Streetlights

Put That Light Out!

2008-04-18T18:11:00.002+01:00

I am an occasional contributor to the Free Society blog. In this article, I compare the government's proscriptive diktat banning domestic tungsten lightbulbs with their insistence on ugly light-polluting high-pressure sodium being specified for general street-lighting. Why is CFL okay for us, but not for them? After all, it's rubbish* as a table-lamp but great** as a streetlight.

Why doesn't government want to take it's own medicine?

* Expensive in comparison with tungsten. Short life if used in an energy-efficient manner, as they don't like frequent switching. Lower light-quality.
** Would work out cheaper than HPS if Lewin's Lumen-Effectiveness Multiplier is taken into account and lower wattages were run. Long-lasting when left on all night. Light-quality a million billion times better than any sodium.

Mercury Moons vs. The Sodium Menace

2006-11-05T04:21:00.000Z

Church Lane, Harwell

A practical demonstration illustrating the clear superiority, on every level except raw lumen-output, of "outmoded" mercury-vapour streetlights over their Home Office Approved high-pressure sodium replacements. Here then, from a pedestrian's perspective, is a November evening's walk around the leafy lanes of Harwell village, South Oxfordshire. [map] The first picture shows exactly what you might expect: a narrow tree-lined village lane; a peaceful idyll.

Standing under a mercury lamp's gentle radiance as in the second picture, we see all the important information. We see the road-surface, we see the pavement and a clear delineation 'twixt the two. We see a mature brick wall covered in creepers, we see verdant trees and hedges. We see all this with our mesopic night-time vision, our eyes having adjusted to the conditions. We see a dusky-peach stain in the near-distance. We see someone's moving house.

You can hardly blame them. For when standing by the estate-agency board as in this next picture, we see a very different scene. The poor colour-rendering of this High-Pressure Sodium lamp means that instead of easy-on-the-eye natural contrasts, all an aid to night-time visibility, we are presented with a scene of sodium splurge. Detail is subsumed by reflected glare and the direct glare from the fitting itself. This SON light is many times brighter than the mercury-lamp behind us, and yet our actual ability to see is reduced. The glare creates an area of bold shadow directly ahead of the lumiere, which means that a piece of pavement just twenty yards away is rendered blind. Our eyes start adjusting to the multifold increase in light-level. We squint against the sudden glare. We feel a headache coming on.

Standing under this light, and with the camera on exactly the same settings * as in the first picture, I took this. The road may appear "well-lit" from a British Standards perspective, as there's certainly a lot of dusky-peach luminosity bouncing around. So much in fact, that not only is important detail subsumed and rendered inconsequential, but the unlit section ahead of us is rendered blind. And is this really how we want our villages to look? The searing intensity of this awful light represents an antithesis to what people like about village-life.

Turning around to look back at the mercury-vapour lamp, this picture gives an excellent demonstration of the qualitative differences between the two lighting-sources. One suggests tranquility, one suggests a military installation.

Even when standing directly underneath the sodium glare, you'll see that the pavement is markedly more apparent under the mercury light in the near-distance than it is in the foreground. The sodium light is so bright in fact, that even it's light-polluting bounce from the metalled road-surface feels uncomfortably glary. In wet conditions, this effect is, naturally enough, many times worse.

The Cleave

By the time I've arrived at Church Lane's junction with The Cleave, I'm starting to feel some aggression beating about my temples. I mean, How dare they? Who could possibly...? What were they thinking...? etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I'll leave you to enjoy the scenery for a moment while I take some aspirin.

Note the near-full moon making a valiant bid for dominance, but falling several starbursts short of the civilising influence from myopic man. Enlarge the first picture [click that thang] and you'll see another level of detail. Rooftops. Try and imagine them without the repugnant orange sodium glare; their clay tiles glinting silver in the moonlight, their chimney-pots dark shapes against a deep blue horizon. Imagine a galaxy of stars in the firmament; a natural wonder observed as routine by all preceding generations, but denied to us.

