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PostPosted: Thu Feb 05, 2015 11:04 pm 
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^ Yes, that's a good point. My old photos from the 1990s (like the night-time photo with the rogue SON lamp) show the large finials in the centre, but my more recent photos - even before the recent bracket removal - show the large centre finials missing. They'd been missing so long that I forgot they had the centre finials in the first place!


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PostPosted: Thu Feb 05, 2015 11:09 pm 
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In "shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted" news, Essex County Council has launched a new campaign aimed at reducing adult pedestrian road deaths and injuries in the hours of darkness, in response to a rise in night-time accidents involving pedestrians in the autumn of 2014. Autumn 2014 was the first autumn since Essex County Council's part-night lighting policy went countywide, although the Councillor in charge of Essex Highways Rodney Bass instead blamed the rise in night-time accidents involving pedestrians on an "unseasonably warm autumn".

The season culminated in the death of a pedestrian in Basildon's Cranes Farm Road, which is the location of a great number of entertainment venues, restaurants, bars and nightclubs (the Festival Leisure Park). Despite the thousands of people who visit the edge-of-town Festival Leisure Park every weekend, the street lights on the road outside go off at midnight as they do in the rest of the county, but after a number of near-misses and David Charles' death, Essex County Council restored the street lights on the road to all-night lighting on a permanent basis. How on earth roads that occasionally teem with pedestrians after midnight - like the road outside Basildon's Festival Leisure Park - were never included in ECC's exception criteria in the first place, remains a mystery.

Essex County Council was voted the worst authority for street lighting in a public satisfaction poll in December 2014.

One of the billboard posters for Essex County Council's new campaign to reduce adult pedestrian road deaths and injuries at night has appeared at the end of my road:

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The Essex County Council poster at the end of St. Peter's Street, Colchester. This photograph and the following photographs were taken in January 2015.

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A view of St. Peter's Street, with ECC's new campaign poster occupying the first billboard. This photograph was taken a few minutes before midnight.

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To my knowledge, Essex County Council doesn't intentionally do irony. This photograph of St. Peter's Street was taken just after midnight. Any revellers walking home after a night out in the nearby town centre would have a real struggle being seen if they were using this road, no matter how much they heeded the advice on the poster.

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Thankfully, there are some lit routes away from the town centre that pedestrians can use, but St. Peter's Street isn't one of them.

There are now a great many campaigns in Essex to get the part-night lighting policy decision reversed, and to paraphrase the above poster, the people behind these campaigns would argue that there's "no excuse" for such poor decision-making by Essex County Council.

In December 2013, David wrote:
Although the street lighting switch-off did eventually begin in Colchester on December 1st, and the purple flag on the town hall (which signifies how safe the town is to visit at night) was lowered to half-mast in sympathy*, it turns out that parts of the Dutch Quarter, including my road (St. Peter's Street) are in fact still under review. This means that sometime in the future the lights that currently go off in my street at midnight may start staying on all night, or those that currently, and inexplicably, stay on all night may start to go off!

* This didn't actually happen, although the Council may struggle to retain its purple flag next year as a result of part-night lighting.

Below are two photos of St. Peter's Street. Puzzlingly (as hinted above) some of the street lighting in my road currently stays on whilst the rest go off, and there seems to be no pattern to it. The street lights that do stay on seem rather random and are arguably no help to Colchester Council's CCTV operators.

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Here's the view outside my home before the lights go out. My building has a 70W SONPAK-style flood light illuminating the entrance to the underground car park, the same wattage as the P111 on the pavement outside. Photograph taken in December 2013.

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And the same view after midnight. The lanterns on columns eight and nine inexplicably remain lit, with a further SONPAK-style flood light on a commercial property further up the road adding extra light. Photograph taken in December 2013.

Despite being so close to the town centre, and housing a mix of business and residential premises, and being covered by Colchester town centre's CCTV system, St. Peter's Street eventually failed ECC's exception criteria after being under review, so all lights are now out:

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The same view as above, but in January 2015. My building's SONPAK-style flood light has also failed (sadly I don't have a ladder tall enough to reach it), although the fluorescent bulkhead which illuminates the steps (which was previously not working) is now back in light.

With the random street lights that originally stayed on now being switched off, the road looks like this, although I should add that this photograph was taken on a longer exposure than the December 2013 photograph. In reality, it's a lot darker, to the point where a similarly-exposed photograph wouldn't be worth looking at.

The fluorescent glow you can see cast along the length of the road is created by an undercroft car park to an ex-office block on the opposite side. The office block is now residential, so the car park's lights stay on all night.


