For nearly three decades, San Jose motorists, pedestrians and cops have griped about the city’s thousands of yellow streetlights, and with good reason.
They are too easily confused with traffic signals, they distort the colors of cars and painted curbs, and they make even a full-moon night look gloomy.
But here’s some bright news. The city is looking to replace its 62,000 streetlights with new light-emitting diode (LED) versions that will cast a white, warm glow, could cut energy costs in half, and will use state-of-the-art technology to vary their intensity and timing.
The plan is to convert 100 lights this spring, a pace that could be quickened if stimulus funds being debated in Congress are sent this way. The city is seeking $20 million to install 20,000 new lights as part of a project officials think will be watched nationally.
The goal is to have all the city’s streetlights changed by 2022.
“This is a win-win-win,” said Jim Helmer, head of San Jose’s Department of Transportation. “The potential is huge.”
And so needed.
The current lighting system was put in place in the early 1980s, when the yellow low-pressure sodium lights were hailed as a way to cut energy costs and reduce overhead glare, allowing the powerful telescopes at the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton to view the stars more easily.
Out went the white high-pressure sodium lights. And from almost Day One, complaints rolled in.
Try driving down Saratoga Avenue at night at the Interstate 280 overpass, where a dozen streetlights mix with signals from three close intersections. Oops, that’s not a yellow streetlight ahead but the yellow phase of a traffic signal.
“I’m searching the cosmos to find the stoplights I know are there somewhere in the mass of lights,” said Jim Bickel of Saratoga. “I have never had any such problem in areas where the streetlights are white.”
Victor Clifford drives along Villages Parkway in San Jose around 5:45 a.m. on his way to work and often comes upon a woman jogging down the street. The yellow lights, he says, cause her clothing to blend into the background. “Some days I do not see her until I am quite close,” he said.
You own a red van and can’t find it in the parking lot? That’s because it looks brown under the current lights. Orange or blue, same problem.
Some motorists have gotten tickets for parking at a red curb because the curb didn’t look red at night. The city had to install “No Parking” signs or stencil in white lettering over some curbs.
In addition to helping with color distinctions, the new lights will consume far less energy, saving a ton of money.
San Jose’s street lighting bill is nearly $4 million a year. It’s gotten high enough that the city turned off 900 streetlights last year to save money.
And although the new lights will cost a lot of money initially, the city estimates it could recoup its costs within five years.
The current lights need to be changed every few years, and often the city doesn’t know a light is out until it gets a call from a resident. Under the new system, the lights will last 10 to 15 years, and they will alert the city automatically when they are out. But the big change comes in how the lights are programmed.
A radio signal will be beamed from headquarters downtown to a transmission tower 20 miles away in the Santa Cruz Mountains and back to signals being tested across from City Hall on Santa Clara Street and at Tasman Drive and Vista Montana.
Time to transmit a message: two seconds.
Want to dim lights 30 percent from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m., when Lick’s telescopes are most active? No problem. It’s staying lighter later, so reset those lights with the flip of a switch. Want to brighten the lights on a moonless night? Sure. Want them to blink during an emergency or go on and off with traffic and pedestrians? Can do.
To help power the streetlights, the city’s plan is to set up solar panels along light poles, on top of buildings and on canopies over sidewalks. In time, the goal is to power these lights entirely from renewable sources.
“This is our definition of a zero-emission streetlight system,” Helmer said.
Lights will be working in a few months in the Alum Rock area east of Interstate 680, near National Hispanic University. On Thursday, the city will test the lights at Tasman Drive.
Whether the plan gets federal money remains to be seen. But only 14 percent of PG&E’s current use comes from renewable sources, and President Barack Obama has made the expansion of renewable energy a high priority.
And this isn’t an issue confined to San Jose.
“There’s something like 55 million street lamps in America,” said Steve Landau, marketing directing at Philips Lumileds Lighting in San Jose. “You can start doing the energy calculations.”
Contact Gary Richards at grichards@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5335.
