Can a Traffic Light Help Lower Your Taxes?
Caught a beautiful late-summer sky recently at the corner of N. Monroe and Fairfax Drive (sorry for the low quality of the cell phone camera). But there's a little environmental beauty in the foreground, as well:
Arlington County has retrofitted more than half of its signalized traffic intersections with light-emitting diode (LED) traffic lights. These LED traffic lights are brighter and only use 25% as much electricity as traditional traffic signals. LED traffic lights also last ten times longer than incandescent bulbs, so the maintenance cost of these new signals is sharply reduced. All of our traffic signals will be LED lights by 2010, saving enough electricity to power about 250 homes.
Info comes from the Arlington Fresh AIRE site. The electricity savings are only a tiny fraction of Arlington County's total power usage, but the cost and maintenance savings will really add up. Always nice when the right environmental move and the right economic move converge!
Caught a beautiful late-summer sky recently at the corner of N. Monroe and Fairfax Drive (sorry for the low quality of the cell phone camera). But there's a little environmental beauty in the foreground, as well:
What about the county turning off many of the useless outdoor street lights? Light pollution is a problem.
ReplyDeleteMany major streets and highways in Arlington are lighted far too much, wasting electricity. I have an extremely bright light just outside my house in Arlington and tried to get the county to turn it off or reduce the wattage. They said No.
For example, cut off every other light on I-66, and make it like GW parkway. Columbia Pike is lighted up too much already with many commercial lights, turn off the county street lights.