Curly's Corner Shop, the blog!

Friday, September 22, 2006

Doing the maths

Light it!

South Tyneside Council's Light it! campaign in partnership with Balfour Beatty reached the first of it's milestones last month. Balfour Beatty have been contracted to replace 80% of the Borough's lamp standards over a five year period, a total of around 24,000 street lamps, and 8,000 sign illuminations will be replaced, and a further 5,000 columns will be installed in back lanes and footpaths.

The new replacemant lamp standards aim to use more energy efficient methods, better lighting, produce clearer colours and allow greater distances to be illuminated. A first milestone was reached in August, a month early, when 691 lamp posts had been replaced, 3% of the total. A second milestone will be reached in February of next year, by when they aim to have achieved 10% of the total.

Now, unless my maths has gone awry since I left school, I reckon that a total of 37,000 installations is involved in the programme, 370 is 1%, therefore 3% is 1,110, and not 690! According to the Council's press release of 16th. August the 10% milestone will represent 2,302 new columns, not the 3,700 you might have expected from the total. But let's assume that they are talking about 10% of the streetlamps only, after one year of the project, how do they plan to achieve the other 90% in four years? They must be busy formulating new energy efficient productivity plans, it's the only way the job will be finished on time!

Cllr. Paul Waggott believes that residents love the new lighting scheme, he claims that the word on the streets is very positive about the new streetlights. My own observations and the testament of others differs somewhat from the official view, the lighting footmark under a new lamp standard is less diffuse than previous, the light is a little brighter and clearer, without doubt. However, you only need to move 15 yards away to find yourself in complete darkness. Perhaps the lights were off when they wrote the press statement.

Link

South Tyneside Council

# posted by Curly : 7:22 pm

Comments:

I suggest that either Cllr Wood.Cllr Anglin or Cllr McMillan should walk around Victoria Road Estste after 8pm and see for themselves the result of the new,"improved" (?) lighting. This project should be halted immediately because results show a considerable reduction in illumination.A waste of money.

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:38 pm

Perhaps they forgot to put the batteries in, or haven't paid the "leccy" bill.

# posted by

Curly : 7:59 am