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Street Lighting


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Street Lighting

Last updated | 19/05/2008

Street Lighting Partnership

The street lighting maintenance service for the Council is delivered by a Partnering Agreement between Perth & Kinross and Dundee City Councils and Tayside Contracts.  The Council provides a full range of services, including statutory duties required by the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984 and Electricity at Work Act, associated with the installation, upgrading and day-to-day maintenance of the Council’s street lighting infrastructure.

History of Street Lighting

 
The first public street lighting with gas took place in Pall Mall, London on January 28, 1807. In 1812, Parliament granted a charter to the London and Westminster Gas Light and Coke Company, and the first gas company in the world came into being.

The Earliest lamps required that a lamplighter tour the town at dusk, lighting each of the lamps, but later designs employed ignition devices that would automatically strike the flame when the gas supply as activated. Street lighting on the Perth Bridge
The first electric street lighting employed arc lamps developed by the Russian Pavel Yablochkov in 1875. This was a carbon arc lamp employing alternating current, which ensured that the electrodes burnt down at the same rate. Yablockov candles were first used to light the Grand Magasins de Louvre, Paris where 80 were deployed. Soon after, experimental arrays of arc lamps were used to light Holburn Viaduct and the Thames Embankment in London - the first electric street lighting in Britain. More than 4,000 were in use by 1881, though by then an improved differential arc lamp had been developed by Friederich von Hefner-Alteneck of Seimens & Halske. Engraving on a street light


Perth Bridge Lamps


The earliest lamps required that a lamplighter tour the town at dusk, lighting each of the lamps, but later designs employed ignition devices that would automatically strike the flame when the gas supply was activated.

Today, street lighting commonly uses high-intensity discharge lamps, often HPS high pressure sodium lamps. Such lamps provide the greatest amount of Photopic illumination for the least consumption of electricity. White light sources have been shown to double driver peripheral vision and increase driver brake reaction time at least 25%.

Perth Bridge at night

Perth Bridge at Night

Street Lighting Policy (white light)

There have been many papers published by eminent criminologists who have studied the relationships between crime, the fear of crime and street lighting. All have agreed that the provision of good quality street lighting has a very positive effect on reducing crime and fear of crime by residents. Recent advances in lamp technology have allowed 'white light' sources to be used in place of the traditional yellow/orange lamp.

Surveys have revealed that white light:

  • Gives better colour rendering (for Police identification)
  • Makes a reduction in residents 'fear of crime'
  • Encourages and aids mobility of pedestrians during the cover of darkness
  • Increases reaction time of drivers by up to 50% which improves road safety
  • Improves the night time street scene and the overall quality of life of its residents and perhaps most relevant
  • Residents actually prefer the 'brighter' white light, it makes them feel safer
 White lighting on a street

In Perth and Kinross Council all new schemes are now designed using low energy white light. White light is also used on replacement schemes where the lighting levels comply with the lighting code for installation.

Street Lighting Service Standards


The objective of the Council’s street lighting service is to provide, maintain and update street lighting on roads it considers ought to be lit. The Council has therefore set the following street lighting service standards.

Type Timescale
Emergencies
e.g. Vehicle damage, doors open or missing		 Attendance within 4 hours
Routine Faults Attendance and repair within 7 full working days from notification
Cable Faults Attendance and repair within 7 full working days from notification

In some instances the street lights are affected by a fault on the electricity supply cable, which is the responsibility of the local electricity company to repair. Although the Council has a service level agreement which provides that these faults are repaired within the 5 working days, attendance and repair, particularly during the winter period, cannot always be guaranteed by the electricity company due to other priorities e.g. dealing with faults affecting household supplies.

Street Lighting Inspection and Repair


The operation of the street lighting is inspected throughout the year on a cyclic basis. During the winter the entire stock of 23,000 street lights are inspected once a week with a different area being inspected under the cover of darkness each night. During the summer months when the days are longer the inspections take place once every three weeks.

All faults identified are repaired the next working day following the inspection. The Street Lighting Partnership deals with approximately 6000 faults annually.

Street Lighting - Other Duties

The other main areas of responsibility of the Street Lighting Partnership are:

  • Preparing street lighting and associated electrical designs for new housing developments including supervision and adoption inspections.
  • Designing new street lighting associated with renewal and replacement programmes (including acting as the council's lighting consultants for internal and external lighting projects).
  • Recovery of costs associated with vehicle collisions and contractors underground cable damage.
  • Supplying plant and underground cable information to contractors in accordance with the NRASW Act 1991.
  • Supply of inventory information for electricity consumption billing.
  • Provision of an emergency standby system to deal with out of hours emergencies.

Street lighting design on a roundabout Street Lighting design on a roundabout

Street Lighting - Facts, Myths and Misconceptions

  • Street lighting does not need to be adjusted to take account of the change between GMT & BST. Solar clocks and photocells self-adjust.
  • Street lights on during the day do not incur any additional energy costs as a fixed charge is agreed with the electricity supplier.
  • Street lighting photo cells fail in the 'on' position to avoid the lamps being left dark at night.
  • A common problem with older street lights which contain mechanical clocks is that their timing and lighting up times can be put out of synchronisation, either by general power cuts or by insects jamming the mechanism. In both instances the clocks have to be manually reset.
  • All new or replacement street lights are fitted with solid state photo cells, which detect and operate on actual light levels.
  •  For Perth and Kinross geographical latitude, the photo cells used are calibrated to switch on at 70 lux and switch off at 35 lux. This equates approximately to a lighting up time of 20 minutes after sunset, and a switching off time 20 minutes before sunrise.