Chicago to upgrade 270,000 street lights over 4 years
http://abc7chicago.com/news/chicago-...ears-/1296000/
Quote:
Over the next four years, the city will replace more than 270,000 street, alley and park lights with higher quality lighting. Low-energy LED lights will replace the outdated, high pressure sodium lamps.
The city said the brighter lights will improve visibility and thus make streets, sidewalks and bike paths safer. Emanuel's office said that by making neighborhoods brighter at night, it will give residents a "greater sense of safety."
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I'm going to try and find more details on this, because with lighting details are everything. I'm designing an LED light fixture right now, so I've been doing a lot of research and want to compare the specs. I really hope they're not overdoing it on brightness.
The image in the ABC7 report shows a fully shielded light fixture, which is good as that will reduce the horrible horizontal glare which actually makes night vision and safety worse, by creating dark shadows. But even with fully shielded lights, making the lights brighter can also reduce safety. Our eyes adjust very well to the dark. And by making the streets and sidewalks brighter, the shadows get that much darker. Walking down a brightly lit California and then turning onto a much darker side street gives an attacker an advantage. They should be reducing lumens, not increasing them.
http://www.bloombergview.com/article...-streets-safer
But I am looking forward to see if getting rid of the old orange monsters starts to reduce the ever present orange muck in my view of the stars to the south east.