Buffalo Rising Online

Wow... another great article! Way to focus on the City's pressing issues. I hope those who create the budgets at City Hall ignore all that needs to be done and divert our limited resources to replacing street lights!

I always felt that the nautical type of lights that are at the Erie Basin should replace the other overhead lighting. The different light heads in Delaware Park, Johnson Pk, Kleinhans neighborhood (LWS), Cary St should be used throughout the entire City. From what I understand street lighting should light the street and add a decorative element also.

Tbone, who says they can't do both?

This absolutely deserves to become an urbanist cause celebre - these lights are a form of blight in an urban area, like chain-link fencing, superhighways, and (to borrow David Torke's term) Vinyl Victorian homes.

Funding for streetscape improvements (including conversion of streetlights) can come from a state program called multi-modal, available through a community's state legislator (assembly or senate). But neighborhoods are well advised to go through a participatory planning/visioning process first, as several neighborhoods in My Fair City have done prior to requesting funding. As a result of this planning, they have not just gotten more attractive lighting, but other streetscape improvements including sidewalk widening, textured crosswalks, bumpouts, and custom features such as neighborhood-specific light pole medallions or street signage.

These improvements to community design and infrastructure don't cost a lot (compared to most public infrastructure projects) but go an incredibly long way - with a multiplier effect - toward neighborhood identity, increased property values, and revitalization.

In the Brooklyn neighborhood that I lived in we had both. The decorative lights were paid for by the neighborhood and the overhead street lights by the city. Unfortunately, when something, happened to one of the decorative lights, there was no money to fix it so it would just sit there twisted or rusted or burned out or whatever. I am not in any way suggesting a similar arrangement for Buffalo. I am just pointing out that I've seen incongruous lighting downstate as well.

no one is expecting the city to wholesale up and change but as streets are redone and new fixtures needed for repairs or replacements it would be nice to see them phased in here and there. The way idiot drivers take out the lights on Delaware Ave S curves those could be redone without any extra cost by summer's end.

While I agree that the Cobra lights are ugly....we can't even maintain what we have now.....get a good maintenance program now tracking everything from graffiitti on public bldgs to benches (there is graffiti on a few benches on Hertel, there is a broken decorative bench), there are dead plants in the medians on Main St........have a database, get kids from the Juvi lockups to do cleanup with the assistance of city workers to cut costs to taxpayers......then once you have that under control, worry about these other matters/

Franky,

We already have that system, it's called CityStat. And when Brown isn't out having his photo taken he would love to drive over to your house in his 24/7 take-home car and tell you how that is the reason there has been $127 trillion worth of development downtown on his watch.

Though it may be true that "automobiles are equipped with lights for lighting the street ahead of them," you can't seriously believe that street lighting is meaningless on city streets, except of course for the safety of pedestrians. Have you ever driven on any streets outside of the city? Though your headlights are a nice commodity, they are cetatinly not sufficient to help drivers see people walking in the street. And there are some neighborhoods where it seems culturally acceptable to walk in the steet, despite the fact that there is a perfectly available and beautiful sidewalk at the pedestrians' disposal.

Many of the streets downtown (West Tupper, Whitney, Prospect, Rabin Terrace, Georgia, etc.) have seeem a move from the overhead so-called "cobra" lights to the prettier park-type "lighting standards." The only problem is that many of these new lights are at just the right height to be blinding to drivers. So not only do they not help pedestrians in the street to be seen, but they actually make it worse. They are pretty cute though.

I've always wondered why my block of Norwood (between Utica and Bryant) is the only one with cobra lights. It's like they purposely left us out. Oh well. And here's another thing that's always bothered me. What's up with the ugly little concrete median with gigantic streetlights on Shoreham Parkway (off of Delaware near Hertel). Did someone really think that looked nice?

such snobs

r129 - Shoreham Parkway is part of a small 1920s subdivision that played off the parkway/English garden movement at the turn of the century. It once had a much wider planted median -- similar to other earlier examples along Argyle Park, Chatham, and Fordham. However, unlike these more upper middle class counterparts (which often have associations which charge $$ to homeowners for landscaping the median), Shoreham and surrounding streets ultimiately were developed with more working class single- and double family residences. Over the years, the median fell prey to disrepair and weeds and was often viewed more as an obstacle to parking and snow removal. When the City reconstructed the street in the 1980s, the reduced the median to what you see today (that's where the electrical lines for street lighting were) and bumped up the size of the lighting for "safety". So much for english garden movements.

I grew up in that neighoborhood -- we'd always joke about how the elegant names of the streets (Shoreham, Cheltenham, Stratford, Camden, Hartwell, etc.) didn't really match the modest incomes of the residents...

AreUKiddingMe, have you ever drove down most of the side streets in Tonawanda.. There are NO street lights, things seem to work just fine... Downtown and some denser city commercial streets would warrent them for traffic / aesthetic reasons but most streets in the city would be just fine without them.

If you can't see a person walking in the streets with your headlights maybe you are just driving to fast to begin with...

Have I ever driven down most of the side streets in Tonawanda? No, I can't say that I've had the pleasue. I have driven down most of the streets on the West Side of Buffalo, however, and can tell you that the overhead street lights there are worthwhile. I can also tell you that the shorter decorative lights are, at times, blinding. The last time I went around that L-shaped curve on West Tupper, between Carolina and Virginia for example it felt like I nearly burned out my retinas (retinea?) just from trying to keep my eyes on the road.

The English Garden movement of the 1920's can be seen all over the Buffalo area especially in first ring suburbs. In Tonawanda, the Deerhurst Park development is one example. In the neighborhood mentioned by P525, the lot sizes had a lot to do with limiting the homes built there. I makes me wonder to whom the developers were marketing. They must have had great curb appeal at the time and the location was good. Argyle Park seems to have wider lots and a wider street. It survives today as a more fashionable address.

Street-lighting is one of the most important issues of urban life that there is. It matters tremendously. As the Washington Post architecture critic Wolf vonEckhardt said many years ago, modern street lights "may deter crime, because they deter any life at all." Paris is perhaps the most over-lighted city in the world, but it doesn't "feel" that way because the lighting (and the thought process behind it) takes into account the total scope of urban living, and not just people speeding along in cars.

proprty values proprty values proprty values

why is this such a difficult concept for Buffalonians to grasp

Im grateful for Buffalo being down to earth and real (buffalo is not a snobbish class oriented city like say rochester) but that doesnt mean buffalonians dont have any sense of style