On 18 Jan, Crathes, Drumoak and Durris Community Council wrote to Aberdeenshire Council on the self-same subject, as follows:-

Mr. I. Gabriel,

Director of Transportation and Infrastructure,

Aberdeenshire Council,
Woodhill House,
Westburn Road,
Aberdeen
AB16 5GB

CC: W Munro (K&M Area Manager) - by email
        L Allen (Marr Area Manager) - by email

 
Dear Mr Gabriel,

The Future of Street and other Public Lighting

I write on behalf of the Crathes, Drumoak & Durris Community Council (CDDCC).

In the past, many local authorities have employed unsophisticated control systems for street lighting, generally based on local photosensors.  These have had the virtue that they were cheap to install.

However, the rapidly-growing cost of energy (noted in the Aberdeenshire Council Budget Briefing Paper no. 3 on the 2007/8 Revenue Budget) suggests that the old approach of simply switching street lighting on for all of the hours of darkness needs critically to be re-examined.

It was traditional to excuse the operation of street lighting in the small hours of the morning on the grounds of:-
·        low energy cost (particularly in areas where night-time tariffs were low, although this is presumably inapplicable in Aberdeenshire)
·        low cost of controls
·        an incidental gain to road safety
·        an incidental gain to crime prevention

In addition to rising energy costs, the urgent need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and the growing public distaste for “light pollution” demand that these issues be reconsidered, for reasons which include:-
·        the relatively tiny numbers of people benefiting at such times
·        car headlights being hugely more efficient than when all-night street lighting became common
·        the counter-productive effect of loss of night vision because of the accommodation reflex of a driver\'s eye, as he/she passes from an unlighted to a lighted area and vice versa (this being of particular relevance to Aberdeenshire, given its scattered communities)
·        the fact that oncoming headlights are more visible against a black background than a grey one
·        the lack of reliable evidence on the crime prevention effect of general street lighting (as distinct from individual building security lighting)

CDDCC wishes to propose that street lighting be extinguished between the hours of 0100 and 0500 daily.

CDDCC would be grateful for your confirmation that there is no statutory or legislative constraint upon such a proposal.

Extinguishing unnecessary lighting in this way would result in energy savings of perhaps 40%, averaged over the year.  It would, of course, require more sophisticated controls (for example, electronic communicating ballasts/switches), which would involve an installation cost.  Case studies are available which indicate payback periods of three years or less from such technologies.

CDDCC would therefore be grateful to receive details of any projects that Aberdeenshire Council has in hand or under consideration which relate to the switching or dimming of street lighting.

It would, moreover, be interesting to know what proportion of the unbudgeted £2.7 million increase in energy costs could in due course be saved by such measures.

Yours faithfully,

John Hopkins

Treasurer