An investigation shows that light pollution from Vienna’s street lighting has been reduced by 75 percent – thanks to a successful collaboration between the city and science.
I am all for reducing light pollution, allright. But could we start on bright advertisment screens and stupid flashing neon lights? I feel that, since they changed street lightning, the streets are way darker. Which is a bit straining, but OK, all for preserving the world. But then, when your eyes are accustomed to the darkness you get around a corner and - BAM - instant eye hurt by a huge billboard.
For some reason there’s a lot of people who just can’t accept that darkness is part of life on earth. Light pollution is such a problem. It’s excellent to see that Vienna has been able to make this improvement.
ETA: my pet peeve are buildings that are lit like the noonday sun all night long for security reasons. It is easier to break in there than in the dark. Turn off the lights and get some IR cameras!! Some twat lurking with a flashlight is immediately seen from a long distance.
fully agree, sometimes it’s just going at the extremes
I read the whole thing, yet still don’t understand how they actually reduced the light pollution. LEDs shouldn’t inherently create less light pollution than light bulbs, halogen bulbs etc…
They also wrote that street lights only contributed 8% to overall light pollution. 8 to 2% might be significant in the statistical sense, but that’s a pretty small decrease for the overall light pollution. Though I still appreciate that they’re doing something, rather than going full steam in the wrong direction.
Vienna’s switch to LED street lighting directs light specifically onto streets and paths, reducing light pollution.
The old streetlights were often quite non-directional. So you’d have illuminated bushes or walls next to the street, which is unnecessary. The new lamps simply have better directionality, creating light only where needed.
Let me guess they chose the most cold white light possible, that makes a xenon lamp appear warm, instead of the comfortable sodium vapour ones…
No they did not, they went for a similar color for the car parts of the street and actually a warmer tone for the cycling and pedestrian parts. That btw also reduces light pollution, as the white ones are much brighter then redish tones.
The large dark sky reserve here in NZ uses 2000K LEDs for all street lighting.
I can’t find an article detailing the streetlights they use. Like you’ve noted, and the bollard pictured in that article, they’re designed to spill zero light above horizontal.
