Conclusion and Recommendations

Conclusion

The scope of the street light problem in the city is a difficult one to fully assess. There are

many factors that need to be taken into consideration including types of lighting, lamp outages

and night lights, park and public area lighting, age of infrastructure, presence of lighting, and the

response Toledo Edison is tendering to these issues. The overall street lighting situation is very

poor based on the above criteria I have listed.

There are many types of street lighting technologies that are available for deployment,

however, the Toledo Edison company only supplies and installs one type oflighting. There are

other types of lights in the city from the past. The current lights that are installed are called high

pressure sodium (BPS) they are the lights that have an "orange" color to them. The older style of

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lights are the mercury vapor (MY) lights which have the white or slight blue appearance. The

MV light fixtures are no longer supplied due to federal restrictions on the manufacture of these

fixtures. The high pressure sodium lights Toledo Edison is installing are considered the current

industry standard, however that is slowly changing. More cities and companies are moving to

either LED or Metal Halide (W-I) systems. This is due to a variety of factors including the poor

quality and ineffective light HPS fixtures give off.' The light given off by the HPS lights is

ineffective for the use by the human eye and is very displeasing. Also the light distorts colors hindering the perception of witness in criminal activities'. The city and Toledo Edison must

work to keep up with modem advancement in research and technology and seriously explore

these issues. The cited resources above are excellent places to start. I see major obstacles to

1 Rea, M.S., J. D. BuJlough and Y. Akashi (2009). "Several views of metal halide and high pressure sodium lighting for outdoor applications". lighting Research and Technology. http://lrt.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/41/4/297.

2 http://www.lrc.rpLedu/researchAreas/pdf/GrotonFinaIReport.pdf

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engaging in these talks in an effective manner. The Mayor has been working on benchmarking

and has been using "big asks" as a method of self-evaluation. During one of the street light task

force meetings Director Crothers asked Meg Adams what they felt was an acceptable plan and

actions the company was prepared to take. He said he was going to use this information to prep

the Mayor for his "big ask" so when he went to Akron he would not ask for anything the

company did not already plan to do. This is not what a big ask should be it should be something

new outside the box. I feel this is dodging the important issues and unacceptable.

The exact number oflamp outages in the city is an impossible question to answer, lights

burn out every night and without checking the entire city in one night it would be impossible to

give an exact number. Therefore, in order to give a reasonable estimate of the number of outages

in the city I have substituted the following method for a complete city wide count. I have

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selected random samples of the city in various comers of the city and calculated the average

number of street lights out in the given area and have put all of those averages together to get a

city wide count. The following are the locations I used, the numbers I found, and the

calculations. The overall combined percentage of street light outages factors out to be about

27.3% of all lights in the city are out. This may vary a great deal based on the road, line shop

district, and neighborhood. Also, I left out some outages areas such as N Detroit Ave. from

Tudor to Winfield because out of the 20 or so lights in the area 13 were out. This would have

made the results look much worse. For the figures given in the chart below I can show the work

orders for each of the lights I said were out as proof they were actually out. For the lights on N.

Detroit Ave. all I can do is show the list but no work orders. I was told after I complied that list

but before I sent it that I was no longer allowed to send in street light outages for the duration of

my employment at the city.

Pagelof7

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Street Area Number of Outages Total Number of Percentage Out
Lights
N. Detroit Ave from 48 120 40%
Alexis to Central
Jeep Parkway 19 20 95%
Berdan to Willys Pky.
Ottawa Blvd. 12 26 46.1%
Bancroft to 2201
South Ave. 8 23 34.7%
Trail to Broadway
Parkside Blvd. 21 41 51.4%
Hill to Nebraska
Hill Ave. 16 61 26.22%
Parkside to Byrne Rd.
Byrne Rd.* 3 101 2%
S. Detroit to Airport
Arlington 15 76 19%
Byrne Rd to S. Detroit
Dorr 8t.* 4 65 6%
Parkside to Hawley
Total 146 533 27.3% *Roads I submitted outages on over the summer then counted how many were still out.

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The other issue for consideration is the presence of "night lights." Night lights are mercury vapor bulbs (MY) that have reached their half-life. As MV's age they slowly lose their ability to produce light. Once the bulbs reach a certain age they are producing less then half of the light they are rated for. At this point in time they need to be replaced in order to remain effective. The above calculations do not take into account the number of "night lights". My survey's did not cover "night lights'; because they are so numerous and wide spread it is a very common problem. In addition to the 27.3 percent oflamp outages it is my estimate based on field observations that an additional 25 percent of the lights are "night lights."

