Street Lighting Shows a Good Gain This Week
 

The tally this week

The Island’s street lighting has improved slightly since the outage rate reported two weeks ago, and considerably over the 41 percent outage recorded four weeks ago. (RIOC disputed the 41 percent figure, claiming that 7 percent of the lights, at most, were out. In response, The WIRE published a full catalog of Island street lights on Website NYC10044. The current chart, with some minor corrections, is available on line at nyc10044.com with this issue of The WIRE.) The proportion of street lights out at night now stands at 23.1 percent, based on a re-survey done this week, Monday through Wednesday, and informal observations last weekend.

The most noticeable improvement occurred between 40 River Road and the fire station. The most serious stretch of chronically lights out lies between the subway station and Meditation Lawn (just south of Rivercross). One pair of tall lights on the west side of the service road were observed last week to be cycling on and off slowly, as though the electric-eye control of each was responding to the presence or absence of light from the other.

One run of six lights in that same heavy-traffic area between the subway station and Meditation Lawn works sometimes but not at other times. This past Saturday and Monday, all were on except one at the south end of Meditation Lawn. But on Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights, all were dark when checked around 9:00 p.m. Reasons for these inconsistencies are unknown.