Wantage Road

The last remaining mercury-vapour lamp on the Wantage Road stands at the junction of Tyrells Close and provides the foreground illumination in this picture. An illumination which is clearly more up to the task than the stupidly bright and sickly sodium stains ahead of us. High Pressure Sodium's increased lumen-output does not equate to "better" streetlighting.It is a wholly un-natural light; ugly in the extreme, uncomfortable, glaring and downright dangerous in that it causes blind-spots due to the eyes' need to keep re-adjusting in the glary conditions. Drivers' reaction times have been shown to be many times slower under orange/dusky-peach sodium light than they are under "colder" white-light sources such as mercury-vapour or metal-halide.

In keeping with the national trend of introducing ever-higher levels of streetlighting, as advocated by a misguided Home Office policy, these villages' sense of rural tranquility is all but lost, and for what? Politicians' populist knee-jerk responses to the very social malaises they encourage their electorates to fear. "Oh, we're doing something about crime, do you see?" What they actually mean is "Never mind the growing body of evidence demonstrating an inverse relationship between levels of artificial lighting and incidences of criminal behaviour, that's too complicated to explain to the poor dears, we'll just get out the Ugly Gun, give 'em what they think is good for 'em, show willing and get ourselves re-elected."

The evidence is that these overkill lighting-levels actually lead to a heightening in instances of criminality in areas where HPS has replaced older lighting-schemes. That high levels of ugly municipal lighting actually does breed criminal behaviour. I suppose that if people are treated as errant, untrustworthy schoolchildren who need keeping tabs on, we will respond in kind.

I didn't have the airgun with me.

* Camera and settings used:

Canon A75 digital camera. Exposure 0.25s @ f2.8. ISO 200, no flash. All images brightened by 20% with Canon Photo Impression 5. The LCD on this camera always gives a brighter reading of events than is seen once the pictures have been transferred to the computer. This is not a trickery motivated by my hatred of high-puke sodium; the same level of compensation has been applied to all the pictures.

Down Harwell

2006-08-10T02:15:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the lack of updates: this is entirely due to my having just moved house and, as such, am currently only on nodding terms with the wundaweb via an expensive and creaky old pay-as-you-go dial-up connection.

Expect a slight shift in the geographical bias of these notes. I’ve moved from the relatively dark skies of West Oxfordshire to a rather more light-polluted South Oxfordshire, with the lovely town of Didcot making, it would seem, an ever-increasing contribution to this shroud of dusky-peach covering where the stars used to be.

Walking out towards the downs from Harwell village about a month ago, up the path known as The Holloway, I passed under two mercury-vapour lamps; these contributing, as is often the case with this lighting, to the most sublime rural setting. Mercury-Vapour and moonlight setting off the timber-framed and thatched-roof houses beautifully and, on this narrow tree-lined lane, demonstrating the superior performance characteristic of cool blue-white mercury-vapour lighting; namely useful illumination with little glare at this low lumen-level. The moonlight helped, but it was easy to see beyond the lights, through to the unlit section of the track leading out from the village. I didn’t have the camera with me.

This week, I walked the same route again, determining to record the perfection before some nu-labor type came along with the ugly gun of HPS to ruin everything. I arrived too late. Where the mercury moons had shone but weeks before, there are now two bulbous semi-cutoff lumieres banging out at least 100 Watts of revolting high-puke sodium apiece. Aesthetically, the result is an abomination. One barely notices the C17th architecture now, for the lighting is so stupidly bright that the glare of dusky-peach subsumes absolutely everything about this scene there is to love. And on this moonlit night, I could not stand ahead of the lights and see through to the unlit section beyond. All I could see was orange, orange, glare of orange.

With the forthcoming nu-labor, nu-Mc.Britain development of Barratt Homes about to land on fields to the west of Didcot, there is a projected doubling in the amount of traffic that will be headed through Harwell village towards the A34. And we all know what that’ll mean in terms of lighting, don’t we? It’s started already. All but one of the mercury lamps on the High Street has been replaced in the last year by the dreaded Prescott Peaches. Under the brightest of these monstrosities, one may observe baseball-capped yoof in noisy evidence, getting pissed on alcopops. Urbanisation takes another step, and Harwell village becomes a suburb of Didcot.

So, you know, thanks to the wonks wot dunnit. Expect a pithy e-mail once I’ve found out who you are.

