Hampshire CC:Public consultation on turning off streetlights for part of the night

[BinocularSky]

Hampshire CC:Public consultation on turning off streetlights for part of the night

They haven't exactly gone out of their way to publicise this, and have "bundled" it with a totally unrelated consultation on concessionary transport. Only 9 days left!

Please do what you can to let Hampshire folk know about this.

https://www.hants.gov.uk/aboutthecouncil/haveyoursay/consultations/publictransportandstreetlighting

[Dr_Ju_ju]

I wish you all the best... 

What swung it for Runnymede in Surrey, was the cost savings. The main road lights (tall Orange) are always on, but they are paid for by the Highways Agency.

What, we as taxpayers pay for are the local street lights (smaller white LED & radio remote controlled). They are switched off at midnight till dawn (why they are sometimes switched back on again, I don't know), It's not perfect, but it does make a difference.

[SteveNickolls]

Yes I too wish you the best on this. It would be good if all your street lights could be so controlled and better led's used with less blue element. The delivery of something similar went completely wrong in Notts despite good research on part of the council staff. The local population have a habit of not really wanting lights turned off and are wont to complain to their councillors. ?

Cheers,
Steve

[Patbloke]

Good luck with that... No streetlights where my son lives, it's in the countryside but it's amazing the difference it makes! but then there's the noodle who has two super bright lights either side of his front 'castle' doors! Why? you are indoors watching TV.... Noodle.... There arent any burglars it's too dark for them!!

[des anderson]

Good luck with your council. Essex c.c did what you are going through now, and what a difference it makes..... Our lights go off at 0100 in the  summer and at midnight in the colder months. well worth the wait. That glowy band called the milky way is visible in more detail, and not just Cassiopea to Cygnus, but nearly to the southern horizon. Des 

[Louis D]

I would have them contact Ft. Davis, Texas about low level street lighting.  Since Ft. Davis is below and very close to the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains of west Texas, they are very conscientious about keeping their light pollution levels quite low.  I remember them having dull red, full cutoff street lights that took some adjusting to get used to.  You have to be partially dark adapted to get the most out of them, but there are no deep shadows for criminals to hide in as a result, not that there's any crime out there.

[Beulah]

All the best, a large part of my local town was part-night lit a few years ago but people protested and the council relented.

Part night lit in my community with some all-nighters for 'security'.

A bonus if the council is aware of colour temps for streetlights and replace all defunct bulbs with warmer light...

[Jonk]

Thanks for the link, I've done the survey ??

[PeterW]

Hope we get more of this and also some action in urban areas too, see if we can reduce the extent of the urban light pollution. From my time trying to get small kids to sleep by pushing them round the local streets after dark I can tell you that [removed word] cats and foxes tend to out number people. We were at a club session in north Surrey recently  and were quite pleasantly surprised that when packing up after midnight (not a brilliant observing session, most of it spent waiting for sucker holes and chatting) that there were a lot fewer streetlights visible. The new PFI across the U.K. have installed better (though by no means perfect) cut off lights has lead to a measurable reduction in the UK levels of light pollution (nasa virss data) not that many of us have noticed the difference. Small steps.

 

PEter

[BinocularSky]

On 27/07/2018 at 16:05, SteveNickolls said:

It would be good if all your street lights could be so controlled and better led's used with less blue element.

On 27/07/2018 at 18:52, Beulah said:

A bonus if the council is aware of colour temps for streetlights and replace all defunct bulbs with warmer light...

I wish! HCC changed the streetlights a few years back on some PFI scheme with the SSE (i.e. neither will now accept responsibility or liability for anything that was done). They swapped the sodiums for fluorescents (!!!!) and put them on taller columns so, whereas before I had a single low pressure sodium that shone into my garden, I now have five over-bright fluorescents. I can read newsprint even after they have gone to 50% after midnight. The shielding that they promised would be available is pathetic; you couldn't make a less effective light baffle if you tried. It's a sort of fixed louvre system that just about protects the top half of the standard - and nothing else - from some of the light emitted by the luminaire.

 

 

On 27/07/2018 at 16:37, Louis D said:

I would have them contact Ft. Davis, Texas about low level street lighting.

Nice suggestion (years ago I tried to have Bristol CC contact David Crawford about this very same thing), but I doubt HCC give much of a damn about anything except the appearance of going through the motions of a consultation, given that this consultation was hidden inside bundled with one on concessionary transport.

[happy-kat]

What a weak council. Mine here said we are doing this and it starts from this date, job done.

[PeterW]

We got taller posts and brilliant HPS lights, quite a number are now downward only whiter LED. The latter disappear beyond a few hundred yards thankfully. Of course the older ones overlooking the back garden are still there, the shield on one is slipping....

send the council some papers on night light and cancer and see if they would like to install better shields... 

