savings they were promised by their lighting salesmen.

The magic number today is 2700K.

Thats the "color temperature" of incandescent lighting.  The warm feeling of the livingroom lamp or a bright fireplace.
The "K" is for Kelvin, a somewhat confusing way of expressing light color in degrees (as in 2700 Degrees Kelvin).

Sadly missing from the story is any reference to optical performance or shielding (glare prevention) of the new fixtures.  The city is promising "night-sky friendly fixtures" but Im wishing they could have elaborated a bit more, since Ive heard those promises used to describe fixtures that arent so friendly.


Also: "There is a current project underway to convert the insides of all acorn lights to a "night-sky friendly LED fixture." It won't change the appearance of the lamps, he said, but it does succeed in directing light to the ground rather than the sky."

OK that would also be a dream come true... something Ive ranted about here for... how many years?
My plan has been more specific, though, to convert the decorative Acorn lights to lower, decorative intensities and use higher-mounted shielded lights for the actual lighting of the streets.  That addresses the glare problem we currently have as a result of using bright lights inside the poor optics of Acorn fixtures and expecting that to properly light streets.

If we're just replacing the Sodium or Metal-Halide lamps currently inside Acorns with the same intensity blue-rich LED we will actually make the problem worse, not better.  If that happens, it will be an expensive disaster.

Lets hope the retrofitted Acorns get clear lenses that allow for better aiming (the frosted or "refractive" globes scatter light and contribute to glare) and the LEDs are the more modern warm-white versions that closer resemble the color and intensity of their 1900's models.

[TulsaGoldenHurriCAN]

An extensive project to replace and add pedestrian lights along 16 blocks in the downtown Blue Dome District will start this week, city officials say.
On Friday, construction crews will begin removing the acorn-style street lamps that have become the downtown standard and replace them with LED fixtures.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/yearlong-project-to-implement-pedestrian-lights-in-blue-dome-district/article_ca2cf1de-aa5e-5335-b204-c5792615087e.html


OK, this could end up being very good, or very bad, depending on the fixtures they are replacing the Acorn lights with.

...

If we're just replacing the Sodium or Metal-Halide lamps currently inside Acorns with the same intensity blue-rich LED we will actually make the problem worse, not better.  If that happens, it will be an expensive disaster.

I thought you would be thrilled about this news. I was wrong.  It sounds like they are incorporating the kind of lighting you are adamant about. And the acorn night-friendly replacement also sounds exactly like they described in the article. I guess you are so jaded that you think even that might be a disaster and I don't blame you, the CoT has really screwed up quite a lot.

Sounds great improvement to me though. I have a bit more confidence because it isn't really "the city" and is a volunteer counsel trying to make improvements that most of the members benefit from also. It sounds like they are trying to do it right. If it was someone who was going to do it "wrong", they probably would've just installed the new acorn lights the one property owner requested and saved a lot of money.

[patric]

I thought you would be thrilled about this news. I was wrong.   It sounds like they are incorporating the kind of lighting you are adamant about. And the acorn night-friendly replacement also sounds exactly like they described in the article. I guess you are so jaded that you think even that might be a disaster and I don't blame you, the CoT has really screwed up quite a lot.

Sounds great improvement to me though. I have a bit more confidence because it isn't really "the city" and is a volunteer counsel trying to make improvements that most of the members benefit from also. It sounds like they are trying to do it right. If it was someone who was going to do it "wrong", they probably would've just installed the new acorn lights the one property owner requested and saved a lot of money.

I think you are right in that im a bit jaded by years of shell games by city leaders and lighting vendors, but I really do want something like this to work.

...and I do believe the volunteers want to do it right, but I realize that hinges on the accuracy of the information they get from salesmen, not other volunteers like myself.

I am thrilled, though, that some of the decision-makers are aware the existing Acorn lights produce a poor quality light and that 'night-sky friendly' lights might also help improve visual acuity by reducing glare.  Its much more a public safety issue than a tree-hugger issue, bit the environment still benefits from making the right choice.

The color-temperature issue is still a big deal, though.  Choosing bluer LEDs over warmer LEDs because you get a bit more lumens-per-watt is penny wise but pound foolish, especially if you have to come back later and change it because of the public outcry other cities are experiencing.

[Hoss]

I think you are right in that im a bit jaded by years of shell games by city leaders and lighting vendors, but I really do want something like this to work.

...and I do believe the volunteers want to do it right, but I realize that hinges on the accuracy of the information they get from salesmen, not other volunteers like myself.

I am thrilled, though, that some of the decision-makers are aware the existing Acorn lights produce a poor quality light and that 'night-sky friendly' lights might also help improve visual acuity by reducing glare.  Its much more a public safety issue than a tree-hugger issue, bit the environment still benefits from making the right choice.

The color-temperature issue is still a big deal, though.  Choosing bluer LEDs over warmer LEDs because you get a bit more lumens-per-watt is penny wise but pound foolish, especially if you have to come back later and change it because of the public outcry other cities are experiencing.

Something I've seen that was interesting in two items of tech I own....the latest Windows 10 update included a display feature called Night Light.  At sunset (or any other time you may specify) Windows sets its monitor to display more yellow light than the standard blue.

My new Huawei cell phone does the same thing.

[patric]

Something I've seen that was interesting in two items of tech I own....the latest Windows 10 update included a display feature called Night Light.  At sunset (or any other time you may specify) Windows sets its monitor to display more yellow light than the standard blue.

My new Huawei cell phone does the same thing.

Android users got that with 7.0 where you can decide how much blue light you want eliminated.  Its mainstream guys. 

I wonder if the Blue Dome domed lights are based on these in the Brady:

https://goo.gl/maps/u4q49uQYY9M2

Those are actually very good lights, but yes they could be a bit warmer color.  Any manufacturer worth their salt makes 2700K "incandescent look-alike" LEDs these days.

[Hoss]

Android users got that with 7.0 where you can decide how much blue light you want eliminated.  Its mainstream guys. 

I wonder if the Blue Dome domed lights are based on these in the Brady:

https://goo.gl/maps/u4q49uQYY9M2

Those are actually very good lights, but yes they could be a bit warmer color.  Any manufacturer worth their salt makes 2700K "incandescent look-alike" LEDs these days.

Not all Android users got that at 7.0.  It depended on the hardware.  The Nexus 6 I had didn't do that.  The new Huawei however does.