BRITAIN’S streets are starting to look as gloomy as its finances. North Yorkshire started switching off street lights in the middle of the night earlier this month and wants 60% of its lights to go off between midnight and 5am. Shropshire, which began its “part-night lighting” programme in June, hopes to extinguish two-thirds. This will save money. Hertfordshire, which is reducing operating hours for about 70% of its lights, thinks the scheme will cut energy bills by 35%, saving £1.3m ($2m) a year.
Darker streets in the small hours frustrate night workers and inconvenience clubbers. But many groups welcome blacker nights. Lovers of wildlife reckon street lights confuse owls, bats and moths. Stargazers enjoy respite from a sky-obscuring orange glow. And all-night lighting is bad for the overall environment. Street lights in Devon account for around a third of the council’s carbon emissions.
Residents worry that cuts to late-night lighting will encourage crime. But illumination can deter criminality as well as increase it. “Burglars need light,” says Kate Painter, a criminologist. Cars parked under street lights are more often broken into, since thieves can spot valuables left inside. And darker streets encourage noisy revellers to disperse quickly, thinks Mark Burrows, a lighting expert. Academics at Cambridge University found that dimming lights in Cornwall by 25% had no effect on crime; police in Bristol, Watford and Essex all report fewer offences in some areas where lighting is reduced.
Yet fear of darkened streets may trap people in their homes. Mike Simpson of Philips, which sells lighting gear to councils, worries that overzealous cuts risk creating a “fortress society”. Ms Painter says that investment in lighting makes people proud of their neighbourhood, and encourages them to take better care of it.
Smarter solutions are available. New kinds of street lamp provide better light for around 20% less energy. Wireless controls will soon allow managers in Westminster and Coventry to brighten or extinguish lights remotely as needed. Bulbs in the Dutch city of Tilburg dim automatically when no pedestrians are present (Richmond, in west London, has something similar). And residents in some German towns can switch on local street lights using their mobile phones. But such innovation is beyond the means of most British councils, some of which operate lights that are more than 50 years old.
A few places are rolling back cuts. Councillors in Milton Keynes have voted to relight streets, for fear of rising road accidents. But a broad reversal is unlikely. Part-night programmes take about four years to introduce and two to three years to pay off costs. And because timing is normally controlled by widgets installed in each light, rather than remotely managed, U-turns would be costly. Bob Mizon, an astronomer and campaigner against light pollution, thinks that Britons have lived with excessive illumination for so long that few notice its harmful effects. They will have plenty of time to get used to the dark.