PEter

[BinocularSky]

1 hour ago, PeterW said:

send the council some papers on night light and cancer and see if they would like to install better shields...

Did that (and more) when they were installed. There is only one shield available. I even offered to design a better one for them at no charge. The council passes the buck on to SSE. Who pass it back to HCC. It's tiresome! Thing is, there's no legislation on this.

[PeterW]

The problem of PFI and infinite complex paperwork... so easy to pass the buck. I have only a few places in the garden I can lie down in relative darkness. Maybe I need to grow a vine up the worst one... see if the highways department notices.

PEter

[BinocularSky]

15 hours ago, PeterW said:

Maybe I need to grow a vine up the worst one... see if the highways department notices.

I have considered things like small raiseable cricket sight-screens to block the lights, although I do have one unilluminated spot.

[Beulah]

1 hour ago, BinocularSky said:

I have considered things like small raiseable cricket sight-screens to block the lights, although I do have one unilluminated spot.

I live in a dark sky area with streetlights  Light pollution screens work well - I can get around 21.4 MPSAS.

Someone on this forum inspired me to use a collapsible gazebo side as the structure to hang a light pollution screen - basically the gazebo side is upended with the legs pointing upward and a line is strung between with a curtain made out of weed suppression fabric (7ft high if needed). The whole lot collapses/folds into a small bundle that can be stored away. You do need an exisiting fence to tie the gazebo side against.

http://www.argos.co.uk/product/7643680

It's worth it of you can grab a used from from Ebay, etc.

[Demonperformer]

I do wish you well. My only concern with something like that happening here would be the enormous ignorance of the general public who would the install a surfeit of insecurity lights that would be worse than the current situation.

[BinocularSky]

6 hours ago, Demonperformer said:

I do wish you well. My only concern with something like that happening here would be the enormous ignorance of the general public who would the install a surfeit of insecurity lights that would be worse than the current situation.

Yes, always a potential problem; my immediate neighbours wouldn't (the nice man in the garage across the road ensures that his outside worklights -- which go off anyway -- don't shine onto my property), but there's no telling what the estate over the back might do.....

[BinocularSky]

6 hours ago, Beulah said:

Someone on this forum inspired me to use a collapsible gazebo side as the structure to hang a light pollution screen -

Ah. I have a gazebo with a broken concertina-strut (too tight-fisted to throw it away in case I get around to mending it). That leaves the potential for two non-broken sides to be pressed into service...
Thanks for the idea.:-)

 

[Beulah]

23 minutes ago, BinocularSky said:

Ah. I have a gazebo with a broken concertina-strut (too tight-fisted to throw it away in case I get around to mending it). That leaves the potential for two non-broken sides to be pressed into service...
Thanks for the idea.:-)

 

It really does work, I have been using this setup for 4 years. Breeze is a bit of a pain but if the setup is secured properly it shouldn't be a problem. Make a drawstring hem in the blackout curtain and feed some of this through, knotted and looped at either end so you won't lose the rope. I stuck a bolt and screw through the plastic feet at either end of the gazebo leg for the loops.     

[PeterW]

Pics please so we can see how it works. My streetlights are quite close so might need quite a high shield unless I move back away from them.

PEter

[noah4x4]

Colchester Borough Council experimented with having no residential street lights in ''safe' districts after midnight to save energy costs and carbon emissions.  Didn't last long. Now all the borough is again lit up like a Christmas tree given the moans, yet there is zero evidence of any increase in late night violent crime, or vehicle accidents or burglaries except in the town centre which was never blacked out and where alcohol is the culprit.

I yearn for the wonderful night skies of the 1950's and have completely given up on local visual astronomy as it is a 100 mile round trip to find decent dark skies. But a quality CMOS camera on Hyperstar/Alt-Az in an EAA configeration has rekindled my enthusiasm. With a 'near live' (stacked image) camera, I can still see far more from my back yard than I could see through an eyepiece even during  field trips above the clouds in the mountains of Tenerife.  EAA is the way we will all eventually have to go if living in urban Britain. 

[Demonperformer]

It's all the transparency we have to have nowadays.

If councils could just gradually introduce dimming over time without telling anyone, I'm sure we could reduce the lighting by 50% in the dead of night and no one would even notice. But tell people that you've done it and someone would fabricate statistics to "prove" that crime has risen.

[PeterW]

Problem is that the data does not support  the fear, the CfDS has as good numbers as anyone. It’s hard to do double blind tests and those aren’t very conclusive. Road accidents, burglary etc. People are given the decision making and they decide that dark scares them, the potential downsides aren’t as immediate and visceral. 

PEter

[BinocularSky]

The simple data show that part-night lighting has, in the great majority of instances, led to unchanged or reduced levels of crime and accident rates. The CfDS is currently engaged in an analysis to determine whether it is a true reduction or whether the crime has merely been displaced to other (lit) locations.