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NEWS
Huntington street light maintenance brightens
HUNTINGTON -- More lights are shining on Huntington's core downtown streets than a year ago, and city officials attribute that to an improved maintenance program.
The Herald-Dispatch sent out reporters Tuesday night to see how many street lights were not working in the area bounded by 3rd and 5th avenues and 8th and 11th streets. They found that about one in 10 -- or 19 of 202 street lights altogether -- were not lit.
That's a sharp improvement from December 2007, when a similar survey found that about one in four street lights in the same area did not work.
Keeping the street lights working is important to people who are in the downtown at night, city officials say.
Charles Holley, the city's director of development and planning, said the number one concern expressed by Marshall University students, downtown residents and business owners during the public comment period this year for the Old Main Corridor project was installing more lighting to provide a safer downtown atmosphere. That project involves retooling 4th Avenue between 8th Street and Marshall University with new traffic lanes, sidewalks and landscaping.
"If we don't do anything else, we knew we had to put in more lighting," Holley said.
Steve Riggs, supervisor of the city's traffic engineering division, said the lower number of inoperable street lights is due to a regular streetlight maintenance shift scheduled every few months and recent repairs made by city workers while putting up holiday lights.
The streetlight maintenance shift, from just before nightfall to about midnight, was implemented by former Public Works Director Chuck Cornett following last year's survey of street lights by The Herald-Dispatch.
The survey area has two types of street lights. One is a square-shaped light that sits on the end of a tall, brown pole. These lights, known to city officials as "shoebox" lights, date back to urban renewal efforts in the 1970s and are maintained by the city.
The other type is a black, antique-looking light that lines 3rd Avenue and 9th Street. These newer lights have been put up in the past four years as part of streetscaping work in the downtown. Maintaining them is a joint effort of Pullman Square and the city.
Of the 103 shoebox lights in the survey area, 17, or 16.5 percent, are not working. In last year's survey, 36 percent of those lights were not working.
By contrast, only two of the 100 newer lights are out, a ratio similar to last year.
The shoebox lights that were not working are scattered across the survey area, though there are a few concentrated pockets. For instance, eight of the 21 lights on 5th Avenue between 8th and 10th streets are out, while three of the four lights at the intersection of 8th Street and 3rd Avenue are not working.
The two newer lights that were not working were on 3rd Avenue between 10th and 11th streets.
Riggs said the five-man traffic crew recently replaced wiring in a number of shoebox lights around the city that were discovered to be broken when they were putting up holiday decorations. Each shoebox light, Riggs said, has a plug for holiday decorations. While putting up the decorations, Riggs said the traffic crew completely or partially rewired street lights and/or installed new plugs in 35 shoebox lights.
A number of other shoebox lights were given new bulbs and cleaned out during the placement of decorations.
Recently, Riggs said, someone stole the copper wiring from one of the lights on 5th Avenue, which could have affected some of the other lights in the area.
Riggs said he was already aware of the broken lights in the survey and said he planned to dispatch a crew to dig up the affected areas and replace the wires and conduits that might be damaged.
"Different companies don't check with the city's street department before they dig up the ground, and then we get a call that the lights are out," Riggs said. "A backhoe does real easy damage to (a conduit)."
He added "Even the ground shifting could be enough to break (the conduit)."
One area where the downtown is darker this year is the section of 4th Avenue -- between 8th and 10th streets -- now under construction for the Old Main Corridor project. The old lights were removed for the work, and new ornamental lights will be installed as part of the project, which officials hope will be done by the end of this year.
Holley said he hoped the city could implement new technology that replaced the older high-pressure sodium light bulbs with new LED street lights. The new energy-efficient lights potentially could save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in energy costs, he said.
Holley noted that the city already is making strides to update the city's traffic signals. The city received a grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission to replace the signal lights in the Wayne County portion of the city because the county is designated by the ARC as a distressed area, Holley said.
It costs about $200,000 a year to operate those traffic signals now. It will cost approximately $20,000 with energy-efficient lights, Holley said. There is a bigger project in the works that replaces all 110 signals in the city with LED lights over the next two years.
Holley said the city has just begun getting information about LED street lights and said once the technology is proven to provide efficient lighting for pedestrians and energy-efficiency for the community, the city will look into the LED street lights. He hopes in the next few years to replace all of the old shoebox lights.
