Street Lighting Hours

Southland Times, Issue 23826, 25 May 1939, Page 4

Street Lighting Hours

IT is not surprising that the Trading Committee’s recommendation for a reduction in the hours of street lighting was emphatically rejected “by the Invercargill City Council at its meeting on Tuesday night. What is surprising is that the recommendation was ever put forward. The committee proposed to extinguish the street lights at midnight instead of 1 a.m. on the ground that this would save the ratepayers about £l5O a year; but when the clause came up for discussion the chairman of the committee said he had since found that there would be no actual saving. What happens is that a payment is made from the council’s General Account into its Electricity Account to meet—or meet partly—the cost of street lighting; and then the Electricity Account pays back into the General Account £lO,OOO a year out of profits. The effect of curtailing street lighting to the extent suggested would have been merely to increase slightly the balance of these payments in favour of the General Account. The reduction in the unit charge for street lighting levied against the General Account, which was adopted by the council, will have a similar effect. Both proposals appear to have arisen from the council’s desire to make reductions in power charges and yet to retain the full annual subsidy of £lO,OOO which the electricity consumers provide for the relief of rates. Extension Desirable

What the council should be considering at the present time is not a reduction, but an extension, of the hours of street-lighting, for the terms of its new contract with the Government would make this possible for the first time without any increase in cost except for additional wear and tear on the equipment. The council now buys power on a maximum demand basis. The peak load occurs in the early evening, not in early morning; thus whether the council lights the streets until midnight, until 1 a.m. or until dawn will make not the slightest difference th its bill. It could at once, without incurring any extra liability for its bulk supply, keep the fights on throughout the hours of darkness. Surely this is worth doing in a, city of Invercargill’s size at the cost of nothing more than additional repairs and maintenance (and this cost is paid out of the Electricity Account anyway). Visitors to Invercargill constantly express astonishment at the turning-off of the lights as early as one o’clock in the morning. Much smaller municipalities in the north consider it an essential duty to light the streets from dusk till dawn. Street lights reduce the risk of accident through pedestrians tripping and stumbling, cyclists colliding with pedestrians, and motor-cars striking cyclists and pedestrians; and they diminish the incentive to the crimes of burglary and assault at least. If a payment towards the cost of the lighting has to be made to the Electricity. Account, why should not the nominal' unit charge be reduced still further so that the lights could be maintained all night at no greater cost to the ratepayers than at present? When the supply contract is so favourable for an extension of the hours of street lighting, it seems absurd that the council should be considering only a restriction of this elementary public service.