HIGHWAY LIGHTING

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 89, 12 October 1937, Page 15

HIGHWAY LIGHTING

DEMONSTRATION AT LOWER HUTT

ENGINEERS' INTEREST

Arrangements have been made lot delegates attending the Power Boards and Supply Authorities' Conferences —engineers, secretaries, and boards— to inspect the demonstration lengths oi highway lighting carried out by the Hutt Valley Power Board at Lower Hutt. In explaining the purpose of the demonstration to delegates attending the engineers' conference, Mr. E. F. Hollands, general manager of the Hutt Valley Board, said that the decision to erect the lights at Lower Hutt had arisen from the representations of a member of the Hutt Valley Board who considered that some action should be taken to start the ball rolling, and that was followed up by a conference of all local bodies of the district, including the Automobile Association. As a result of that conference the Hutt Valley Board agreed to erect a stretch of lighting and the Automobile Association came in with a donation of £50. It was left in his hands to investigate highways lighting while abroad, and upon his return he had the authority of the board to proceed. 'The length of lighting was not so much an experimentt ns a demonstration. A quarter of a mile of the roadway was lit with incandescent lights and a similar length with sodium discharge lights with special fittings similar to those usfjfl between London and Croydon. . TRAFFIC DENSITY. * The question of traffic density was a very important consideration, said Mr, Hollands. The illumination had been designed as for a density of 20.000 vehicles in 24 hours, but there. was nothing like that in any road in New Zealand. The Main Highways Board had indicated that lighting would be considered only for roads carrying 2500 vehicles an hour, and there were only a very few roads in New Zealand which carried such a volume as that, the Hutt Road from Wellington and main roads out from Auckland and Christchurch, so that no great degree of help would be had from the Mam Highways Board. . Mr. W. A. Waters said that in addition to the Hutt Valley length other lengths of highway had been lit, for instance, by 120 mercury vapour lights at Whangarei and in numerous lengths in the South Island. '"Mr. H. F. Toogood said that the mam association (the Power Boards and Supply Authorities) wanted to know from the engineers what were the economic limits of highways lighting and what should be the shares of cost to be borne by power boards and reading authorities. . harbour and railway signals, In reply to a question why mercury vapour lights had not been installed at Lower Hutt for comparison with the sodium discharge and the incandescent lights, Mr. Hollands said that the board had not been permitted to erect mercury lights within a fixed distance of the waterfront on account of possible confusion with harbour and navigation lights. Mr. G. W. Wyles, signal engineer New Zealand Railways, raised the point that where vapour discharge lights were installed in close proximity to a railway an element of dan--1 ger was introduced, for when visibility was bad the effect was to give the ■ engine driver a green signal, but if ■ the shades were brought below the ' light centre that trouble, woind not ■ follow. ,