Somerville Community Path Lighting Survey

[aurewl.livejournal.com]

There are a few easy-to-miss posts near the Cedar St. part of the bike path advertising a lighting opinion survey. I followed the link and found this:

"Recently the City of Somerville installed new lighting on the Somerville Community Path between Willow and Cedar. SolarOne Solutions partnered with Somerville to win the Innovate Mass Grant Award that largely funded this project. Solarone is using the installation as a "living lab" to develop networked lighting solutions that can effectively manage solar lighting in adverse environments and track the available power stored in each system. An important part of the project is hearing from you.  Please take a moment to share your  experience."

The new lighting they are talking about is the LEDs which so far I've noticed between Willow Ave and Lowell St., and also over by the park near Woodbine. Here is the link to fill out the survey if you have opinions on the new lighting: www.solarone.net/lights

I am also generally curious what other people think of the lights. I find them to be way too bright.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_meej_/]

Haven't been out there at night since those went up, actually, though I've seen them during the day. But this is of some interest (as a landscape architect) so... consider this additional info to judge by, but not necessarily meaning they're *not* too bright.

Anyway, are both the old (non-LED, non-solar) lights and the new solar ones on at the same time? That'd contribute to the "too bright" feeling (by being actually too bright). If not...

LED lights tend to be much better directed and more even in the lighting than non-LED lights (usually Metal Halide, which I think the ones on the path were), and have much better cut-off at the edges of the lighted area, which means you're seeing that area better but your eyes are still trying to take in details outside that are in deeper shadow (because they're getting less light pollution). The nice thing about that would be that if you're in an area near, but not in, the lighting (like, say, adjacent homes) there's much less light pollution. (I can't wait till they switch the light outside my bedroom window over to LED, for example, but I doubt it'll happen anytime soon.)

LEDs are also a cooler white most of the time, which can lead to them seeming harsh, and the lamping is often more directly visible so they can seem sort of glare-y if you look right at them. All three of those things combined are probably why they feel "too bright" in comparison to the old ones - because I'd be really, really surprised if they'd lit the path to a different "use standard"/target average light level than it had been before, unless it was way less than the guidelines recommend.

(Unless it also felt too bright to you with the old lights, in which case, maybe it's just a matter of lighting preference.)

Anyway, maybe that's informative and maybe not; there's a lot about lighting that's a matter of taste.

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

Really? The LED streetlights I've seen around here tend to throw light all the way up the fronts of buildings, much more than the sodium vapor lights they replaced. And streets that used to be pleasantly dim at night are now glaringly bright.

[smammy]

I think they look nice. Now that I've gotten used to the color temperature, it's been great to be able to see colors more accurately.

[gruene.livejournal.com]

Hate LED lights. Not only for the quality of the light, but also for the compound bulbs, which give the shadows the weird pixelated look, rather than the nice crisp edges the old lights give. They totally ruin the nighttime atmosphere, in my view.