A SON lantern in a SOX-lit street doesn't look too disjointed to the casual observer, as SOX (amber) and SON (golden) have broadly similar colours at the warm end of the colour temperature scale. My theory is that [Essex County Council] are reluctant to switch to modern light sources because they are invariably all white or cooler than white, and the introduction of white-light casual replacements into streets currently lit by a warm amber glow will look careless. And with the current slow pace of change, it could be an awkward 50 or 60 years of mixed yellow and white lights before the county's roads are finally converted over to white light. Well, blow me down, that could be about to change...
Colchester Gazette,Thursday 4th December 2014.
After many decades of installing SOX and SON,
Essex County Council are now going to trial LED street lighting, and Colchester town centre will be part of the trial. 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.
The North Bridge on North Station Road, as photographed in December 2014.
The same location photographed earlier this evening (4th March 2015).
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...
The
Urbis Schréder Ampera Midi. This Urbis Ampera is on Colchester's North Bridge.
Today's Colchester Gazette has hailed the new LED lighting in Colchester a resounding success, with a little help from a UKASTLE member.As always, it's the online comments section at the bottom that generates the most mirth.
Colchester Gazette,Tuesday 10th March 2015
Colchester Gazette, Tuesday 10th March 2015
The whole of page nine of today's paper is given over to the subject of street lighting - something that would have been unimaginable a few years ago. But seeing three of my photographs used in the newspaper was particularly pleasing. And UKASTLE members got to see them first of course!
The article details things I didn't know - Colchester is getting a staggering 920 of the 1,700 LED street lanterns being installed in Essex County Council's LED trial - representing 54% of the total lanterns ordered and more lanterns than all the other LED trial sites put together. The LED trial is a lot more extensive than I first thought and covers some roads that are well away from the town centre - roads which I understood to be under the part-night lighting regime and, by default, excluded from the LED trial. It's a heck of a lot of vintage ELECO, GEC, Philips, Phosco and Thorn lanterns that are now heading for the scrapheap.
The three Alpha Sixes on and next to the Spring Lane roundabout could be on the endangered list (although no LED has appeared here thus far), and if the LED trial spreads as far afield as Stanway and Mark's Tey, another half a dozen Alpha Sixes could go (although no LED has appeared here either).
Colchester (population 121,859*) is the only sizeable town on the list, while the other towns on the LED trial list - Maldon (population 21,462), Burnham-on-Crouch (population 7,636), Great Dunmow (population 8,480), and Saffron Walden (population 14,313) - really are small fry compared to Essex's bigger, better-known and more urban population centres like Basildon (population 99,876), Harlow (population 82,200), Brentwood (population 49,463) and Chelmsford (population 111,511), which all miss out on the LED trial.
Having said that, it is only a trial at this stage, which is possibly why these small, out-of-the-way towns were chosen. Colchester is therefore quite an anomaly on this list, so it may easily end up with the lion's share of the 1,700 LED street lights to be installed between January and March next year.^ well, that came true!
The two smaller articles detail attempts by Colchester Borough Council and its neighbour Tendring District Council (which covers Clacton-on-Sea, Frinton-on-Sea, Walton-on-the-Naze and Harwich) to pay Essex County Council money out of their own budgets to keep all the street lights in their area on all night.
The online version of the Colchester Council article is here.