Are Durham’s new LED streetlights too bright? It may depend on where you live.

The new LED streetlights gleaming across Durham drew the ire of hundreds of residents who live in a cluster of neighborhoods near downtown.

Some residents in historically Black and brown neighborhoods, however, like the lights for their safety or don’t mind them as much, say a City Council member and a long-time resident of East Durham.

The city’s response to complaints over lighting may show a disparity in how some quality-of-life issues receive more attention than others, said council member Mark-Anthony Middleton in an interview with The News & Observer.

“There are some residents and citizens in our city who are dealing with way more than light. That’s gunfire,” Middleton said. “You know, that deserves as much if not more attention and as vigorous a response from their government.”

In an effort to reduce the city’s carbon footprint and make the streets safer, the City Council last spring agreed to switch roughly 21,000 streetlights from high pressure Sodium (HPS) bulbs to energy-efficient, light-emitting diode (LED) fixtures.

The city’s transportation department received “approximately one” complaint per week for the first 15 months of the project, totaling 65 requests.

It’s now getting about 20 complaints a week, with 220 complaints total as of Nov. 10, according to Sean Egan, director of transportation.

After hundreds of complaints at the beginning of autumn, Mayor Steve Schewel sent a 1,000-word email to residents in October explaining why Durham changed the lights and why changing back would be too costly.

The areas with the most residents vocal about the issue are Duke Park, Old North Durham, Old West Durham, and Watts-Hillandale, neighborhoods with active listservs, or group email lists, said assistant transportation director Bill Judge.

Complaints and solutions

Residents unhappy with a streetlight’s glare shining through their windows can ask the city to install a shield on the lamp.

But requests to remove or reduce a light’s wattage must receive support from the Durham Police Department. Since 1997, the DPD has determined brightness levels at specific locations to increase visibility and reduce crime as part of the Brighten Our Streets policy.

About 33% of Durham’s 21,000 lights have bulbs over 50 watts, the city standard, based on “safety and visibility needs,” Egan said.

Rhonda Klevansky suspects the streetlight in front of her house is one of those roughly 7,000 lights with increased wattage.

It’s so bright, she said, it makes her want to move.

“You can’t walk around the neighborhood now in comfort unless you put on a broad-brimmed hat,” said Klevansky, who lives in Watts-Hillandale and has read similar complaints on her neighborhood listserv.

She said she has put up black-out curtains, but light peeks in around the fabric’s edges.

“There’s nothing we can do,” she said.

Lighting up streets for safety

Aidil Ortiz, who has lived in East Durham since 2003, said “the lighting hasn’t particularly been an issue” for her and may help residents on side streets feel safer.

“I feel like they could use visibility to keep folks from like, kind of hiding in some of the shadows,” Ortiz said. “Mostly not necessarily doing violent crime, but doing petty things that just bring down a sense of safety for people. Especially if they’ve got kids.”

Middleton said he doesn’t want the public to get the impression that all residents oppose the lights.

“I’ve seen a number of Black residents in the city say they appreciate the increased security, that it makes them feel,” Middleton told The N&O.

Residents in Braggtown or Northeast Central Durham have thanked the city for the lights, he said.

“They feel safer,” he said.

In his letter to residents, the mayor said Durham installed roughly 1,000 new LED lights between 2014 and 2019 with “very few, if any, complaints.”

When he approved city-wide installation, he was thinking about reducing energy consumption, the absence of complaints for the 1,000 lights, and public safety, he wrote.

“Over my years on the council, and as mayor, I have heard from many people — especially in neighborhoods which experience significant gun violence — that they want improved night-time visibility which these lights could provide,” he wrote.

Middleton hopes the city will bring “as much intensity and ingenuity and creativity and resources to bear” to the issue of gun violence in Durham as it has to LED lighting.

“It’s costing us money to fix the light issue,” he added. “It would cost us nothing for six months to see if ShotSpotter could help us fix the gunfire issue.”

ShotSpotter offered a free, six-month trial of its gunshot-detection system to the city in September. With the exception of Middleton and council member DeDreana Freeman, a majority of Durham’s City Council appeared to reject the offer.

Are the lights safe for traffic?

Although most cyclists tend to take “the responsibility of being seen” upon themselves by wearing headlights or reflective clothing, adequate lighting is important for biker and pedestrian safety, said John Tallmadge, executive director of Bike Durham.

He also thinks the level of brightness necessary for safety depends on location.

“It’s going to vary street by street,” Tallmadge said.

The city should have taken a neighborhood-by-neighborhood approach and assessed the needs of each community, he said.

Klevansky doubts whether the new LED lights are safer for commuters in the city.

When she drives up some of the hills in the neighborhoods near downtown, the lights at the top of the slopes blind her, she said.

“You cannot see anything in the shadows,” Klevansky said. “So if a dog, cat, deer, person, (runs) in front of you in the shadow, you will not see them. You will knock them down.”

Ortiz said people in East Durham usually ask for speed bumps and more lighting in order to feel safer walking outside.

“For people who are coming home late at night, you know, from shifts and things like that, it does feel better to come home to a well-lit area,” she said. “You can get up your stairs safely and, you know, make it from your bus stop home safely.”

“I think we need to consider the experience of lots of different people, and not just the person who’s tucked safely at home,” she said.

This story was originally published November 17, 2020 at 3:09 PM with the headline "Are Durham’s new LED streetlights too bright? It may depend on where you live.."