New LED Streetlights Continue To Bother Residents

The new LED streetlights installed in Windsor Terrace and Kensington earlier this year have lead many in the neighborhood to complain.

Although the energy-conserving lights are supposed to save the city millions of dollars annually on energy and maintenance costs once installed across the city by 2017, neighbors say the bright blue lights remind them of a film set or a prison yard.

Novelist Lionel Shriver, who lives in Windsor Terrace for part of the year, recently weighed in about the LED street lamps in an opinion piece for the New York Times. She encouraged residents to call 311 to ask the City to limit streetlights to no more than 3,000 Kelvin, install shades on the lamps, or find a way to dim lights in residential areas.

Shriver says,

As currently conceived, the D.O.T.’s streetlight plan amounts to mass civic vandalism. If my focus on aesthetics makes this issue sound trivial, the sensory experience of daily life is not a frivolous matter.

What do you think about the new street lamps? What do you think the city should do?