Song for the Streetlights

2006-04-29T06:04:00.000+01:00

Hoh yes, my friends. In a webtastic Streetlights exclusive and thanks to the server-space of that nice Mr. R. Murdoch, I am now making available my very own Song to the Streetlights. You'll find the song Hurricane Lamp available for free download, along with a couple of others [varying streetlight-quotient].

8/2/07: due to the utter and continuing crapness of myspace's site-design/reliability, I am currently unable to log-in to that account, so am unable to approve friend-requests etc., let alone delete that 4AM Byron-setting. Most music's over-regarded anyway though [doncha think?] , so it's no great loss.

Streetlight Spotting on't Tinternet

2006-04-27T23:57:00.000+01:00

From Davy Warren comes this interior shot showing some serious streetlight action. It's a sodium sandwich. From the left, we have low-pressure sodium [SOX], mercury-vapour [hurrah!] and high-pressure sodium [SON], all ensconced in attractive Thorn Gamma 6 post-top lumieres. Davy's site has a good selection of historic streetlights, focussing on the street-furniture aspects of lumiere design and development. Geographically, he concentrates on the South Devon area but there's also a page of photographs from Berkshire and Oxfordshire.

Next, we have Matthew Eagles' soxlamps.com , a site celebrating the low-pressure sodium streetlight. We differ on the relative merits of these things, but I applaud a well-written, informative site which infuses a bit of good old personal passion into what is often considered a rather dry interest. The site also contains a clear explanation of the tech powering discharge lamps. And I have to admit that I do rather enjoy partaking in the atmospherics produced by the ignition sequence of the once-ubiquitous SOX lamps, as they fire red against the darkening sky. Actually, Matthew goes into some detail on this ignition sequence; there's colour charts! And timings!

Indeed, he cites his childhood fascination with this colour-changing ignition process as the inspiration behind his interest in street-lighting. In a different way, it was probably mine too. I had a dream. Cancel the MLK voice, I was six. As I trotted home from school past the wicked witch's house and an enchanted leafy glade, the gloaming dusk seemed to take on an ominous tone. I couldn't put my finger on the difference, but it was there. The birds still sang, the wind still rustled the leaves, the chimneys of the houses still discharged their Coalite trails speaking of warmth and comfort, but something was definitely amiss. As darkness came, the reason took form. The streetlight outside my bedroom window was not shining it's usual soft silvery-white, the colour of moonlight. Like every other light on the crescent, it had turned blood red. And I knew nothing would ever be the same again.

Waking to the reassurance of mercury-vapour normality, I put the dream aside and tried to learn how to do fractions. Many [oh alright, thirty-five bloody hell] years later, my childhood home is no more. Razed to the ground in the mid 80's, one of the few reminders of it's moment in space is the decaying lamp-post, now propped up with external trusses to stop it falling over and, in 2006, still illuminating this overgrown and forgotten corner of earth. In the early evening, this light will be observed as a deep red glow; a bloodlight spreading through the mass of foliage as the low-pressure sodium vapour lamp goes about it's business.

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Shape of Things to Come

2006-04-27T20:25:00.000+01:00

It's looking like the end of the sodium reign could be in sight. Light Emitting Diodes are now being developed for streetlighting applications and, whilst currently more expensive to purchase than discharge lamps, their extended lifespan and zero-maintenance design will soon make a powerful economic case for their adoption. Economies of scale in production should ensure the initial purchase prices come down, as well.

LED's will provide higher quality, gentler and yet more efficient public lighting. Halting the HPS proliferation and replacing sodium with these likely lads will save energy and reduce light-pollution, whilst giving a more welcoming feeling to public spaces. Remember; at optimal colour-temperature they won't need to be anything like as bright as sodium in order to do a better job. LED's suitable for streetlighting are now available in various colour-temperatures, from a visually-efficient blue-white to a "warm" yellow.

