IPWEA’s National Director of Sustainability brings together the top advice from your conversations on our Ask your Mates forum about street lighting audits.
Eddie Biernat, a GIS officer with Break O’Day Council in St Helens, Tasmania, recently sought advice through IPWEA’s Ask Your Mates online forum. He had been asked by councillors to audit poorly-lit streets in existing subdivisions to find locations where council might install extra street lights. Eddie received eight enlightening and illuminating responses within five days.
Most street lighting in Australia is owned and managed by electricity distribution utilities, but paid for by local councils. Street lighting is currently a hot topic with local councils because of its rapid technological changes, recent steep cost increases and the limited say by councils in the service they get. Despite that, as a road authority, councils have the power to decide whether to light streets and to what levels. They therefore have a duty of care to exercise that power responsibly.
The AYM responses indicate that street lighting in both new and existing subdivisions should be designed to comply with the relevant standard AS/NZS 1158. However, in practice, most councils find it too costly to fully comply with that standard. So they limit the number of street lights, knowing that they don’t comply with AS/NZS 1158 - which is not mandatory anyway.
Several responses suggested that, in such circumstances, a council should protect itself from litigation by consulting with the community about what it desires and is willing to pay for, then adopting and following a public lighting policy.
Councils should identify locations for extra street lights using utility asset maps, night inspections, road crash data and resident complaints. It should then consider how many people would be served by the extra lights, the cost of extra lights and hence how many council can afford to pay to have installed and maintained.
It was noted that street lighting in residential areas is either Category P4 in new subdivisions or Category P5 in older subdivisions. With modern luminaires the street lights can be 65 metres apart with P4 or 80 metres apart with the stronger P5 lights, depending on the road width and mounting height. But, being pragmatic, this often means a street light on every second pole.