We just noticed that the city’s Bureau of Street Lighting — part of the the Department of Public Works — has been installing LED street lighting in Melrose Village. So far they have been installed on the side streets in our area. As of today, they’ve not yet been changed on the main commercial streets, such as Melrose Ave. and Beverly Blvd.
The new lights are flat and contain 30 or more separate white LEDs. (See the pictures below.) The new lighting will last years longer than the older mercury vapor, metal halide, and high pressure sodium lights. But more importantly, the new LED lights use less than half the power of the older lights. This not only saves money in power generation, but also significantly reduces the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from generating that power.
According to the Bureau of Street Lighting’s October 27th report (just last week), 571 of these new LED lights have been installed in all of Council District 5 so far. Based on a quick walking survey, quite a few of these appear to be in Melrose Village.
We’re glad to see this move into the 21st century in our community. For more information on the program, see the LED page on the Bureau of Street Lighting’s website.
Thank you so much to the city and Melrose watch for making Melrose Village a much safer place to walk the dog. The street lights both north and south of Melrose are now much brighter and will give us all peace of mind not to be walking in the dark any longer. This is an area of many dog owners. Although many dog owners never walk their dogs (sad and heartbreaking but true). Most of us do.