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A comment on A call to improve London's lighting at night. Parent comment

Re:A call to improve London's lighting at night by DrBazza on Thursday March 18, 2021 @09:42AM (#26502575)
My local council, prior to recent events in London, decided to turn off all lights after 1am (or thereabouts) "to save money". There was a backlash, and also at the same time when LEDs became more affordable, so the lights are back on, but they're not the same as the good old fashioned orange/sodium lights. The light is more focused on the ground, and it makes driving a little bit more 'interesting' in the evenings. Compare that to the orange lights, where it was more diffuse and even.

Improving the lighting is also at odds with wanting a dark sky for the local wildlife too. It has a noted effect on birds for instance.

Apropos of nothing... I also remember a story about a northern country replacing traffic lights with LEDs and then spending even more money adding heaters because the old lights were naturally warm, and melted any ice that stuck to the lights. Can't find a link to it at the moment.

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Re:A call to improve London's lighting at night by Faaak on Thursday March 18, 2021 @10:33AM (#26503110)
In my towns in France, it's actually the opposite: more cities are turning of the lights between 23 and 5 and I personally love it. It gives a sense of "city-sleeping" peacefulness
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Re:A call to improve London's lighting at night by M2Ys4U on Thursday March 18, 2021 @01:02PM (#26504818)
>Apropos of nothing... I also remember a story about a northern country replacing traffic lights with LEDs and then spending even more money adding heaters because the old lights were naturally warm, and melted any ice that stuck to the lights. Can't find a link to it at the moment.

The Technology Connections channel on YouTube has an excellent video on this, called 'The LED Traffic Light and the Danger of "But Sometimes!"': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiYO1TObNz8

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Re:A call to improve London's lighting at night by flurdy on Thursday March 18, 2021 @01:46PM (#26505389)
My council are also started turning off their lights during the night. I understand it but I hate it. I feel sorry for the dude across the street that now comes home from work in the dark. Personally I feel a lot less secure now staring out in the darkness with a lot of houses and people nearby but we can't see them. I think in more suburban and rural setting this might make sense, but this is still in the town with many people so it makes little sense to me.

I think partially the problem is people(us) have designed their lighting and safety around the street lights being on, and now they are not it is an issue. I have lived in other countries where the norm is for houses to have subtle outside lights that are permanently on at night. But around here they do not and people are more paranoid so all the terraced houses instead have over-active motion sensors with massive flood lights. That are now very noticeable when a poor late night clubber/shift worker/early morning dog walker/baker etc walks by...

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