Last edited by David on Tue Oct 10, 2017 9:50 am, edited 2 times in total.

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PostPosted: Fri Feb 06, 2015 6:06 pm 
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Essex County Council have taken things too far. I won't say they will pay the price for their failings, as this is the public sector after all. However, if other councils are anything to go by, I suspect Essex will announce LED with CMS and part night dimming at some point in the year. It's either that or they, from a customer satisfaction point of view, remain one of the worst authorities in the country.


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 2:36 am 
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sotonsteve wrote:
Essex County Council have taken things too far. I won't say they will pay the price for their failings, as this is the public sector after all. However, if other councils are anything to go by, I suspect Essex will announce LED with CMS and part night dimming at some point in the year. It's either that or they, from a customer satisfaction point of view, remain one of the worst authorities in the country.

It does feel like a very unusual time at the moment. For all the years I've had an interest in street lighting (nearly up to 4 decades now), Essex's street lighting has diligently got on with its job of lighting the streets without ever causing a fuss or coming to anyone's attention. The introduction of part-night lighting and the "missed opportunity" to avoid such a drastic measure by investing in LED lighting has brought the subject of street lighting to the front of many peoples' minds for the very first time.

Essex's street lighting switch-off is arguably one of the most aggressive introduced in the UK, with all towns plunged into total darkness after midnight with only town centres, one or two roads leading to them, alleyways, pedestrian crossings and the occasional dangerous junction remaining in light.

It is made all the more ironic when you also consider that Essex refused to follow the crowd and install power-hungry SON or metal halide in the days when money was more readily available. Accordingly, the vast majority of Essex's streets still run on 35W SOX - hardly the most costly and inefficient of the commonly installed light sources. When electricity prices began to rocket a few years ago, there must have been many councils around the UK who were kicking themselves for so readily ditching all their old SOX, but Essex wouldn't have been one of them.

Although Essex was awarded a street lighting PFI under the previous government, it was cancelled after the 2010 General Election. Had the PFI gone ahead in 2010 and all the lighting in the county had been replaced, I imagine the electricity bill would be twice what it is now, and perhaps three times higher if the county was still running full-night lighting.

In the political arena, the street lighting issue is firmly divided along party lines. Essex County Council is a typical south-east England home counties Council and has been Conservative for as long as I can remember. It was the Conservatives that introduced part-night lighting. Labour and some of the other opposition parties (e.g the Liberal Democrats) have been fighting part-night lighting since its introduction, and I imagine before its introduction as well. But with the Conservatives holding the majority of seats on Essex County Council, any opposition motion to set money aside for the reintroduction of full-night lighting and/or for an LED roll-out are always voted down.

Although part-night lighting has already featured on many of the canvassing leaflets being delivered by the political parties ahead of this year's general election, Essex County Council is not due for re-election until May 2017. So it looks like the county's SOX could remain until at least then, especially as it's been announced that this year's LED trial is unlikely to change the Council's part-night lighting policy.

One unforeseen consequence of part-night lighting has been that many of the individual District and Borough Councils across Essex have been looking at ways of raising the cash themselves so that they can foot the bill to keep their street lights on. Under such circumstances, taxpayers are effectively paying twice for the same service. And when I say many Councils, it's well over half of them:

•   Harlow District Council has voted in a 1.5% Council Tax rise in order to raise the £100,000 needed annually to turn its street lights back on;

•   Tendring District Council have set aside £160,000 in their budget to switch the street lights in their area back on, subject to a public consultation;

(the next three links are to the same story)
•   Castle Point Borough Council offered Essex County Council £68,000 to get its street lights back on, but it was rejected;

•   Basildon Borough Council offered a contribution to Essex County Council to convert its street lighting to LED, in line with its Unitary Authority neighbours Southend and Thurrock, but they got a "no" from ECC;

•   Rochford District Council was told by Essex County Council that it would need to stump up three years' of money - equivalent to £219,000, before negotiations with County Hall could even start;

•   Brentwood Borough Council asked Essex County Council to switch their lights back on, but to find the money from within ECC's existing budget;

•   Maldon District Council's councillors debated whether to go for their originally proposed 1.5% raise in Council Tax, or raise it 1.8% and get an extra hour of light per night;

•   Colchester Borough Council is investing £45,000 in new "night vision" CCTV cameras to combat the loss of pictures when the street lighting is switched off.

