I hate the orange and something about that color band really messes with my eyes after a while and seeing the picture on the left just screams "old" to me while the one on the right is futuristic. My complex just swapped out all of the orange for white LED and it's a million times better and has already helped to cut back on the crime a bit. My borough still has the orange in most spots so I get to compare side by side (complex light, street light right near it) and it made me hate the orange even more.

i guess i just like old shit.

the way chicago so ridiculously over-illuminated its streets (and even alleys) with those orange sodium lamps made it look like the city was trying to re-enact the great chicago fire every single night.

but now "orange chicago" is slowly drifting off into memory land one light fixture at a time. :(

i can always enjoy seeing the density of orange streetlights and where they abruptly end at the city limits when i take a night flight out of STL, as the county municipalites are a hodge-podge and generally have far less streetlight coverage.

I'm not happy about the new lighting scheme either. . . here's a view of Fullterton Ave. as seen from the CTA elevated station. . .

https://pbase.com/temper/image/169211790.jpg

I'm shocked at how poorly lit the street is now. . . very strange. . .

. . .

Not the best photos, but a couple snapshots as I was landing at O'Hare back in March returning from a trip to Houston. . .

https://pbase.com/temper/image/169211788.jpg

https://pbase.com/temper/image/169211789.jpg

Not as bad as Detroit - which seems to have completely replaced ALL their streetlights - but it's starting to change. . .

. . .

pretty soon its going to look like Istanbul.

When they first started to transition to LEDs I wasn't a fan of them. Now that I'm used to them, it's strange to visit a city that has the old orange glow everywhere.

LEDs do tend to provide more visibility IMO.

I was in the Valley of the Sun last weekend, which was a huge orange glow city, I noticed that some lights in some intersections are all LEDs, while most lights along the surface streets are orange glowers. Another couple of months/years and I'm sure all the lights will be LED.

i think the pic on the right is cool but when you are down on the street i bet it is annoying like looking at a white tv screen at night.

For awhile up in the NYC suburbs we had this neat juxtaposition of lights on the new and old Tappan Zee Bridge. Since the old one was being replaced they never bothered to upgrade.

https://i.imgur.com/Cgwzpcj.jpg

I think the new LED lights make it a lot easier to see at night, especially while driving. I've noticed the improvement in NYC and Detroit.

I guess I'm the only one that thought this thread was going to be about fruit theft?

Anyway...

I definitely feel like the LED's increase visibility. I'm guessing they decrease traffic accidents. Still, I don't like them. I feel less comfortable in harsh, blue light. It feels odd. "Why do I feel like I'm in a big box store even though I'm outside at night?" When I'm in an area brightly lit by LED's and I see some of that orange glow down the street, the orange glow looks inviting.

Perhaps years from now, I'll be so used to LED lighting that the orange will feel weird? I don't know. Who lights their own home like an office building, with white LED's? Almost no one. You can't relax in that shit.

I'm with Steely. I hate the cold new lighting style. Gimmie the spotted owl killing, AOC hating, ozone burning orange tinge of yore.

They might make streets safer, but they also make light pollution much worse.

From National Geographic:

The orange lights have more of a gritty feel. Imagine an abandoned house (where folks died in it drinking lighter fluid), at night, on a tree lined street, and than with orange lighting. Place some new, hospital bright LED's... just doesn't feel the same.

Sanitizing the urban feel. But... the energy savings is worth it in the long-run.

I find this so ironic since I remember back when i was a kid all the streetlights in my town were white - I'm assuming some type of fluorescent - and the cool pure neutral light always felt so urban to me it somehow helped me pretend the town was a big city. Then when they replaced the light with orange it really bothered me since it just lost that edge. Now to hear people basically saying the same things about the reverse colour change... it really just prove to me that people's emotional response is often shaped by what they've become accustomed to how what mental associations they make between things. Therefore there's no point in treating these psychological reactions as absolutes and accepting that they're just products of a change.

I'm sure it'll help with folks with tinted windows. That's the problem for folks like me that have the darkest tints (illegal ones in NJ), the lighting in some areas can make it difficult to see when an area has poor lighting to begin with. Should aid in illuminating side streets with greater luminosity.

Really more of a mild issue in close city or town streets with no enough lighting or one that is blocked by trees.

Those orange lights are probably responsible for the death of at least one polar bear.

Come on Man, do it for Greenland!

I apologize, but I don't understand how you could possibly feel less safe with LED streetlights compared to the old standard.

I mean, personally, if I'm driving down a street that I am not familiar with in a more impoverished part of town, I don't see the distance glow of an old streetlight as helpful. These days, now that our streets are lit with LED street lights, there is much more that I can see as I drive down a street.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I'm getting the impression that LED streetlights here in Birmingham are less powerful than those outside of the Southeast? From some comments in this thread, I get the feeling that people are f***ing blinded by them... that just doesn't seem to be anything like our new streetlights.

i don't mind them, but i wish they were a warmer shade of white. blue light is fucking with our circadian rhythms, and these LEDs tend to be daylight white which leans towards the blue spectrum.

I don't feel less safe with LED streetlights. I think you misinterpreted me. In fact I said they're probably safer in terms of reducing traffic accidents since you can see better.

And I'm personally not blinded by the LED's, I just think that harsh blue light is less comfortable to be in. When I see warm incandescent glow down the street, it looks inviting. It looks like a cozier neighborhood over there. Know what I mean?

The issue of feeling safer, from crime, on the street is something I've never considered I guess. I'm having a hard time thinking of a neighborhood here in town that I wouldn't feel safe walking through at night. (Although I suppose women might feel differently.)

As for driving through a bad neighborhood? I feel pretty dang safe from crime. I mean, I'm in a big metal box that can go fast. Hopefully my life never becomes a scene from Escape from New York, LOL.