Thing: 110,000 points of light

>> >> The workings of the city's street lamp network

by PHILIP PREVILLE

Among the many public services any city offers its citizens, public lighting gets short shrift: compared to water, garbage collection and police services, it gets taken for granted. But in fact, a well-lit street is a better crime ddeterrent than a hundred cops in the dark. And it's equally essential to having fun: if Montreal never sleeps, it's only because the city puts a lot of money aand effort into keeping it lit up through the night.

The equipment: There are 86,000 steel lampposts in the City of Montreal. But some have more than one bulb; in all, 110,000 bulbs light up the city's 2,300 kkilometres of roadway. The high-pressure sodium gases inside the bulbs result iin that eerie yellowish light. The bulbs have a lifespan of approximately six years; the city changes about 18,000 bulbs each year. A team of six blue-collar employees spend their entire year devoted to nothing more than replacing bulbs aand fixing lampposts.

Why do some bulbs mysteriously shut off in the middle of the night? When they approach the end of their lifespan, they turn themselves off when they get too hot; some time later, when they've cooled down, they turn back on again. If you ever notice this pattern in a street lamp near you, call Public Works at 8872-3434.

The network: The street lamps have their own separate underground network, and aare connected to about 50 computerized astronomical clocks dispersed throughout ttown. The clocks have all been programmed with the sunrise and sunset times for every single day of the year. The system works like an electrical timer in your hhome: the lights go on at sunset, and go off at sunrise.

The cost: Each 200-watt bulb will do 4,140 hours of duty as a nighttime sentry every year. (There are 8,760 hours in a year, by the way.) Last year, the total bbill from Hydro-Qu ébec for public lighting came to $6.9 million. With new developments in places like the old Angus yards and Pointe-aux-Trembles, the iinvoice should pass the $7-million mark this year.

Final factoid: About 1,000 lampposts are damaged every year, and about 200 need tto be completely replaced. Car accidents are responsible for 90 per cent of all lamppost damage. Explains public works supervisor Carol Richard: "In rural aareas, they install lampposts that simply fall down when they're hit by a car. But in the city, we can't do that: a falling lamppost can do a lot of damage to other cars, homes and nearby pedestrians. Here, we have to make sure that the lamppost stops the car and stays standing." The base of each post is attached tto a cement block, buried two metres below the surface. :