Beginning on Monday, the City of Barrie will be flipping the switch and going green when it comes to street lights.
The city plans to change 10,660 light bulbs across the municipality with brand new LEDs. The city’s manager of energy says he can't wait for Barrie's big makeover.
“Street lighting tends to be a big expense in a municipality. People maybe don't think about that, but it's our largest single bill that we get is street lighting,” says Barry Thompson. “We pay in the neighbourhood of $1.4 million a year to light our streets.”
Changing the lights is a big investment too. The project comes with a $5 million price tag, but city staff and council members believe the long term benefits make the conversion worthwhile.
“Those cost savings are going to be significant, $11.5 million over 10 years, plus the fact that we are reducing our greenhouse gas emission by 546 metric tonnes. That's huge,” says Ward 7 councillor John Brassard.
Lori McCauley lives on the street where the city has been testing out LED lights for the past couple years. She says they've worked well.
“Definitely better and if it's going to save money then that's good for me,” she says.
It takes just over 20 minutes for crews to modify and convert one street light and while that's considered to be pretty fast, people should anticipate traffic delays as work is being done.
To minimize the impact for drivers, the city has been divided into four zones. Work will only happen in one zone at a time.
“Each zone is expected to take four weeks to complete. So there should be roughly about 16 weeks of work, so we are trying to limit the impact on congestion based on the staggering of the lights,” says Brassard.
Work crews estimate they will be able to convert 1,000 lights a week and if all goes according to plan, those lights won't be changed again for another 20 years.
The decorative lights downtown will stay the same and won’t be converted. The project is expected to be completed by the fall.
