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Britain Street Lighting...

slinxy

slinxy

slinxy

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I thought it was just my eyes failing me in my old age, or my memory playing tricks on me..
But I could have sworn that the streets were better lit when I was a kid, and the parks had lights on them as I used to cut across one when I fancied a walk home from a night out in town.

Well it turned out to be true, local councils have been turning them down or off since 2010

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The practice of dimming or turning off street lights across the UK has been happening for about 15 years, beginning in earnest around 2010.
The timeline explains how the practice evolved from complete blackouts to modern dimming:
  • 2010–2014 (The Austerity Era): Following the 2008 financial crash, severe government budget cuts forced councils to look for drastic ways to save money. Many local authorities introduced "part-night lighting," which involved completely turning off thousands of older orange sodium street lamps between midnight and 5:00 am. By 2014, over 100 councils were actively dimming or turning off lights.
  • 2015–2020 (The LED Transition): As councils began upgrading old bulbs to modern LED fixtures, they gained the ability to dim lights rather than turning them off entirely. Instead of leaving streets in total darkness, technology allowed automatic dimming (often by 30% to 50%) during the quietest hours of the night.
  • Recent Years (Energy Crisis Escalation): Spikes in global energy costs coupled with ongoing council deficits caused a significant second wave of reductions. Dozens of local authorities that had previously resisted the practice—or had only applied it to rural areas—extended dimming schedules into major urban boroughs to plug massive budget deficits.
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Doesn't help my village as in some parts the lights are placed quite far apart which means that some areas are not lit at all.
 
Round my way the street lights go off at midnight.

If you are out after this time you will need to carry torch or use your flash from your phone as its pitch black out there with no lights on

I've come home on the train before and its been all lights off and used my phone which is a 10 min walk from the station.
 
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Fewer lights on big roads as well. The M60 is unlit for large sections, so you then end up with twerps driving around with their full beams on blinding you. Couple that with the fact that the roads haven’t been painted in forever so you can’t see where the lane markings are, and it’s just ridiculous.
 
Street lights used to be sodium high pressure lamps. You used to be able to filter the sodium spectrum out of astrophotography photos. However LED white lights are broad spectrum and can’t easily be filtered out. The white lights and blue luminosity in them started causing problems with sleep so in addition to saving money, switching the lights off actually is better for sleep.
If you have a street light that shines into the bedroom on an infant it used to be that they’d put a shade on the lamp to prevent sleep problems.
 
Not just that, but the white LEDs give a better contrast view, but make your pupil close up a bit more, and because of that any shadow is perceived as much darker. The old yellow/orange sodium lights were like emergency night lighting, so although not as bright, you could see better into the shadows and dark areas.

Still, when you see the amount of money councils saved by going to LED, it's a no-brainer to switch over just to get the power saving.
 
Vonhelmet said:
Fewer lights on big roads as well. The M60 is unlit for large sections, so you then end up with twerps driving around with their full beams on blinding you. Couple that with the fact that the roads haven’t been painted in forever so you can’t see where the lane markings are, and it’s just ridiculous.
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Rural motorways do not need lighting IMO. i agree with your points on road markings though.
 
Used to be 1am until 5am last year, when the clocks changed the local council left it so streetlights switch off at midnight until 5AM.

If you are coming home late and walking home, or just general security, I think its a wrong move and its ***** to be honest.
 
I was driving around Tatton park a few months back when there was an event on, it was havoc as there was a load of people trying to cross the roads and a load of people trying to find parking spaces. Without any lights apart from the actual cars, it was quite dangerous.

You would think Cheshire East would know that there was an event on and switch the lights on.. but I guess the system can't be turned off/on as easy as a switch.
 
I disagree @slinxy

With my limited vision, I find that the orange (sodium) lamps are monochromatic meaning they only show 1 gradient of light. It's like 0-255 greyscale, just shades of oranges instead of greys. The white LEDs that you see on the streets nowadays are incandescent meaning you can see in colour so that a red car is red, not grey.
 
Diddums said:
Remember kids, when the street lights come on, it's time to go inside.
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This really was what it was like as a kid in the 70's. You could be out all day and your parents didn't worry or care where you were. But when the street lights came on you had to head straight home.




I also had a key around my neck to let myself in after school. Latchkey kids were a thing.
 
When I go back to my mum's I've noticed how dark it's become.
I've said it's actually darker in east London than Sweden in the clutches of midwinter.
Every other street light is turned off and the ones that are on are pitifully low light.
 
Street lighting is off around here by I think its 1a.m it was quite a surprise when I first noticed it trying to find the car in near total darkness

Hagar said:
Rural motorways do not need lighting IMO. i agree with your points on road markings though.
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Outside of main junctions or otherwise important areas motorways have never had permanent lighting
 
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