From the Philips website comes this example of an LED streetlight-pair, one of four now used to light a pedestrian area in the Dutch town of Ede. In this instance, each lumiere contains 6x 3 watt white diodes and 12x 1 watt amber diodes. The ratio of white to amber light then is 3/2. Philips make this fitting available in a range of colour-temperatures by varying the amber/white diode ratio. C.T.'s are available from 2700k to 4000k. The one shown is, I would assume, the "warmest" at 2700k. Despite my initial alarm at the presence of amber diodes, a C.T. of 2700k is actually pretty similar to that of a domestic tungsten lightbulb. Standard HPS typically has a colour temperature of 1800-2200k, which equates to dawn sunlight [or a peach melba] and Mercury Vapour has a C.T. of about 4000k, equating to silvery moonlight. Again, I must stress: cooler whites are more efficient than warm whites and may therefore be run at lower lumen levels with less glare.

For a more detailed look at the ongoing developments in LED technology, I refer you to patmullins.com

Blingin' in Bristol

2006-02-16T20:45:00.000Z

Ooff! Decking! Fountains! A pedestrian island between St. Augustine's Parade and Colston Avenue in Bristol. The picture was taken over the Christmas period and I'm hopeful that at least part of this lightshow is of a festive and temporary nature.

The blue-white street-lighting on Colston Avenue and St. Augustine's is metal-halide and provides a very high, almost daylight level of illumination. As if this weren't enough, some of the Georgian facades appear to be floodlit with HPS. The decking area features a modernistic collection of uplight/downlight columns. Now, I'm reluctant to slag off any installation featuring white light, but these uplight/downlighters are, I feel, a singularly stupid product of the Design-over-Function mindset. They're probably quite cheap to manufacture, as the lumiere carries no lens and the lamp [compact-fluorescent, I think] sits in a simple cradle atop the pole, shining upwards. The Starship Enterprise diffuser then reflects a portion of this back down again by dint of it's white-painted surface. I'm prepared to be corrected on this, but I bet a fair bit of light still escapes upwards beyond the diffuser. Really though, my main objection here is aesthetic: these lumieres seem to be trying too hard; the design-brief appears to have been Make a Statement whereas, for me, the best streetlighting is that which complements rather than dominates it's environment. Looking at this whole scene, the lighting seems to be used to define spaces in a rather T.V. Makeover kinda way. It has what I believe some call "the wow factor".

But hey, it's still better than the usual HPS/LPS mix. And it makes for an easy photo.

Decking, though...

Swindon - Magic Roundabout

2005-12-25T06:08:00.000Z

It takes me back to Scalextric, for some reason. It's a Town Planner's fantasy roundabout and a Swindonian icon. More than just a landmark, it represents a user-friendly face of modernity and regeneration for this famous railway-town. Hell, we don't build Castles and Kings for the Great Western anymore, that's all gone and the engineering works has been bulldozed in favour of a shopping-centre, but we've got a corking roundabout.

Opened in 1972, the roundabout, or, to be more accurate, the collection of mini-roundabouts formally known as "County Islands", was a bold and innovative blah blah response to dealing with the problem of managing a five-way convergance of traffic on the eastern edge of town. Five mini-roundabouts radiating around a central hub allow for both clockwise and anti-clockwise movement around the whole: from the position shown to take the third exit for Gorse Hill, North Star and Elgin for example, the shortest path is permissible. By turning right at the first mini-roundabout and travelling anti-clockwise around the hub, one will not cross traffic headed for the Town Centre from Old Town on the other side. This allows for smooth handling of large traffic volumes, with congestion rarely being a problem here. Navigating the Magic Roundabout, despite being daunting for the first-timer, is a surprisingly relaxed affair, made all the more so at night by the recent upgrade from sickly sodium to Metal-Halide lighting.

Seamless.

Dominating the scene is a Very High mast, crowned with 12x 400W Metal-Halide lamps. This rig can be seen from some distance away, but the intrusion is mitigated to some extent by the naturalistic silver-white colour of the light. Also notable is that the installation does not appear to contribute appreciably to the [already chronic] light-pollution radiating out from the town.

The periphery is lit by 250W Metal-Halide; the light given by these is a cool blue-white, giving excellent colour-rendering and clear contrasts without appearing overly bright. Although I am informed this installation has raised illumination levels on the roundabout fourfold, this has been achieved without the unpleasant "fogging" and glare associated with HPS. Increasingly, I'm looking at how well the road-surface is illuminated under white light: the increased visual acuity is exemplified by a clear contrast of the white road-markings, which become white-on-grey, instead of orange-on-brown.

