Turn up the lights, say residents
First it was just two streets in Miramar and Lyall Bay, now 60 streets in Tawa have brighter street lights.
Wellington City Council’s Transport Infrastructure team confirmed the street lights have been bumped-up from 50 per cent brightness to 100 per cent.
A Tawa Neighbourly post on the suburb’s lighting drew 115 comments - the bulk complaining they were dim, which spurred residents to send complaints to the council.
Cr Malcolm Sparrow said there was a total of 145 streets in Tawa and he wouldn’t be surprised if the council received a list of 100 streets.
‘‘Wherever you go 50 per cent brightness seems to be pretty pathetic.’’
As streets have been reported across the board of Wellington, he suggested the council dial the whole city up.
‘‘I’m no professional, [but] it would be sensible to turn them up somewhat even if it was to 70/80 per cent and if you do get some complaints about it being too bright you can turn them down,’’ he said.
He expected there would be fewer complaints over brighter light than dim light.
Transport Infrastructure team leader Kevin Turner said they wouldn’t be brightening the entire city but would deal with complaints as they came in, as lighting was sufficient in many cases.
‘‘Where residents report that the lights seem too dim, we are responding to that by brightening the lights and we’ll continue to do that,’’ he said.
Where Tawa residents had raised issues with lighting, the majority of those have been brightened, he said. ‘‘There may be a handful of lights that are still at 50 per cent brightness but we are looking to address them over the next few days,’’ he said.
Tawa resident Peter Hyde said he disagreed with the council’s approach. ‘‘It shouldn’t really be up to the residents to kind of whinge about it to get something done.
‘‘Turn them all up, they’re virtually nothing at the moment it’s just not good. It’s a no brainer just turn them up a wee bit.’’
‘‘I don’t like the fact that our cars are outside and people can interfere with them without being seen. It’s kind of negating the whole point of lights,’’ he said.
Tawa resident Judith Schwass said she felt unsafe pushing her wheelie bin out at night, and thought it was best to brighten all streets to avoid similar issues.
‘‘I’ve started putting it [the bin] out a bit earlier actually and my neighbour is the same … since they’ve put the lights in there is some really dark dark places,’’ she said.
Tawa resident Shirley Clover understood the concern but liked the lights. ‘‘It’s not as bright, but I don’t mind that because our bedroom faces the front and my husband says he doesn’t feel the lights are intruding into the house too much.
‘‘The problems in our street is the lights aren’t close enough ... there’s not enough poles,’’ she said.
‘‘It shouldn't really be up to the residents to kind of whinge about it to get something done ... Turn them all up, they're virtually nothing at the moment.’’ Tawa resident Peter Hyde