America going back to dark ages - cities removing light poles

[soulcougher73]

ROFL. So they cant pay the electric bill but they can pay people to remove poles.

/facepalm

Just leave them turned off. No need to remove them LOL Morons

 

[soulcougher73]

More cry-baby bullsh*t from OP. Detroit isn't "America". Go Troll OP about make-believe house thefts.

/geography fail

Last i looked Detroit was a big city in Michican, which is a state of the US.

It may be a shit hole of a city, but it is part of America.

Troll calling the OP a troll. Hypocrisy at its finest right here folks.

 

[Zebo]

I hardly think turning off street lights is a major concern relatively. There are cities paying 75% of their revenue just in retirement and can't even afford current cops and are WAY understaffed on many critical services.

 

[soulcougher73]

Actually you make a great point perhaps without realizing it when you said "history". Detroit has been going down the drain for years, even as the rest of the country has not. It's more or less detached from the reality the rest of us exist within, a city that is synonymous with decay. There are other major US cities that continue to grow and do fine, of course.

So are you, but we still call you American

 

[Genx87]

I realize this and also realize that Detroit was one of the most important manufacturing cities in the U.S for most of the 20th Century.

I also realize that if the GOP had their way and let Chrysler and GM go down the tubes the ripple effect over the whole U.S. manufacturing and support system would been catastrophic. If you think downtown Detroit is a shithole now just imagine what I would be if the GOP's wet dream AKA destroying private Unions came to fruition.

The decline of the American auto industry was due to many factor imo such as Incompetent management and N.A.F.T.A .

Dont forget shitty products and too high costs due to regulation and unions.

An Democrats have run Detroit for decades.

 

[Modelworks]

Sounds like a good idea more cities should follow. I always thought it stupid to light up all the streets in a city all night long. There is no point to it. If you are worried about security on your property then you should be paying to light it up. Some larger cities are consuming 6MWatts per hour on just street lights.

 

[MovingTarget]

I'm a big proponent of "Dark Skies", so this is a bit of a bittersweet development. However, I do realize that streetlights do serve a public safety role. It is quite sad that they shut them down for budgetary reasons. We can reduce light pollution (and energy use) drastically from streetlights without removing them entirely.

 

[1prophet]

ROFL. So they cant pay the electric bill but they can pay people to remove poles.

/facepalm

Just leave them turned off. No need to remove them LOL Morons

Get scrap metal prices now and when the city wants to restore lighting, new poles at current prices plus labor to install.

 

[Anarchist420]

I think removing street lights is actually a good idea because the market can work its way around the removal of street lights and to the benefit of most. They should auction off the roads also and never regulate them.

 

[Megatomic]

This is happening all over. I spent some time on my local town board of supervisors this year and every time a request was made for more street lighting it was voted down unanimously.

 

[Fear No Evil]

I think often the electric company owns the poles and lights, so those saying the city paid to remove them or they should have left them should realize its probably like you dropping cable service and them coming to pick up their equipment. It doesn't make sense to have your customer drop 80% of the service and just leave a bunch of lights/poles out there rotting away all of which would probably still need to be maintained so they don't fall down/electrocute people anyway.

 

[MovingTarget]

This is happening all over. I spent some time on my local town board of supervisors this year and every time a request was made for more street lighting it was voted down unanimously.

Out of curiosity, why were they so against street lighting?

 

[Megatomic]

It's a small town with numerous rural roads. The cost of the power for the lights was too much. Energy costs are high in NY.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

I guess the last person to leave Michigan no longer needs to worry about turning out the lights

 

[CPA]

My subdivision does not have lights or stop signs, and we prefer it that way. Our subdivision is out in the country and our lots are an acre or bigger. So it keeps with the country feel. It's awesome to be able to see the stars at night.

 

[IronWing]

My subdivision is pay-to-play wrt street lights. There is a pole w/ light a few yards from my house. Anyone who wants it lit can pay the electric bill for it. It's been fifteen years since anyone wanted it lit bad enough to pay for it. Most folks prefer the stars.

 

[Sinsear]

1. No one cares about Detroit
2. Dave, when are you leaving for Somalia?

 

[McWatt]

1) For an astronomer like myself, this is kind of exciting. If they replace them in the future, hopefully they do so with directional lighting, which is much more efficient than the usual spherical emitter nonsense.

2) I live a few hours from Detroit. Having visited different parts of the city several times, I can say that the perspective held by inexplicably angry people on the internet isn't very accurate. Yes, Detroit is a troubled city, but it's absolutely recognizable as an American urban center. There are very nice parts, very bad parts, and in between parts. The balance between those is weighted more heavily toward the very bad than in a city like, say, New York or San Francisco, but they still clearly face the same issues and have the roughly the same responses.

 

[Jaskalas]

America going back to dark ages - cities removing light poles

Again no surprise here.

Lights require electricity, and last I checked you were a devout warmist afraid of CO2. You should be thanking the city for reducing their carbon footprint. Thanks to them the earth will be habitable again!

 

[rcpratt]

I dunno about Chicago, but turning off the streetlights along I-94, I-75 or The Lodge in Detroit woud probably cause carjackings to increase tenfold. Not to mention highway traffic deaths due to actual Car Wars.

Detroit is That Bad.

[edit] I grew up in Michigan, but if I were ever to revisit, I'd take US-23 up through Ann Arbor before I'd ever take I-75 up through Detroit.

I would never drive through even the outskirts of Detroit with out-of-state-plates on my car.

Ya feel me?

Give me a fucking break. You couldn't possibly exaggerate more.

They're not removing lights along the freeways anyways.

 

[Nintendesert]

I don't know why the freeways need to be lit all night, cars have headlights. At the very least the lights should be on motion sensors, the lights around me are like that and are off until someone drives through. We have way too much light pollution.

 

[bigi]

Since when does Detroit even remotely resemble America?

In case you don't get it, Detroit looks like a future America. You can quote it when you catch on.

 

[ShawnD1]

It wasn't always this way. But when the debt-ridden community could no longer afford its monthly electric bill, elected officials not only turned off 1,000 streetlights. They had them ripped out -- bulbs, poles and all. Now nightfall cloaks most neighborhoods in inky darkness.

LOL that is so fail. Instead of just leaving the poles there, let's pay people thousands of dollars to rip them out.

 

[Jaskalas]

I don't know why the freeways need to be lit all night, cars have headlights. At the very least the lights should be on motion sensors, the lights around me are like that and are off until someone drives through. We have way too much light pollution.

Light bulbs can only be turned on / off so often before they expire. I think under your idea they'd be flipping on / off all the time.

 

[PingSpike]

The Electric company removed not just the lights but the poles themselves.

They were aluminum and they sent them to China for scrap metal price.

It's always about the money.

I'm surprised some of the more industrious residents of Detroit hadn't already performed this service already!