Thanks to Robert Bass; Principal Electrical Engineer at Swindon Borough Council, for technical information used in this and the preceding post.

Swindon - Regent Circus

2005-12-05T04:07:00.000Z

A splendid example of what can be achieved with a sensible level of high-quality modern lighting in an urban setting. The installation is complementary to the red-brick architecture and friendly layout of this vista in the heart of Swindon and results in an interesting, comfortable and relaxing night-time environment: there's sufficient illumination to maintain constancy of vision and yet it's not so uniform as to subsume detail and a sense of place.

The lights are 150W Metal-Halide, giving a warm white light; chosen in this instance to highlight the Town Hall. The colour-temperature of the light appears to be in the region of 2700-2800k: about that of a tungsten bulb and a world away from the tangerine fug of HPS on surrounding streets. It is worth pointing out that these halides are quite a pricey light in terms of initial purchase cost: three to four times that of 150W HPS. Ah, civic pride. Feel the quality. But just don't expect to see them beautifying Commercial Road in the near future.

Roads to Hell- the Sodium Menace

2005-11-25T04:50:00.001Z

It's time for a quick refresher as to the basics of why we need to become a bit more conscious of the harm being done by the present trend towards ever-higher levels of street lighting. So pay attention and I'll thank you to not shuffle your feet. Basically, it's a re-write of Scared of the Dark, only a bit techier and with the addition of an impressive graph. If you've read that instructive piece already and feel tempted to skip any of the following, don't. For here be revelations...

Perpetual Dawn

Now you may feel the term "Light Pollution" smacks of pee-ceeness, but it describes an effect which deprives all of us from experiencing the blue-black tapestry of stars that is the night-sky in it's true colours. The sense of vastness, of the universal. The subtle frosting of silver moonlight across the landscape; natural order, a blue horizon. The wonder of the night sky as experienced by all generations before us. Our ability to appreciate natural beauty overwhelmed now by the dirty orange stain cast into the sky from every town and city in the land, from every out-of-town retail development and from every Industrial Estate. We are told it's all for our own good. We are told brighter lighting cuts crime. We are told it makes the roads safer. We are encouraged to feel vulnerable without it.

The majority of UK streetlighting utilises two types of sodium-discharge technology. Low Pressure Sodium, which produces a monochromatic deep orange colour and has been around since the 60's [but really proliferating in the 70's and 80's] and then the newer High Pressure Sodium type, characterised by a glaring peach-coloured light, usually much brighter than the LPS fitments they replace.

Roads to Hell

Sodium streetlighting produces it's characteristic orange glow as a result of electricity exciting the sodium gas contained in the tube-fitment. This reaction produces the light and is responsible for the garish colour. In terms of lumens produced, Low Pressure Sodium is extremely efficient at converting electricity into light. This is the beginning and end of the justification for their proliferation over the last thirty years. However; credible, peer-reviewed researches have now found that, because the human eye is extremely unresponsive to orange light at low ambient lighting levels, sodium streetlighting is actually APPALLINGLY inefficient when it comes to the production of USEFUL illumination. As the light level reduces from daylight to the twilight levels typical of those achieved by streetlighting, our eyes' colour-sensitivity shifts to favour blues and greens; colours not rendered at all by Low Pressure Sodium and rendered poorly by most types of High Pressure Sodium. Most of the orange light is wasted, because it's in the wrong part of the spectrum for the human eye. Researchers such as Dr. I. Lewin of Lighting Sciences Inc., Pennsylvania, have now shown that, in streetlighting tasks, orange light must be between 3 AND 15 TIMES the brightness of white light, in order to achieve the same effect on drivers' reaction-times. The difference really is that dramatic.

See Pat Mullins' excellent article, for a more detailed analysis of these researches.