Parks often have lighting in them as well to guard against vandalism and illegal trespassing at night. Some of these lights are owned and maintained by the City of Toledo.

Other lights are owned an operated by Toledo Edison and are paid for accordingly. These lights may be over a basketball court, playground equipment or just simply over open space. The percentage of these lights out was much higher then the percentage of street lights out This difference between the two types of lighting is understandable given the fact that the parks are closed at night. Therefore, citizens should not be in the parks and those that are generally are not the type that will report these issues for the good of the city. Below is a calculation and estimate of the outages in the city parks based on the random sample I took. Toledo Edison crews need to check parks that have Toledo Edison lighting in them at night on their own accord. This is not an issue that can be left up to the citizens to report considering Toledo Edison is well compensated for their services.

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Park Number of Outages Total Number of Percentage Out
Lights
Pickford 0 1 0%
Copland 2 8 25%
Navarre 6 6 100%
Danny Thomas 4 4 100%
Ottawa 1 1 100%
Total 13 20 65% The age of the street lighting infrastructure in the city is an issue but one that is most serious when taken into consideration in the downtown area. It was stated by Gary Byers director of the Lakewood line shop that it would take three to four months of a Networks and Substations crew working solely on downtown Toledo to properly trace repair and restore all of the lighting in downtown Toledo. Cheryl Bailiff, a representative from Toledo Edison's Networks and Substations section stated in a meeting on July 29th they did not have the resources to do this and that it would not happen. She went further to state that they work on downtown by waiting for the list of network outages to get "thick then they come in thin down the list by working on the oldest ones and leave." I asked if this meant they never actually fixed all the lights in downtown and she stated that was correct. This is an example of old infrastructure that is failing faster than Toledo Edison is willing to fix it. Also, it shows an unwilling ness to commit the needed money to keep the system in operational order.

Within the City of Toledo there is a lack of street lighting in some neighborhoods and on certain streets. Currently the city waits for residents to complain and work through a petition Page 5 of7

process in order to get new or upgraded lighting in their neighborhood. The council does have the authority to enact lighting ordinances without the petition by statue and should consider doing so more often. The city does not have anyone assigned to the job of proactivity assessing lighting needs and making recommendations to council for new lighting. The entire process is driven by complaint which is unacceptable. Citizens complain after they have experienced a problem, it should by the goal of city government to prevent them from experiencing a problem. One example of an area that needs lighting but doesn't have it is Hill Ave. from Richards Rd. to Reynolds Rd. There is only one person who works on street lighting at DPU on a part time basis. His name is Scott Bishop, he also over sees some road construction and other projects but he is paid totally out of the street lighting assessment. Additionally there is another full-time engineer who is also the asphalt expert he is paid out of the street lighting assessment but as far as I know never or almost never works on lighting at all.

The above issues paint a bleak picture of the issues we are facing in the City of Toledo.

The issue of paramount concern however is going to be how the Toledo Edison Company responds to these issues. To date the overall response from the Toledo Edison Company has been the epitome of indifferent mediocrity. The City of Toledo is divided into two separate line shop districts. Everything west of Douglas Rd and South of about Harvard Blvd. is served by the Holland line shop. This line shop has been totally cooperative and has been able to respond in an effective manner to almost all the issues I have presented them. The remaining part of the city is served by the Lakewood line shop which bas proven totally ineffective. They are extremely slow to respond to issues, it takes them multiple reports and requests, and when they do respond they often do a very poor job. A good case study is Navarre Park: the lights around the pool house were out. I had to submit three work orders over the course of four months. After that and the

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intervention of Director Crothers and Meg Adams they were finally fixed, then they all went right back out after less than a week and remain so as of Dec 5th. The numbers above speak for themselves as far as performance. I feel at this point in the report I can simply say their performance is very poor. Since the beginning of this project I can tell you the numbers are improving but they will stop improving as of today. I have been told I am no longer allowed to work on any street lighting around the city at all. I cannot go out and look for outages and submit them anymore. This will lead to a quick return to the way many of the city streets looked prior to this under taking. I have been fielding at least two calls a day from citizens who want existing lighting in their neighborhoods fixed. My home number has traveled through the block watches and by word of mouth. I used to go out and meet with them, survey their neighborhoods, submit the outages and give them a copy of the work orders. I am no longer allowed to do this and I hope someone at the city will pick up where I have left off. It is very hard to tell someone you can't help them when you want to, know you can, and it is something that really is important to them. I have been forwarding these citizens to DPU but many of them called me when DPU; Toledo Edison, and other city offices didn't help them.

Respectfully,

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