That's eight out of the twelve District and Borough Councils under Essex County Council's jurisdiction that are taking action or trying to take action to get their street lighting switched back to all-night lighting, or to mitigate the consequences of part-night lighting. I'm pretty sure part-night lighting is also a topic for discussion in the other four Councils - Uttlesford, Epping, Chelmsford and Braintree.

A young lad lost his life after being hit by a car on the A133 St Andrews' Avenue in Colchester in the early hours of Sunday morning. Although the circumstances of the tragedy are under investigation, the Gazette newspaper ran this front page on Monday, asking if the decision to switch the street lighting off after midnight on this 40mph thoroughfare was a factor in the fatal collision.

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Colchester Gazette, Monday 9th February 2015.


Last edited by David on Tue Oct 10, 2017 9:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 11:38 pm 
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Essex County Council's LED street lighting trial arrived in Colchester today, with all the SON-running Philips SGS203s and a couple of Philips SGS252 casual replacements in the town's North Station Road being replaced with new LED lanterns.

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The North Bridge on North Station Road, as photographed in December 2014.

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The same location photographed earlier this evening (4th March 2015).

This year's LED trial is unlikely to change Essex County Council's controversial part-night lighting policy.


Last edited by David on Tue Oct 10, 2017 9:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 12:38 am 
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With the weekend here, I was able to take a look at the LED lanterns currently being installed in Colchester as part of Essex County Council's LED trial in daylight for the first time. Unless stated, all photographs were taken yesterday (7th March 2015). And ECC's chosen lantern in Colchester is...

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The Urbis Schréder Ampera Midi. This Urbis Ampera is on Colchester's North Bridge.

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How the Urbis Ampera looks on one of Colchester's Stewarts & Lloyds columns. The new LED lanterns are being retrofitted to existing columns.

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A day-burning Urbis Ampera in East Street.

It is still an enormous surprise to see LED street lighting here in Essex, especially considering Essex County Council's refusal in the past to embrace even SON on a wide scale, let alone embrace the white light sources like metal halide and fluorescent that came after SON (this is not a criticism - I'd rather have most of the county lit with 35W SOX than 70W SON if it was a choice between the two. SOX is also cheaper on the electricity bill of course). I imagine the small number of posts in this topic compared to the other regional discussion threads on UKASTLE could be testament to how little things change around here.

The majority - possibly the vast majority - of Essex's street lighting is still SOX. With the part-night lighting controversy split along party lines and no County Council elections until 2017, there's a racing certainly that SOX will be sticking around for some time to come. In fact, it's already been reported that this LED trial will not change Essex County Council's controversial part-night lighting policy.

Initial thoughts on the new LED lighting is that it is a vast improvement to the previously-installed sodium lighting and will certainly benefit the town's CCTV operators. To the human eye, the colour temperature of the new lanterns appears to be neither warm white (yellow hue) or cool white (blue hue) but pretty much the pure white light in the middle of the two.

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North Station Road in Colchester photographed in December 2014.

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How North Station Road looks now.

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The picturesque and often-photographed view of Colchester's North Hill, as seen in December 2014.

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How North Hill looks now.

North Hill was converted to LED in the early hours of Saturday 7th March. When I returned from work on Friday night, the road was bathed in yellow light, and when I got up in the early hours of yesterday morning to get these "after" photos, the road was illuminated in white light.

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Another view of North Station Road from December 2014.

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And the same view now.

If you want to see what this view looks like in the daytime, check out Claire's picture here. The view hasn't changed in 34 years!

The Essex County Council LED trial only affects street lighting that stays on all night - i.e. the town centre, some radial routes and junctions that remain lit. All street lighting that is currently turned off at midnight is unaffected.

In April 2013, David wrote:
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Firstly, a look at Colchester town centre. The town still retains a number of Stewart & Lloyds columns, although the open GLS lanterns they first supported are long gone. Here, these Philips SGS203s (quite modern by Colchester standards) have been fitted with Telensa telecells.

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The assorted GEC and Thorn turtles, GEC Z8600s, WRTL Arcs and SGS203s in Head Street have now been changed to Urbis Amperas.

In April 2013, David wrote:
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The Alpha Three on this (quite possibly the most puzzling) column in the town centre also got a telecell.

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A new column appeared alongside the quirky column with a SON-running Phosco P567. This photograph was taken in December 2014. Although I will always view the Phosco P567 as a side-road lantern, they have started to appear on main roads around Colchester at mounting heights up to 10 metres.

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The Phosco P567 didn't last long.

