[PRCo] Street lighting

[Bob Rathke]

Sodium and mercury vapor street lights are a great way to identify the city
limits of Chicago, and to see where the suburban communities start.  From an
aircraft, it's very apparent where the sodium lights (Chicago) end and the
mercury lights (suburbs) begin.

And from the ground in Chicago, you see an orange glow in the sky at night,
while in the suburbs the sky has a faint blue glow.

Bob 4/28/04

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----- Original Message -----
From: <ktjosephson at earthlink.net>
To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2004 3:45 AM
Subject: [PRCo] An (arguably) Interesting Comparison....


> 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 Rober
ta
> 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.
RR