Street Lighting

blackbelt

Hello,

Just a question that intrigues me but does anybody know what system the county councils have in place for street lights?I find it fascinating looking at the different types of street lights and their colours.Some of them are those yellow bulbs while some are an orangey pink bulb.

They widened the Malahide Road after Donnycarney and replaced the yellow neon lights with those tall,high pole orangey pink ones.Before,both sides of the road were lit up in yellow but now only the right hand side of the road going northbound is lit up with the orange pink lights and you can't see the shops on the left anymore.

Does anybody know why or find this weird.Seems that they are upgrading the streetlights a lot around the city with the upgrade being these orange-pink lights or the modern white lights that they have on O Connell Street,Dorset Street and Ballymun.

Any civil engineers care to "shed some light".:p

Carawaystick

the normal yellow streetlights are Low Pressure Sodium - these are the most efficient lights available. they provide the most light for the least electricity, but all the light is the same yellow colour ( monochromatic light) and you can't see any other colours, only shades.

The pinky orangey lights are High Pressure Sodium - these are slightly less efficient, but provide some colour seeing ability

These are the two main types of lighting used.

Older lighting used mercury lamps, these are blueish white
and I don't know what the white lights you mention on O'Connell st are, I've seen them alright.

Lamps and bulbs from different manufacturers/batches will have slightly different colours, but it is more noticable in street lights because the light has a noncontinuous spectrum - unlike incandescent light. think about how CFLs are all different shades, while normal lightbulbs are pretty uniform.

have a look at wikipedia, there's a reasonable speel on lighting, and when you glaze over just click something else....

aliveandkicking

There was a fascinating program on RTE Radio a few months ago about street lighting in Dublin and had an interview with Dublin City Council's chief lighting engineer who explained the difference between the orange and yellow lights etc.

Here is the link to listen to it, scroll to 6:30 minutes in.

http://dynamic.rte.ie/quickaxs/209-rte-thegreenlight-2007-09-27.smil

AlekSmart

I wonder was he around in Nassau Street where his department is proceeding apace with a new concept called Black Light.....designed to evoke fond memories of the Wartime Blackout so as to prevent Germans Bombing the ass out of London and such places...Take a ramble between Grafton St and Dawson St after dark and get into the mood..... :rolleyes: :eek: :rolleyes:

Danno

Street lighting is poor in many places IMHO.

gibo_ie

Just a slight twist on this post. Is it possible to "turn down" the light, im not talking on doing a Lisa Simpson on it but i was reading that in some country they reduced the light by 40% after a certian time at night when not used much and it drastically cut back on light pollution and running cost...
Just a thought if it is set or can it be reduced?

ga2re2t

Why not LED street lighting?

LED street lighting in the US city of Ann Arbor

http://www.ledcity.org/

Carawaystick

LEDs are still much less efficient than sodium lamps. you need more electricity to give the same level of brightness.

jrar

Not sure if it's a lighting issue or a road markings one, or a combo of both, but what is it with road markings in irish town and cities esp. on wet nights that it is nigh impossible to see because of the way our street lighting "lights" the roadway ? Anyone else notice this ?

Danno

It is really the poor surface drainage and uneven surface causing that. If the roads were not dug up every where and relaid poorly alot of this could be avoidable.

tampopo

aliveandkicking wrote: »

There was a fascinating program on RTE Radio a few months ago about street lighting in Dublin and had an interview with Dublin City Council's chief lighting engineer who explained the difference between the orange and yellow lights etc.

Here is the link to listen to it, scroll to 6:30 minutes in.

http://dynamic.rte.ie/quickaxs/209-rte-thegreenlight-2007-09-27.smil

Yeah!!! I heard this programme. i was half listening and half surfing on boards.ie. It was very interesting. The Green Room was the name of the programme. It's not on now, they started an Arts show 5 nights a week not too long ago.

The radio programme was on about Sept 24th or so. Maybe the link will tell you. I'm just posting to bookmark this thread, cos I want to listen back to it myself at a later date.....the contact details was environment@rte.ie

t

Ford Cortina

All this talk about street lights makes me want to sing my favourite Randy Crawford (with the Proclaimers) song, "Street Lights"

She must have been facinated by street lights while working on the streets at night.;)

Zoney

Carawaystick wrote: »

the normal yellow streetlights are Low Pressure Sodium - these are the most efficient lights available. they provide the most light for the least electricity, but all the light is the same yellow colour ( monochromatic light) and you can't see any other colours, only shades.

The pinky orangey lights are High Pressure Sodium - these are slightly less efficient, but provide some colour seeing ability

These are the two main types of lighting used.

Older lighting used mercury lamps, these are blueish white
and I don't know what the white lights you mention on O'Connell st are, I've seen them alright.

The two main types can also be referred to as SOX and SON respectively.

The white lights used in a few city centre places are I believe metal halide ((wikipedia). On the continent, and even in a few places in the UK they also have ordinary flourescent lighting and CFLs (the latter often where we have those small low pressure sodium ones, which are more efficient even than CFL). CFLs might be more pleasant lighting for suburbs etc. though.

Red Alert

Metal halide lamps are dimmable but need a special ballast to do so. The energy savings also don't scale along with the reduction in light level, and the lamp will tend to extinguish more often as it gets older.

I think we have too much of the wrong type of street lighting. Some treets are very brightly lit when a more uniform lower light level would actually improve overall visibility and reduce electricity consumption.

AlekSmart

Jeezuz H...This discussion of SOX`s,SON`s and CFL`s etc is WAAAY too premature as by the looks of it the City Manager has not yet bothered his arze to take an evening stroll along Nassau St.....The place is Blacker then the Blackest Hole in Calcutta....and that`s BLACK :eek: !

From Dublin City Councils point of view it would probably just be easier to stick a few flaming rush bundles along the railings of Trinners than to attempt to stick a bulb or two in the few paltry lights that are in place along one side of the street.

Still...the clocks are springing forward next week so that will give DCC another six months to answer the $64,000 ?....."How many Irishmen does it take to change a lightbulb ?"

Answer....How many professional adiministrators does DCC have on its staff multiplied by 10

Victor

I've made the complaint. Have you?

They deny College Green (the lights are above the trees leaving little light through in summer) is their problem - thats an upgrade project.

In Rathmines they put in new footpaths, street furniture, twice as many lights as before, but only turned on half of them (it would appear they are on two circuits).