Street-lighting repairs peak at 600 per month

By Brendan Grehan

AN average of 600 public lights were repaired in each month of 2016 by South Dublin County Council. In total, council workers repaired 8,097 public lights in 2016.

According to the council, the figures do not actually vary much from year to year.

However, they say there would be an increase over the winter months, due to the harsher weather conditions.

The local authority expect less repairs to be carried out in future years, as approximately 3,000 LED lights have recently been installed.

SDCC are replacing low-energy lamps across the county with more efficient/energy saving LED lights.

The rollout began in late 2014, when a new public lighting scheme was piloted at Greenhills Road before moving on in phases to other areas.

“It is expected that there would be less repairs in the future as the maintenance is less on LED lights,” said a council spokesperson.

SDCC hope the roll-out of the programme across the county will meet energy-saving targets of 33 per cent by 2020.

Meanwhile, the number of traffic light faults in 2016 was 1,009 – an average of 90 per month.

This represented a slight increase from 2015, which saw 901 traffic light faults – an average of 75 traffic light repairs a month.

A spokesperson for the council said: “In relation to traffic lights, the number of faults from year to year varies. In 2015 there were a total of 901 faults. In 2016 there were a total of 1,099 faults.

“The most common causes of faults are power cuts, knockdowns due to traffic accidents, blown lamps, cable shorts, weather damage, rodent and insect damage, and vandalism.”