This graph uses data from practical vision experiments; under four types of artificial light, subjects' reaction-times to hazard-stimulii were measured at various lighting-levels, indicative of those found in street-lighting applications. To make sense of the Luminance figures on the x-axis, 0.1 cd/sq.m is about ten times the level of starlight, whilst luminances above 3 cd/sq.m relate to daylight conditions. Streetlighting will be designed to give average luminances in the range 0.3-2.0 cd/sq.m. Lighting on major commercial roads in the U.S. is designed to give an average luminance of 1.2 cd/sq.m. [click on graph to enlarge]

Assuming this high 1.2 cd/sq.m luminance is provided by High-Pressure Sodium, the graph shows drivers' average reaction-time to be about 800 milliseconds. Under cool white Mercury-Vapour, only 0.4 cd/sq.m would be required to produce the same result. If Metal-Halide is used the results are even better, as this light can be tuned to produce it's peak output at the optimal colour-temperature for visual response. Despite this, MH [which is a development of MV] is rarely used for streetlighting due to a slight cost/maintenance disadvantage against HPS. These cost increases could be more than offset by electricity savings achieved through running lower wattages, but for the way in which Lighting Authorities pay for their electricity as a flat rate, regardless of how much they consume. So although, say, an 80 watt Metal-Halide would easily outperform a 150 watt HPS fixture in terms of effective lumination [and at about a third of the apparent brightness], there is, at present, no cost advantage to Local Authorities in reducing the amount of energy their streetlights are wasting.

Electric Starlight

Before the 1980's turned our night sky orange, public lighting tended to be of the Mercury-Vapour type: another gas-discharge lamp but, with mercury as the reactant gas, the light-output is a cool silver-white. Not entirely dissimilar to the colour of starlight, which made for a more natural and peaceful night-time aesthetic. There's still a few of these lights left in the villages, but, as they fail with age, replacements tend to be in the form of putrid peach-coloured HPS. Check that graph again and compare the performance of MV against HPS. The uncomfortable reality is that ugly high-intensity dusky-peach HPS revoltingness needs to be at City-Centre type levels of illumination in order to provide the same effect on drivers' reaction-times as MV can achieve with fifty watts of electric starlight.

In this picture, a modern semi-cutoff fixture houses a mercury-vapour lamp shining it's gentle and benificent light on a quiet corner in the beautiful Oxfordshire village of Childrey. Notable here is the appearance of the road surface. What can you tell from this? The picture was taken on a cold November evening, with ice starting to form on the wet tarmac. Tyre-tracks are clearly visible in this shot. Under the tangerine glare of HPS, there would be no such information available, as the road-surface would be reflecting so much of the wrong type of light that conditions would just look uniformly damp.

There are other serious safety issues concerning the proliferation of over-bright sodium lighting; the transition between lit and unlit areas causing the retinas of our eyes to expand and contract, for example. As we age, our eyes take longer to achieve this transition, so elderly drivers may experience moments of near-blindness when moving from a bright to a dark area, or vice-versa. Very bright HPS in full-cutoff lumieres can be uncomfortable to travel under, as there's a strobing effect with the sudden bright glare every few seconds. [It is advisable to lower one's sun-visor to mitigate against this.] And the driver's peripheral vision is affected, too. Because the roadway's lit up so bright, the boundaries of the carriageway assume less importance. And it's the boundaries, or what might leap out from them, that we address with our peripheral vision. Our peripheral vision is, you've guessed it, extremely unresponsive to orange light! So there's a cumulative effect akin to tunnel vision. The road's lit up bright as far as we can see, and it looks clear, so we drive fast. It is a dangerous optical-illusion.

Come to think of it, could there be, possibly perhaps, a Very Good Reason as to why we respond so well at night to the cool white light which replicates moonlight? Could it be that we have, in fact, evolved to suit our natural environment and that it is by design that our faculties work best in naturalistic conditions?

Heroes and Villains

So what about the influence street-lighting may have on criminality? Are the Home Office accurate in their assertion that "brightly-lit streets cut crime"? There appears to be a contradiction in their approach: they are rightly critical of the widespread misuse of highly-powered domestic security lights, making the case that these are counter-productive because, behind the glare, they create shadow and this can provide cover for miscreants. And yet, their own guidance to street-lighting agencies still runs along the lines of "more is better", regardless of how these high lumen-levels are obtained and without adequate investigation into the alternatives.

