Poorly-Lit Streets

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 772, 19 September 1929, Page 8

Poorly-Lit Streets

City Faces Huge Annual Bill

AUCKLAND CITY bow spends £32,000 a year in street lighting, and when a scheme is shortly undertaken to illuminate the streets of Tamaki and Avondale, the annual expenditure will be raised to the vicinity of £40,000. Sooner or later the complete relighting of Queen Street must be faced, but in the meantime the only new work to be executed in the immediate city is the installation of suspended centre lamps in Grey’s Avenue.

Parts of Queen Street are singularly ill-lit. The lamps have been in use for many years, and a reinstaiiation is recognised by the City Council to be desirable. But with an annual bill of close to £40,000 for street lighting alone, the engineer’s department will not recommend any heavy expenditure in this direction at present. A system of community lighting was suggested recently as a solution of the Queen Street problem, but the opinion of the general manager of the Auckland Electric-Power Board, Mr. R. H. Bartley, is that it would not be practicable in any big city without the complete co-operation of all the business men in the area to be covered. Community lighting is particularly suited to small towns, where shopkeepers are agreed upon a group of verandah lights, and where a flat rate is charged for the use of the current. But for a city such as Auckland, the idea which appeals to the electric supply authorities is one of ornamental illumination, operated largely upon the lines adopted in Broadway, New York, and in many other big cities abroad. BUSINESSMEN’S ATTITUDE Figures have actually been submitted to the council officials showing the approximate costs of installing in Queen Street attractive standards fitted with powerful lamps, but in view of the fact that many places in the City area are without lights altogether, this work must be delayed for some time. The majority of Queen Street shop owners do not favour the community system of keeping their premises lit up at night, and moreover, the attractive rates offered by the Auckland Electric-Power Board for window lighting until late hours have not been adopted by them with any outstanding display of enthusiasm. As Mr. Bartley makes clear, the wholehearted support and co-opera-tion of business people for a community lighting system is readily obtained in small towns, but in the city it has been tried without much success, principally on account of shop-

keepers requiring to light their windows instead of the footpath, as they consider that the footpath lighting is the function of the municipal authority. It is necessary, however, that several of the City streets shall have adequate lighting. One of the most pressing is Grey’s Avenue, where suspended centre lamps, similar to those used on the Victoria Embankment, London, are shortly to be installed. Side standards would .be quite useless in this avenue on account of the lines of heavy foliage on each side of the street, but the centre lamps will give a touch of brightness to one of the most badly-lit parts of the City. BADLY-LIT SUBURBS In the outer districts, too, several places art in urgent need of street lighting, among them Avondale and Tamaki, the two latest additions to the City. A report is being prepared upon the desirability of carrying out this work, and if the recommendations are adopted by the council the street lighting account will be increased by several thousands of pounds. It is suggested by a correspondent that Queen Street, from the wharf to the Town Hall, should be lit on the community system, and that such a proposal would make the City’s main thoroughfare more attractive for strangers in the evenings. Such a proposition is fraught with difficulties, however, because there are many gaps in the line of Queen Street shops, and it would be too much to expect the owners of banks, insurance companies and offices without front-window displays, to light their premises simply in a spirit of public generosity. The patriotism of the business man has simply not reached that state of beatitude. Queen Street, it seems, must retain its black patches until the whole lighting system is overhauled. That, in the words of the acting-City Engineer, Mr. J. S. Tyler, will be "when we can get ahead of requirements in streets where there are at present no lights whatever.” L.J.C.