LIGHTING OP CITY STREETS

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22105, 29 May 1937, Page 20

LIGHTING OP CITY STREETS

TO THE EDITOR OF THE PRESS. Sir. —What of our municipal electricity undertaking? The streets, as everybody knows, are miserably lighted and gloomy. Some specially-favoured thoroughfares have had the small street lamps replaced with larger ones still on the old obsolete poles and fittings, types that were discarded years ago in modern railway and timber yards, but in the main our average street remains dark, gloomy, and unsafe. There is another matter. For the last fortnight men have been digging up the footpaths near the Municipal Electricity Department, laying bare the feeder cables, nine or 10 of them lying hig-gledy-piggledy in the bottom of a trench in mud and water. This digging up of the footpaths seems to be an annual affair in the vicinity of the Municipal Electricity Department; surely our electricity officials must know that this is a very inefficient and clumsy way of doing things. With a proper system of underground construction, putting in another cable is only a matter of a few hours’ work, pulling a line through pipes already prepared, and no inconvenience to anyone. Seeing these things, one is prompted to ask if the Electricity Department knows just where it is. It appears to me mostly chaos.—Yours, etc., DARK TOWN. May 27. 1937.