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The city of Philadelphia announces that they will replace all of the city’s streetlights with bulbs that are energy efficient. The city currently has around 130,000 streetlights, so they have set a 2-year plan to make the changes city-wide. The city has decided to make this change to both light up high-crime neighborhoods with brighter lights and lower the electricity used by the city.

The city has had the project in the books since 2016, getting funding from the Philadelphia Energy Authority. According to their research, they anticipate a 10% reduction in the city’s carbon emissions. If they are successful in seeing the project through to completion, it will be the city’s largest energy-saving project ever. They do not plan to add any additional streetlights, rather just change the ones they currently have.

The energy-saving bulbs that will be put into use are LED lights.

LED lights are light-emitting diode lights. They use less energy than the current high-pressure sodium lights that are currently in the streetlights. Along with the swap that will occur, the crews sent to work on these will also install technology that will be able to remotely keep tabs on the lights and know when there is an outage.

The financial savings that the city will have from the lower electricity usage will cover any debt that the project will create. The city is outsourcing the project to have the construction done by contracted vendors.

Since the pandemic, issues related to the streetlights have increased. More residents have filed complaints regarding broken streetlights throughout the pandemic than ever before. The city also failed to renew a contract for the maintenance of the lights, which led to an increase in broken lights.

Because of all of the broken streetlights, there has also been an increase in traffic and pedestrian accidents.

By updating and repairing the lights the city is hoping that they will reduce the number of accidents. They also hope the brighter LED bulbs will illuminate the streets in a more efficient way that will act as a deterrent for crime.

City council members have spoken on behalf of the residents of their areas, saying that this project is not something new, but rather one people have been asking for, for quite some time.

The local government leaders and people of the city are very happy to see the project finally coming to fruition and being worked on.