New LED bulbs light up the street from lampposts along Carling Avenue.Ottawa Council approved a proposal last Wednesday to replace the city’s 58,000 old, much dimmer street lights with LED fixtures.
Under the proposal, the current lights will be replaced incrementally over a four-year period at a cost of $26 million.
Once the plan is complete, the energy-efficient LED lights are projected to save the city approximately $4 million each year in electricity costs.
Mike Sharp, a spokesman for Black & MacDonald, the company that currently maintains the city’s streetlights, told members of the transportation committee that he believed the city could save even more on energy costs with the plan, calling the annual $4 million estimate “conservative.”
The proposal does not include a schedule for which streets or neighbourhoods would be first to transition to LED. At a recent transportation meeting, Rideau-Vanier Coun. Mathieu Fleury suggested that the city’s main streets, like Bronson and Carling Avenues, should come first.
Somerset Coun. Catherine McKenney says she hopes that Centretown will be at the top of the list.
“I do agree with the assertion that my colleague made that it would be best to see it starting on the main streets. If that’s the case, Somerset Ward has got a lot of main streets — probably the most. We would see them rolled out here on Elgin, Somerset, Gladstone, Preston, and Bank Street,” McKenney said.
The city has already switched over 700 lights to LED on Carling Avenue between March Road and Bronson Avenue as a pilot project.
Aside from saving energy, the most notable impact of the LED lights will be the change in appearance of the streets at night.
Whereas the current high-pressure sodium lights wash the dark streets with a yellowy glow, the LED lights are much clearer and brighter.
McKenney says that “the greatest impact will be in the residential areas,” where this type of lighting will create higher visibility for those with disabilities or accessibility issues. She also points out that signs will be easier for nighttime drivers to see and read.
Another interesting feature of the new lights will be a monitoring system that will automatically alert city staff when a light has burned out, effectively reducing the need for residents to report them.
The new lighting plan doesn’t get positive reviews from everyone, however. Robert Dick, a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and an instructor at the University of Ottawa, says the brightness of the new lights will have a negative influence on the plants, animals and people living in the city.
“For four-odd billion years… life has formed and evolved on earth with a day/night contrast,” Dick says. “All life-forms, except for those that live underground and in caves and very deep in the ocean, have developed a dependency where they exploit the day/night balance.”
Dick, who works in the field of scotobiology (the study of darkness’ effects on life) says that too much brightness at night can throw off a plant’s growing process, and can also interfere with human sleep in residential areas.
Despite having compiled research in the field, it appears that Dick is in the minority in his opposition to the LED lights. Not only did every councillor present at transportation committee vote in favour of the new plan, but many cities across Ontario have already been heading down the same path.
Kingston, Markham and North Bay have already finished replacing their old lights, while Mississauga, Thunder Bay, Hamilton and Windsor have begun or will soon begin the transition.