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Dec 02, 2023

Wellington’s falling street lamps: 17,000 at risk of failure

Share this article Wellington City Council’s plan to stop new street lamps

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Wellington City Council's plan to stop new street lamps shining into people's homes has resulted in a more serious problem – lights crashing to the ground, with the potential to cause serious injury or death.

Now, 17,000 LED lights have been deemed at risk of failure, with 17 having already fallen and 161 being reported as drooping.

Every adaptor in the lights will have to be replaced, hopefully within the next year, starting with the 3200 street lamps which are most at-risk.

The risky ones are the heaviest (11.2 kilograms) and are located in high-wind areas.

Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau said the situation presented a clear and unacceptable safety risk.

"I urge anyone who sees a drooping light to notify us straight away, and the council will fix the light within two hours of it being reported, weather permitting."

The saga started in 2017 when the council installed 17,000 more energy-efficient and brighter LED street lamps across the city.

In the process, there was some concern the new lights would cause glare issues for nearby homes because of the city's hilly topography.

So the council developed a part for the lights called an aluminium-alloy adaptor. This connects the lamps to the pole, allowing for a greater degree of tilt to control any glare.

But the plan failed to take into account Wellington's strong wind, causing the adaptors to fail prematurely.

Former city councillor Chris Calvi-Freeman raised the issue earlier this year after he noticed several missing lamps and, upon closer inspection, saw the posts had wires hanging out of them and jagged metal.

He was stunned when he then discovered a heavy street lantern on the ground.

"The chance of you being under it is pretty slim – they’re not falling like the morning dew – but if one hit you on the head you’d be stone dead, that's it. They’re six metres up, it would kill you outright."

But this was not the first time the council had been made aware of the issue.

Council staff were alerted by members of the public to the drooping lamps in late 2018. This was brought to the attention of the manufacturer, which replaced the broken adaptors free of charge but determined it was not a widespread problem.

A red flag was again raised in October 2020 by maintenance contractors, but again the failure was not thought to be widespread.

Wellington City Council chief infrastructure officer Siobhan Procter it was clear processes at the time were not up to scratch.

"We’ve now made significant improvements in this area to avoid this issue happening again. Our community expects better, and we expect better."

Procter was made aware of the problem only when it hit the headlines in February this year.

The council commissioned engineers to stress-test the fixtures, revealing the adaptors were unsuitable for Wellington's windy conditions and were fatiguing over time.

The testing also showed that, contrary to earlier assessments, all 17,000 adaptors have the potential to fail.

Procter said removing the adaptors was a top priority and 600 street lamps had already been fixed.

"This work is currently being done by the council's maintenance contractors and we are going through a procurement process to get additional resource. The exact timeframe to fix the network will depend on contractor availability but it is absolutely a priority for us."

It's expected the work will cost $6 million. The council wants Waka Kotahi New Zealand Transport Agency to pay half, and the council will cover its share by borrowing money.

As for the glare, council transport and infrastructure manager Brad Singh estimated about 10 per cent of the street lights being fixed might result in glare complaints.

"However, at this stage, the health and safety risk posed by the street lamps is probably our greatest concern, and so we’re going to prioritise that."

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