STREET LIGHTING

Evening Post, Volume XCIX, Issue 121, 22 May 1920, Page 9

STREET LIGHTING

AMERICA'S EXPENSIVE BUT EFFECTIVE METHODS. During his recent travels, the City Engineer found that street lighting in many of the cities of America was very effective and satisfactory, but expensive methods were adopted. In the principal streets of the largest cities, he states, the general practice is to group three or five lamps, according to' the importance of the street, on ornamental cast-iron columns, the wires being laid underground. In some cities, owing to the brilliance of the illumination in connection with street advertising, it was difficult to appreciate j,he effect obtained by the ordinary means of street lighting provided in some of the more.important thoroughfares. The city which appeared to be most satisfactorily illuminated was unquestionably that of Toronto, Canada. That city used the castiron columns referred to, and the clusters of lamps, but in the subsidiary streets isolated lamps were fixed in many cases on ornamental reinforced concrete columns, and in other cases were secured by means of ornamental brackets to the tramway poles. The diffusion of light, owing to the large number of lamps used, was very effective.'- The distance between the lamps would not be more than from forty to fifty yards, and the lamps themselves were set at about twelve feet above the surface of the footways and enclosed in opal shades. The Toronto municipality obtained its electrical supply from Niagara, through the Commissioners who controlled the Canadian hydro-electric supply from that source. • The municipality had spent a large amount of money for the effective illumination of the city, but with the hydro-electric source of supply the light- ' ing charge was comparatively Jow.