NY Going To Experiment With LED Street Lamps

Looks like NYC is going to start tinkering with LED street lights.  The lights are extremely long lasting (5X a normal bulb) and much more efficient than the current bulbs in use.

The only real difference to NY’s approach, other than the fact that they are being wimps about the implementation, is that they spent more money on fancy designs for the new lamps and poles.  The New York City Department of Transportation worked with the Office for Visual Interaction to design the fancier style lights… woo hoo.  For the time being they are only installing six streetlights.  If the program is successful they plan on doing all 300,000 of the city’s streetlights.

Likewise, the lamp posts are designed especially for the city, where all manner of signs and bills have to be hung off of them. To this end, OVI designed the poles to have different sections for different signs, and special contact points to hang them from.

This trend is not new… but it is a start in the right direction.  Ann Arbor, Michigan was the first city to go 100% LED for it’s street lamps.  See a video of that in action after the break.

[Via]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olF8PQgM4F0