RELIGHTING STREETS OF LONDON

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 150, 20 March 1936, Page 15

RELIGHTING STREETS OF LONDON

Expensive Floodlighting Scheme Following tiie recommendations of the recent Lighting Committee a beginning has been made to relight the London streets. Side lamps are being pulled up tjnd daylight arc-lamps hung down the middle of the roads are supplanting them. The formulae is that streets and roadways should be so lighted that drivers can safely maintain a speed of 30 in.p.h. without using their headlamps. Twenty miles of streets In Lambeth are to be equipped with lamps of 2000 candle-power each, representing in rotal a million candle-power for the area, which includes main thoroughfares, side roads and even courts and alleys. An official states: — “To relight all London to the requirements of the committee by means of the new electric discharge lamp, which gives daylight effect, would require a capital expenditure of £300,000. “This is based on the estimated figure of 400 to 500 miles of classified A and B roads in the metropolitan boroughs and the city of London. To illuminate every subsidiary road would cost probably four times as much. “The annual cost of maintenance, depreciation, repairs, current consumption and so forth would be about £250,000. This would mean an L.C.C. rate of Id. “To light all arterial roads in Great Britain, assuming that the lamps were on all night, would involve a capita: expenditure of. £9,000,000. The annual cost of maintenance and so forth would be £4,000,000. “This is based on the assumption than the main traffic routes cover approximately 10,000 miles. “The £9,000,000 would be made up of about £7,000,000 materials and £2,000,000 labour, and would be spread over three or four years.