By Arthur Foulkes
TERRE HAUTE — Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett said he is not concerned about switching the city’s traffic lights to energy-efficient LED lights despite some problems with the high-efficiency lights in cold-weather states.
Across the country, many cities and state highway systems have replaced old-style incandescent light traffic light bulbs with LED lights, which use about 80 percent less energy. Terre Haute recently received a federal grant to change all of its traffic lights to the LED-style.
Although cities can save tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in energy costs annually by switching to the light-emitting diode — or LED lights, the lights do not burn hot enough to melt snow and ice that sometimes covers them. Authorities in Wisconsin, Minnesota and other cold-weather states have reported dozens of motor vehicle accidents and one death associated with an obstructed LED signal, according to media reports.
But that should not be a problem in Terre Haute, Bennett said Thursday, because it takes a snowstorm combined with strong winds to obstruct the lights.
“There’s really not much of a problem in this area,” he said.
The State of Indiana already has installed many LED traffic lights on U.S. 41 in Terre Haute and elsewhere with no reported trouble, he said.
“A lot of cities have been doing this,” Bennett said. “We’ve not received any information that it is a problem.”
As part of the first federal stimulus package, Terre Haute is receiving $617,700 from the U.S. Department of Energy to replace all of its old-style lights with LED lights, Bennett said. The change will save the city between $250,000 and $300,000 annually in energy costs, he said.
There are other advantages with LED lights.
“They burn much brighter,” said Toni Mayo, communications director for the Indiana Department of Transportation, which has been working to replace all traffic lights on Hoosier state highways to LED signals for the past six years. Mayo also said that LED lights have six-year life spans, which is much longer than the 18-24-month life span associated with incandescent traffic light bulbs.
Bennett said the need to change the old-style light bulbs in traffic signals is “constant.”
The LED traffic lights also come with meters to measure their electricity use, Bennett said. They also can be more easily programmed to improve traffic flow, he said. “These are much more sophisticated than the old lights,” the mayor said.
Arthur Foulkes can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@tribstar.com.