Their opinion is informed primarily by the Farrington and Welsh Report: Home Office Research Study 251 pub.2002: Effects of improved street lighting on crime: a systematic review. This is a piece of flawed meta-analysis: the researchers reinterpreted data from previous studies, some up to forty years old and badly-designed, in order to arrive at their [predetermined?] conclusion. Farrington and Welsh made exaggerated claims not backed by the authors of the original studies. In any case, these did not compare areas on a true like-for-like basis; low-crime control areas being compared to re-lit crime hotspots. The studies were not designed to take into account that statistical-effect known as "regression to the mean": that extreme results would be the result of chance variation. This is particularly relevant here, as incidences of criminal-behaviour are not isolated events: one individual can be responsible for a crime-wave. Read Paul Marchant's critique of HORS251 and wonder at how anyone with a grounding in statistical-modelling could have ever taken it seriously.

Also critical of HORS251 is Dr. B. Clarke. In this 2002 paper written for the Astronomical Society of Victoria, he debunks the "brighter is better" view, arguing in favour of cutting low-level criminality by reducing artificial lighting levels. Consider when you last saw unruly yoof largeing it up in an unlit area... or a graffiti-artist working without light. Bright artificial lighting is an urbanising influence. Noisy environments will attract noisy behaviour.

From UK Parliament Select Committee on Science and Technology Seventh Report:

"... the Committee notes that in the August 2003 electricity blackout in parts of North America, the feared crime wave did not materialise. Similarly, in 1998, Auckland was victim to a black out lasting several weeks. A police inspector was reported as saying "It's almost a crime-free zone. The normal levels of muggings, violence, fights, burglary and robbery have just not happened.""

Now, what good would that be to the politician whose livelihood is dependent upon instilling a sense of fear amongst the voters before being seen to address said fear with a "solution"?

"When all our roads are lighted
By concrete monsters sited
Like gallows overhead,
Bathed in the yellow vomit
Each monster belches from it,
We'll know that we are dead."

From "Inexpensive Progress" [1966] by John Betjeman

Hell

2005-09-30T05:45:00.000+01:00

It is a FACT that Hell is illuminated by Sodium Discharge lighting, which, as we all surely know by now, gives VERY POOR colour rendering capability and an unfortunate dusky peach ambience. The muses are repelled and this may well provide an explanation as to why no English word can be found to rhymme with "orange".

Oxford - St.Giles

2005-09-15T05:35:00.000+01:00

Looking west across Oxford's St. Giles and into Pusey Lane. What I like in this picture is that it achieves a clear illustration of the effects of three types of street-lighting. The foreground is lit by the colour-corrected HPS as seen in the following images. Pusey Lane has full-spectrum Compact Fluorescent giving a more natural, neutral feeling but one which complements the architecture to sublime effect. Note also, how clear is the view down this lane and how this is achieved with less light being reflected off the road-surface. The parking lanes which border the main carriageway are lit with conventional H.P.S., notably more abrasive than the main lighting scheme. One is seen here to the right of the frame. This picture was taken in fine Septemberous conditions, soon after sunset.

Looking south from the War Memorial and towards the Martyr's Memorial at the junction of Beaumont Street, with the colour-corrected H.P.S. seen as a ribbon of "heritage" twin-fixtures running down the centre-island of this wide thoroughfare. The crappy old HPS Ordinaire may be seen casting it's dusky-peach sameness unto the periphery parking bays behind the trees.

Another view south, with the Eagle and Child pub just visible behind the rightmost HPS light. The trees look agreeably verdant under the main illumination of improved HPS, the white and yellow road-markings are distinct and the red car looks red. Although a touch bright for my tastes, this installation does feel appropriate for the setting of this busy and architecturally rich central street.

At the north end of St.Giles and forking onto the Woodstock Road, this sunset view is shown in order to provide a comparison between St. Giles' improved yellow-white HPS and Woodstock Road's regular dusky-peach HPS.

Compact Fluorescent on Osney Island

2005-09-13T04:59:00.000+01:00

Phwoar! Look at the foliage on that! This verdant view demonstrates the superb colour rendering of Compact Fluorescent street-lighting. Oxford City Council have replaced most of the old monochromatic orange L.P.S. with this type of lighting on West Oxford's residential streets.

