[This post, actually pecked out on my netbook way back in July while I was on vacation, has a certain historical irony to it now. I'll post it here anyway, with an appropriate update in brackets.]
Everyone knows LED lighting saves power. That’s why traditional incandescent Christmas lights have all but gone the way of cassette tapes. As lights go, they’re pretty, though not exactly known to give off much light.
So it was with mixed emotions that the citizens of Saskatoon woke up one day to find their municipal government had spent close to half a million dollars attempting to light up a black bridge with LEDs. Well, sort of black. The iron Traffic Bridge, Saskatoon’s oldest, has been allowed to deteriorate over the years. It no longer receives new paint, so much of the black is now rust brown. That’s the main reason an inspector once condemned it on the spot, forcing the city to close it immediately. It would take maybe millions, they said, to make the bridge safe again.
It quietly re-opened a few weeks later, after repairs costing a fraction as much. “Good to go for another 20 years”, we were told. Um…thanks, I’ll take the Broadway Bridge. [Update: Here, of course, is the historical irony part: the bridge has been condemned again after only four more years. This time, it's probably for good. I'll blog again soon about that, but first, back to my original entry.]
But the bridge remained more than a bit shabby, so city council decided if you can’t hide it, decorate it. $400,000 dollars later, we were treated to a dim light show that broke down constantly, leaving much of it unlit for days at a time. The break-downs seem to have been solved for now, but here’s an interesting observation:
LEDs, while saving money, do use electricity. There’s a lot of lights on that bridge, effectively using a LOT of electricity. So why have these lights been allowed to burn for years, day and night, 24 hours a day?
That’s right—the Traffic Bridge “Christmas Lights”, invisible in anything but near-total darkness, are actually lit up all day, every day, from cold winter mornings to the blazing heat of an August noon hour sun. And no one notices, because LEDs aren’t bright enough to be noticed during daylight hours. The colour-changing light show goes on when no one can see. (How do I know? Because you actually can see them when you're standing on the bridge--see photo.)
Why has this been going on? And just how many taxpayer dollars are used to subsidize this mess? The environmental aspects alone…good grief!
But there's more to it than that. LED's rated life expectancy is not the time it takes to burn them out. LEDs do not "burn out"...they just slowly fade away. From what I've read, the life expectancy ratings for LEDs are actually the amount of time it takes from the time they are new to the time the light they give off has dropped to 50%. That's why, if you have one of the original strings of LED Christmas lights, many of them have all but faded to "off". Likewise, when the Traffic Bridge lights fade away--which they must do exactly four times faster if they are left on for 24 hours a day instead of six--they will need to be replaced. At considerable cost.
So why keep them on 24/7? Only one logical reason comes to me, and I'd better be wrong.
I’m going to attempt to find out more. I will share what I find in this blog.
[Update, 27 September, 2010.] I thought I'd best check to see if these things were still being lit 24/7... I haven't actually been on the bridge since it was condemned, after all. They are, and I'm still looking into it.]
[Update #2, 7 December, 2010.] A pair of e-mails was sent to Councillor Charlie Clark on 4 October, 2010, one of which asked for an explanation of the above. (The other dealt with a transit issue, which had been entirely ignored by transit officials for years.) An auto-reply indicated he would respond to these when he returned after 12 October. Unfortunately, that response never came...
