Another 4,500 street lights in Buckinghamshire to be upgraded to LED lanterns

LED street lights at Abbey Way in High Wycombe.

Transport for Buckinghamshire has announced that a further 4,500 street lights in Buckinghamshire are to be upgraded with LED lanterns.

The continuation of the TfB county-wide street light replacement programme over the next few months will see a further 4,500 old style sodium lanterns replaced with the more environmentally friendly and longer lasting Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) lanterns.

More than 12,000 street lights in Buckinghamshire have been converted to LED technology over the past five years. However some lights, mostly in residential areas, are still using the old style lamps recognisable for their deep orange colour.

Low pressure Sodium lamps have been widely used since the 1960s but have gone out of favour in recent years as their running costs are relatively high compared with LED technology and the quality of light poor.

A TfB engineer examines one of Buckinghamshire’s 30,000 street lights.

Mark Shaw, Buckinghamshire County Council Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Transportation, said: ‘LEDs are more environmentally friendly, they reduce light pollution, and they last for much longer which saves money on energy bills and manpower.

Please bear with us while this programme is rolled out as some of these street lights may have been out for some time as we have been in the process of moving to the new lanterns.‘

The last remaining manufacturer of low pressure sodium lamps, Philips Lighting, has now announced that from September 2020 it will discontinue the production of the low pressure sodium lamps.

LED street lights in Lower Road, Stoke Mandeville.

Broken street lights, both the old style or modern LED, can be reported on the Buckinghamshire County Council website  at http://www.transportforbucks.net/report-it-street-lighting.aspx.

Existing street lights which are currently not working and not in the new LED programme will be prioritised for repair by TfB using a risk based assessment.