Why Aren’t All Streetlights Equal?
This streetlight on Quebec Place illustrates the District standard paint color.
Maybe its just me, but when it comes to city infrastructure I tend to believe that the level of service shouldn’t matter on what part of the city you live. I’m currently focused on streetlights and find it interesting that the city has different standards for historic districts, great streets corridors, and then the rest of the city. This difference is both in style and color.
While I appreciate that there is an effort on the part of the city to beautify designated great streets and historic districts with design compatible lighting, honestly the entire city would benefit from a uniform lighting hierarchy where different styles of lighting were installed based on street classifications.
Streetlights, such as this cobra hood on Rock Creek Church Rd., are replaced with far more attractive alternatives on great streets corridors.
At the very least, the city could adopt a uniform color. In speaking with DDOT I learned that gray is the standard street light color — unless the light happens to be in a historic district or great streets corridor. In that case, the lighting tends to be the gloss black.
On some streets, such at Quebec Place, the lighting is already stylistically compatible with the nearby housing and only needs to be finished in black to be compatible with the new ‘great streets’ streetlights installed on nearby Georgia Avenue. Painting these streetlights black would be a simple fix that could be implemented over time and enhance the city’s efforts to beautify our corridors and neighborhoods.
December 12, 2012 at 9:56 am
It’s disappointing that the city standard for the “great streets corridors” are of a type that contributes as much light pollution upwards as physically possible. There are classic style lights that have elements to keep the light from shining up.