Streetlight repairs? Some of us would be happy to see some of them left broken...

Canberra lights clearly visible from the top of Mt Ainslie.
And a beautiful comet! Photo: Richard McDonald

It appears that Katy Gallagher is copping some flack about slow repairs of streetlights in the older suburbs of Canberra. And understandably so - some of the old "heritage" lights do very little for pedestrian safety. Even less when broken...

But it is precisely the opposite in any newer areas. We have lights on steroids. I can do the gardening at night time by the street lights. Literally!

And forget looking at the stars except in the back yard where the house partially shields some of the worst ones.

The worst of it though is that we can go up to any high point around Canberra and see virtually every street light. What's that about? Any street light so poorly designed as to project light upwards should never be installed - it is just wasting energy and taxpayer money for no benefit at all.

And yet, the LDA and TAMS continue to install exactly these poorly designed streetlights throughout every new suburb. "They conform with the Australia Design Standards" is the response - so what? They don't conform to the "see them from the top of a mountain" standard, which I think makes eminently more sense.

It's perfectly feasible to use streetlights that are designed so that all light is thrown only downwards over a sharply defined area - and not just streetlights. When I was a councillor in Queensland, we designed lighting for a new multisports complex surrounded by homes and under the final approach to the Sunshine Coast Airport. These lights were on 24 metre high towers and the lighting was to just one step below TV standard. Yet none of them were even visible when on from the surrounding houses, let alone from above. Wouldn't mind betting that won't be the case for the new Manuka lights!