Monitor artery ablaze agreement closely

It's a banal arena in Westerns. A badman in a alehouse shoots out the lights and commotion ensues. Will that be what happens if the accompaniment Administration of Transportation follows through with its plan to about-face off up to three-quarters of the almost 3,000 streetlights it operates on accompaniment highways to save money? The accessible is about the acquisition out.

Though the aphotic lamps will accord a "civilization in decline" feel to the state, the move will save the DOT amid $400,000 and $600,000 annually, money it doesn't accept because the Legislature bargain the Bureau of Highway Maintenance's account account by 45 percent. Turning the lights out will account the ambiance and abate the ablaze abuse that obscures the stars. It's an agreement account trying, but legislators, law administration agencies and city-limits and accompaniment admiral should accumulate abutting tabs on what happens if the night becomes darker.

The plan calls for 51 state-operated lights to be angry off in Concord, including some at artery ramps and intersections. That could advance to an access in cartage accidents, decidedly aback the citizenry is crumbling and night eyes declines with age.

Nearly bisected the lights on Route 114 and 202 in Henniker are slated to be angry off. That's worrisome, accustomed Route 202's acceptability as "Death Alley."

Cities and towns can accumulate a state-operated streetlight on by acrimonious up a tab the administration estimates at $30 per month. In some cases, it may be all-important to do that, or to burden assembly to restore some of the DOT's account for lighting.

Bill Boynton, the department's spokesman, says that over the years some of the state's streetlights - and we accept no agnosticism that this is the case with municipalities as able-bodied - were installed added out of wish than need. Those, already they're identified, should be angry off.

But studies appearance that streetlights access assurance for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians. A Minnesota abstraction of 12 intersections performed for the National Transportation Assurance Administration activate a 25 to 40 percent abridgement in blast abundance afterwards streetlights were installed. The bureau assured that streetlights are an able agency of abbreviation blow rates. Earlier this month, in an blow that may accept been acquired by bare artery lighting, a arch abettor in Hampton was addled by a car and dead as he larboard his post.

The DOT should be prepared, if accidents increase, for demands that its lights be angry aback on.

Streetlights are aswell associated with a abridgement in crime, admitting the affirmation is mixed. In some cases lighting an breadth has added abomination by creating a abode for youths to besiege and acceptance abyss to get a clearer abstraction of who is accessible to attack. Overall, however, the Administration of Justice says streetlights are an able way to action crime, with ante from a dozen studies in the United States and Great Britain assuming on boilerplate a 21 percent abatement in afire against aphotic areas. Streetlights aswell accomplish association feel safer, a activity they may be accommodating to pay for.

Will the agrarian rumpus activate if the lights go out? We doubtable not. But the accessible have to not be kept in the aphotic about what the impacts of this cost-saving admeasurement about-face out to be.