When lights are in the dark
Graffiti-covered sensors keep Pasadena Freeway lamps lighted all day
It would be easy not to notice.
Once the impression has been fixed, though, it’s hard not to make a mental check every morning to count the days and wonder why the faux Beaux Arts gas lights on the Pasadena Freeway are burning 24/7.
It’s been about two weeks. How long exactly is impossible to say because there was no precise trip point that caused a couple dozen lights to stop shutting down, as they’re supposed to, at dawn.
The malfunction was not the result of a mechanical failure like a blown fuse or a wayward timer. Neither was it a bureaucratic meltdown, though a fix could have been made easily enough before The Times phoned Caltrans to ask, “What’s up?”
The explanation offered by Caltrans spokeswoman Yessica Jovel is that the modern electronics inside the 19th century-styled light standards was tricked by the lowest-tech form of mischief — graffiti.
A tagger got into the locked catwalk along the freeway and spray-painted over the photovoltaic cells that normally turn the lights on at dusk and off with the rising sun. As far as the lights know it’s perpetual midnight along that short, bucolic strip where the southbound Arroyo Seco Parkway arcs over the tunnels into downtown.
The graffiti attack, evidenced by the appearance of large, bold letters on the man-made rock wall that looms over the east side of the freeway, has been a rarity since Caltrans refashioned the parkway in 2010 using the period lights to restore some of the historic character of the city’s oldest freeway.
“Without putting in the original lampposts we had lampposts fabricated similar to the original design,” said Patrick Chandler, another Caltrans spokesman.
To discourage graffiti Caltrans planted a fastgrowing vine that quickly covered the concrete imitation rock wall in its tentacles.
Whether it’s the drought, or the vine’s life cycle ending, the surface of the concrete appears to be more exposed recently, creating that object that is irresistible to the street artist, an open surface visible to people every day.
Caltrans has the lampposts on its maintenance schedule, Jovel said. The lights should go out someday soon.