[PRCo] Re: An (arguably) Interesting Comparison....

[Fred Schneider]

There must be a great story behind this.  Incompetence?  Kickbacks?

ktjosephson at earthlink.net wrote:

> rogertrolley wrote:
>
>  "Back in 1958 it seemed an achronism that it was that way,whereas you would
> think the big city would be far more modernistic than the small burg like
> Johnstown would have been !!!"
>
> This is neither Pittsburgh nor trolley related, so have your fingers on the
> delete key if you don't wish to see it (Derrick will slap me around
> later....)
>
> I grew up in a city which had a 1960s population over 700,000. Many of the
> surrounding small cities and towns (some with less than 5,000 people) began
> installing mercury vapor street lights in the 1950s. My city continued to
> install incandescent street lighting until about 1968. The city initially
> tried mecury vapor lighting on utility poles in alleys, though a number of
> private businesses, shopping centers and large factories had been using such
> lighting as soon as it became available.
>
> High pressure sodium lighting was introduced in the inner city long before
> the rest of the town was converted to mercury vapor. When some of the more
> affluent suburbs began replacing their mercury vapor and incandescent street
> lighting with high pressure sodium, many of their residents expressed fear
> that installing "ghetto lighting" would imply high crime and reduce their
> property values.
>
> To try to tie in the above with the topic of this forum, some of the Roberta
> Hill pictures taken along Route 85 in the Hill District show city crews
> replacing older incandescent lighting with new cobra head mercury vapor
> fixtures along Bedford Avenue and Wylie.
>
> I believe some of these are posted on Dave Mewhinney's Pittsburgh page.
>
> K.