There’s no denying that streetlights are essential to the well-being of communities. They play several key roles in improving the lives of residents, increasing driver and pedestrian safety, improving security, preventing crimes, promoting economic development, enhancing accessibility, and strengthening the sense of community. Despite the key role that they play, community engagement around streetlight services often leaves much to be desired.
Streetlight outage reporting process is almost always a cumbersome task with plenty of room for error. If someone reports an outage using their address, by calling 311 or entering it manually on a web form, there can be multiple lights near that location. Some utilities require folks to report outages with a specific pole ID, which is not only difficult for the customer, but can also create more problems. Pole tags are often damaged or missing, and people simply make errors. The result is expensive, wasted truck rolls to the wrong locations, where crews replace the wrong fixture. Even if they somehow end up at the correct streetlight, replacing a fixture blindly often just wastes money and doesn’t fix the problem, for example, if it’s a bad photocell, power supply or other issue.
Fortunately, the industry is moving towards smart, connected LED streetlights. Problem solved, right? Not so fast. First, many cities and utilities miss the opportunity to engage the community on this energy-saving, carbon-reducing, vastly better lighting deployment. Citizens and businesses simply want to be “in the know”. When are my lights being upgraded? When will crews be working in my neighborhood? What are the benefits to the community? Secondly, many organizations have deployed smart LED streetlights without taking advantage of them to transform their operations. The lights work smarter but the people are still using paper forms and old school applications that don’t even talk to their streetlight network.
Whether the focus is improving outage management or converting to Smart LEDs, below are three examples of organizations that are doing the right thing to get on the same page with their communities.
Earlier this year, Philadelphia recently won a Smart 20 Award at Smart Cities Connect for making this connection with its citizens and businesses, using the TerraGo web-based Community Engagement Module. TerraGo’s deployment and community engagement software is being used on the Philadelphia Streetlight Improvement project, which is converting 130,000 legacy HPS streetlights into a network of more efficient, longer-lasting LED lights. With the TerraGo interactive community map, citizens can see which lights have been converted, where crews are working and when the lights in their neighborhood will be converted, improving community awareness, engagement and satisfaction with this important program.
Likewise in Nashville, the Streetlight Retrofit Project is a collaboration between the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County (Metro), Nashville Electric Service (NES), and Tennessee-based Path Company, retrofitting over 55,000 streetlights across the Music City metropolitan area to enhance driver and pedestrian safety and generate system-wide energy savings. Again, these organizations have made the right moves to engage the community on the project with a web portal that answers all their questions and provides an interactive map from TerraGo, so they can see the program’s progress and when their neighborhood lights will be upgraded.
Another outdoor lighting leader and pioneer, Georgia Power manages close to a million streetlights in its service territory. In order to streamline its engagement and improve services for the communities it serves, Georgia Power provides an interactive map that makes it as simple as a click of a mouse or a tap on the phone to report an outage, easily, accurately and efficiently.
Transitioning to smart streetlights doesn’t automatically make outdoor lighting maintenance and operations more efficient or help engage community stakeholders more effectively. But interactive community streetlight maps are another opportunity to use modern technology to work smarter in ways never before possible.
