The lighting industry has expressed alarm that it will be more difficult to justify replacing or installing new streetlights on trunk roads, under changes to the Design bulletin standards.
The Highways Agency has been consulting on an overhaul of the 20-year-old standards, which suggest that the contribution of streetlights to casualty reduction has, in the past, been over-estimated. The 30% contribution from lamps assumed when calculating the costs and benefits of schemes would be reduced to 12%. Road safety alternatives to installing lights would also be recommended, including ‘intelligent’ road studs – which do not wait for headlights to shine on them before they work – electro-luminescent traffic signs, and improved road delineation. Road safety minister, Dr Stephen Ladyman, pressed by backbenchers to take steps to reduce energy consumption, said the revision would mean that fewer lights would be installed in future.
The Highways Agency is also taking forward an ‘energy strategy’ for managing existing lighting, which could include reducing lighting levels or dimming or switching off on roads when they were lightly trafficked. New approaches, such as installing dimming switches would be tested before applying them widely across the network. A spokesman for the HA told Surveyor: ‘We are looking at making the provision of road lighting more efficient and less polluting. ‘We’re spending £14M this year on electricity, up from £9M last year.’ He stressed that the removal or dimming of lighting would be on the links between junctions, not at junctions. Buckinghamshire County Council is to trial switching off lights on rural or semi-rural sites, including at roundabouts while installing alternative road safety measures. It will monitor the effect of turning off 300 lights after three years (Surveyor, 8 February).
The Institution of Lighting Engineers’ technical services manager, Dave Coatham, said: ‘There is a need for the HA to review the circumstances where lighting should be provided. ‘But my major concern is that the document was written with the presumption that lighting was not necessary and should be reduced, rather than that lighting is beneficial, and we should think carefully about when and where it’s needed.’
The standard is the DMRB volume 8 section 3 TA 49/86, Appraisal of new and replacement lighting on trunk roads and trunk road motorways.
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