We begin a short tour of Osney Island alongside the Thames [none of that "Isis" nonsense here] on East Street, looking south towards Osney Lock.

This view down East Street shows the contrast between white C.F. lighting and the more familiar Dusky Peach of H.P.S. across the river. What looks at first glance to be a mercury-vapour light on a very high column is, in fact, the moon.

Window boxes on West Street. Proper wood-frame sash windows as well! This is great! In fact, I'll bet you want to live here, don't you? Two considerations: 1/ Osney Island floods. 2/ Despite this inconvenience, a two-bed terraced house here will cost £230-275k. [2005] I humbly suggest part of the reason for this desirability is the superior night-time environment. I know I'd pay a tidy premium for a city-centre location free from ugly sodium lighting.

A final view of West Street, looking towards the Botley Road, which is just visible as a peach-coloured stain in the near-distance. Note: in all these pictures I have tried to represent the actual lighting level, as perceived subjectively at the time of shooting. Flash is never used, as it would defeat my purpose here, which is primarily to show the qualitative differences in the effects of different light-sources on their environments. Therefore, slow shutter-speeds must be used: 0.25-0.8s. Consequently, when, as here, the light-source is included in the photo, it can appear more glaring than it really is. The appearance of a bowl of light in this photo is as a result of light being reflected around in the deep diffuser fitted to these particular "heritage" styled lumieres. The lamp itself is fitted horizontally, high inside the fitment and is not a cause of glare. These compact-fluorescents, whilst providing a slightly higher lighting level than the 35W L.P.S. they have replaced, are nothing like as hard on the eye as the more common H.P.S. The feeling, when walking these streets after dark, is not only one of calm, but also of a re-kindled sense of anticipation for what aesthetic pleasures may be around the next corner.

Sodium Gallery

2005-09-08T03:22:00.000+01:00

H.P.S.

There's no excuse for this. A High Pressure Sodium streetlight has been plonked here solely to light-pollute a few yards of footpath leading from the village of East Hagbourne to the neighbouring town of Didcot. As well as destroying any sense of rural tranquility in this "Conservation Area" through a combination of the putrid peach colour and searing intensity of the glaring light, the badly-positioned lumiere bangs the light directly in your eyes on approach from Hagbourne, as can be seen in the second picture. This means that one's eye is blinded to whatever evils are sure to lurk beyond the light, thus negating the supposed fear-reducing benefit of illuminating the path in the first place.

L.P.S.

Further along the same path, but out of the Conservation Area and into Didcot, our way is lit by the ubiquitous monochrome of Low Pressure Sodium. The appearance of verdant hedgerows, tree foliage and lush green grass seen by day are replaced at night with the omniscient orange fug, which gives a more threatening atmosphere. The light is, however, rather less glaring than the HPS shown above. White light replacements would out-perform both types of sodium shown here and, at a lower level of illumination, would be considerably less intrusive.

Colour-corrected H.P.S. [White Sodium]

Of interest for two reasons. Firstly, to demonstrate the vastly improved colour-rendering properties given by this latest generation of High Pressure Sodium. A wider spectrum of light is produced, albeit with a yellow bias. The lights are, however, extremely bright. Almost daylight levels of illumination; the need for which I must question in relation to this particular stretch of road. Formerly the A34, it is now the B34879 or something, linking the villages of Drayton and Steventon. The only turning or entrance on this stretch is shown on the left of this view taken from the last bus-stop before leaving Drayton. It leads to a domestic waste tip, open daylight hours only, and a small Golf Club. If the aim here is to illuminate the footpath to the right of the road, then why light both sides? This high-mast rig must have cost a fortune. Why not just light the path with pedestrian-level lumieres?

I will be updating this section with more galleries soon. Highlights to come include a calming white-light arrangement illuminating Swindon's famous Magic Roundabout , colour-corrected HPS on St.Giles in Oxford and, if I can stump up the fuel costs and if they are indeed still there, the Millington Road gaslights in Cambridge. When I saw these lights a few years ago, I understood them to be the last example of a gas lighting installation still operating in this country. A very fine light they give, too. Brighter than you might expect and pure white in colour. If anyone knows the current status of these historic lights, I'd be grateful if you'd let me know.