Longer term residents of Forest Hill will remember some years back a lot of the streets got new lighting. New lampposts in new locations.
Every year as the earlier darkness draws in, it becomes apparent how badly done some of these were. Along Church Rise for example, 80% of the lights themselves are in tree canopies. Giving off very little light.
Walking through a park and street in Southwark last night we noticed that when their lampposts are next to trees, the lights are much lower and give off far more light. Resulting in “street lighting”.
Does anyone else live on a street which seems to have received similarly poor lighting since the change? And is it possible do you think for them to shorten some of the poles to accommodate lower lights to light the streets?
When the lights are out of the trees they give off ample light. Can you tell which is Lewisham and which is Southwark?
When last our street lighting was renewed under a joint contract on a borough wide basis in tandem with a co-located authority many of the assumed benefits were simply not delivered.
Design development was almost on a random basis with little concern paid to what should have been well-understood standards for light distribution factors, ignoring many of them that should have been implemented.
Supervision of the design process which was allegedely independent of the contractor was rarely in evidence which resulted ultimately in a very poor quality (and irregular) designs for street lighting schemes across too many of our streets. How many badly lit areas can you observe that lighting columns are predominantly on one side of the street?
In its inevitable poor quality outcome, there can be little expectation of any real lessons learned. Sad really.