Now a look at the roads leading to the town centre. Most of the roads leading to the town centre were originally designed to be switched off at midnight, but after an outcry at how aggressively ECC's exception criteria was being applied, councillors won a number of concessions and many roads in close proximity of the town centre now remain lit. Sadly, these roads contain a lot of vintage SOX that is about to bite the dust.

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Military Road in Colchester. Originally scheduled to be switched off at midnight, this road won a reprieve, so consequently it is currently being converted to LED. Philips MA90s, ELECO GR100s and GEC Z9454s were lost from this road.

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Many Alpha Ones will also be lost in the LED trial. The Atlas Alpha One was launched in 1955 and the Urbis Ampera was launched 56 years later in 2011, so it's quite a juxtaposition to see lanterns from such different eras sharing the same street.

Colchester's Alpha Ones have certainly aged well and still look as good as they did in their 1970s heyday. I'm unlikely to be around in 56 years time to see if the Urbis Ampera equals the Alpha One's production longevity and long service life.

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For some reason, none of the sleeved concrete columns around the town have had their lanterns swapped to LED, so this pair of Alpha Ones on Wimpole Road have a stay of execution for the time being.

This may just be the crews getting the easy columns done first before returning to the more awkward columns at a later date, or perhaps there is a plan to remove the old concretes as soon as the budget allows, and the lanterns can remain until the new columns arrive.

In April 2013, David wrote:
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I fear this poor old Alpha One won't be around for much longer either.

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The electrical tape eventually lost its battle with gravity, the droop angle worsened and the Opticell eventually disappeared. The Alpha One shoe is still here in 2015, and now the two lanterns on the columns immediately behind this one indicate that the council won't be sourcing a spare Opticell to get this Alpha One back in to light.

Again there appears to be circumstantial evidence in this photograph to suggest that sleeved concretes are being put to the back of the queue when it comes to LED conversion. In the background are two ELECO GR100s and a shallow-bowled Davis GR100.

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Magdalen Street was also reprieved from part-night lighting, and has consequently had its eclectic mix of Philips MA90s, ELECO GR100s and GEC Z9454s replaced with Urbis Amperas. Having said that, the crews evidently didn't want to tackle the top-entry lanterns. The nearest top-entry lantern in this photo is the ELECO with the W-shaped bowl that has often appeared on UKASTLE in the past, and the top-entry lantern in the far distance is this GEC Z9455 with the smashed bowl, which is still hanging on with its smashed and taped bowl.

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Sadly, the days of the ELECO with the W-shaped bowl, and many of the town's other top-entry ELECO, GEC and Phosco lanterns are numbered. The crews will eventually take a disc cutter to the bracket finials and side-entry fit the new Urbis Amperas.

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But their imminent destruction shouldn't stop us from enjoying a night-time photo of this ELECO with the W-shaped bowl. This photo is from December 2014.

In conclusion, the crews involved in implementing Essex County Council's LED trial have made swift progress in converting many of the roads in and around the town centre to the Urbis Amperas, with about ten roads completed or at near completion (North Station Road, North Hill, Head Street, St. John's Street, Osborne Street, Military Road, Magdalen Street, Wimpole Road, Brook Street and East Hill).

Having said that, roads which have sleeved concretes and/or top entry lanterns will need to be visited again to complete the work. Furthermore, neither of the 40mph dual carriageways that remain lit after midnight (Southway and Balkerne Hill, both with 10m and 12m columns) have been tacked yet, none of the lanterns on wall-mounted lighting control boxes in the town centre have been converted, and many lanterns at difficult road junctions have also been missed off for the time being.

But the biggest surprise of all is that Essex County Council are doing something like this in the first place.


Last edited by David on Tue Oct 10, 2017 10:11 am, edited 3 times in total.

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 9:40 am 
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As ever, excellent photographs and a comprehensive record of the changes. However it's sad to see all those relics which have survived for so long, now going.


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PostPosted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 12:06 pm 
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Phosco152 wrote:
As ever, excellent photographs and a comprehensive record of the changes. However it's sad to see all those relics which have survived for so long, now going.


Hear, hear!

Does anyone know of the product code for the ELECO lantern with the 'w' shaped bowl?


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PostPosted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 6:16 pm 
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It is a variant of the Eleco HW745. Picture of another one here, but in West Sussex and also long replaced.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 09, 2015 7:20 pm 
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It's funny to see the regional identities having an effect. By this, I mean the fact that Essex is using the same LED fitting as Hertfordshire. Both counties being SOX strongholds is also something of a "cross boundary" thing.


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