George Washington Bridge gets LED lights!

[jtr1962]

The GWB became the first bridge in the NYC metro area to have its mercury vapor "necklace" lights replaced with LED - link to article. The move is expected to save $5000 per month in maintenance and power costs. The new lights will last 15 years compared to only one year for the mercury vapor. Good move NYC!

 

[alpg88]

that is b.s.
tapan zee bridge is falling apart, but no lets not spend money there, lets decorate gwb. :shakehead

 

[jtr1962]

that is b.s.
tapan zee bridge is falling apart, but no lets not spend money there, lets decorate gwb. :shakehead

You don't understand, this is saving money, not spending it. Now maybe some of those guys who used to replace lights on the GWB can go and do some much needed repairs on the Tappan Zee. As for falling apart, that description applies to just about all the roads in NYC.

 

[blasterman]

At first I was shaking my head at the '15yr' claim, but if these lights are run 8-10 hours a day then it's totally reasonable.

Again, the power savings are negligible compared to HID, but it's the cost in maintenance that really matters. The guys who change the old MV bulbs likely have higher salaries than the engineers who designed the fixtures.

 

[Monocrom]

I always hated driving home from my last job on the expressway, just after Midnight. Always plenty of cars on the road, but large sections were dark as Hell because the city decided it wasn't worth keeping the overhead lights on. If the city keeps replacing the lights with LEDs, maybe that type of cost-cutting nonsense will become a thing of the past.

 

[JohnR66]

Why were they getting only a year of life out of the MV lamps? 4 or 5 sounds more reasonable.

 

[LuxLoverr]

that is b.s.
tapan zee bridge is falling apart, but no lets not spend money there, lets decorate gwb. :shakehead

tappan zee bridge belongs to nys, the gwb belongs to nj,ny port authority! david patterson opted for a raise for him and his crew. the tzb can be the responsibility of the next admin.

 

[alpg88]

I always hated driving home from my last job on the expressway, just after Midnight. Always plenty of cars on the road, but large sections were dark as Hell because the city decided it wasn't worth keeping the overhead lights on. If the city keeps replacing the lights with LEDs, maybe that type of cost-cutting nonsense will become a thing of the past.

those aren't the lights that will get replaced, it is the main suspension cable lights will be replaced, the necklace, as they call it.

 

[Monocrom]

those aren't the lights that will get replaced, it is the main suspension cable lights will be replaced, the necklace, as they call it.

Wouldn't be a bad idea to replace all of them.

 

[LuxLuthor]

This step makes sense and is a good use of LED's since they are not being used for road lighting.

The 156 L.E.D.’s — which provide the glittery aesthetics along the drape of the suspension cables and do not light the roadway.

If the govt was serious about saving money, they would remove them entirely, since they are a frivolous display of munincipal vanity. If private individuals with deep pockets want to pay for it, as happened with Boston's Zakim bridge lights, fine...but then I no longer live in NYC, so knock yourselves out.

 

[deadrx7conv]

We'll see how long they last in the real world.

A couple power outages, glitches, surges, and a few thunderstorms will roast the LED and its driver. I bet they won't last a year or 2 at most.

My question is, did they replace good non-burnt out bulbs with the LED? Gov't waste and YOU paid for it.

What I don't understand is why they don't replace/upgrade as required, instead of the massive replace all good & bad at once?
I can see the headlines now, massive retrofitting causing landfills to fill up with 'good' non-LED bulbs.

Rotating a few hundred LED bulbs into the regular maintenance to see how they react over time would be more cost effective and logical. If they work, then stop purchasing the mercury/sodium/incan/cfl/incan..... over time as they will all eventually be replaced with LED.

They sit their with their sales pitch and formulas and contracts and and and.....has the gov't ever calculated anything correctly?

I waited for my incan's to burn out before replacing them with CFLs. I waited for my CFLs to burn out before replacing them with LED, CCFL, or LVD bulbs. One at a time replacement, and I've learned that CFL's don't last as long as claimed and LED's run too hot in some fixtures.

 

[jtr1962]

Since they replaced the bulbs annually, they may have waited until the replacement cycle was up before installing the LEDs. As for MV bulbs only lasting a year, I really have no explanation for that. It wouldn't surprise me if they were using the lowest bid, and you generally get what you pay for. Or perhaps the bulbs were replaced annually just as a precaution. This is after all a mission critical application. You NEED these lights to keep low-flying planes and helicopters from snagging on the bridge cables. They're not just there to make it look pretty. I do know the lamps are enclosed to prevent damage. Maybe that shortens their lives. In the scheme of government "waste", something of this magnitude wouldn't even get on my radar, especially when it saves money in the long run. The city may also be using the GWB as a test bed for the LEDs it plans to use in streetlights. Better to know if it's a good design before you're committed to buying 300,000 or so.

Another thing to consider regarding buying "one at a time" is that these aren't off-the-shelf designs. Buying 5 would probably be almost as much as buying 156 because the design work has to be paid for regardless. Like I said, far worse things for the government to spend money on than something like this. This probably cost less than one of the MTA's or Port Authority's famous patronage consulting jobs.

 

[jtr1962]

Wouldn't be a bad idea to replace all of them.

It's in the works to replace all 300,000 or so of NYC's streetlights with LED, probably starting a few years from now. From what I understand, the city is throughly testing several designs before committing to one. This is a much more cautious approach compared to a few cities which jumped the gun, and ended up being burned. Also, the longer they wait, the more efficient LED technology will be when they finally do replace the sodium lights.

 

[Colorblinded]

Interesting, it's certainly a symbol for the city. Wonder what the LEDs they're using are like to get the same overall look. I hope they get the full 15 years out of it.

In some ways applying these to something vain like this is both going to annoy the crap out of people but might also be a good place to test the product before replacing all the street lights with the technology.

As for falling apart, that description applies to just about all the infrastructure in America.

There you go.

 

[Random Guy]

We'll see how long they last in the real world.

A couple power outages, glitches, surges, and a few thunderstorms will roast the LED and its driver. I bet they won't last a year or 2 at most.

My question is, did they replace good non-burnt out bulbs with the LED? Gov't waste and YOU paid for it.

What I don't understand is why they don't replace/upgrade as required, instead of the massive replace all good & bad at once?
I can see the headlines now, massive retrofitting causing landfills to fill up with 'good' non-LED bulbs.

Rotating a few hundred LED bulbs into the regular maintenance to see how they react over time would be more cost effective and logical. If they work, then stop purchasing the mercury/sodium/incan/cfl/incan..... over time as they will all eventually be replaced with LED.

They sit their with their sales pitch and formulas and contracts and and and.....has the gov't ever calculated anything correctly?

I waited for my incan's to burn out before replacing them with CFLs. I waited for my CFLs to burn out before replacing them with LED, CCFL, or LVD bulbs. One at a time replacement, and I've learned that CFL's don't last as long as claimed and LED's run too hot in some fixtures.

Actually, in situations like this where you have to pay a crew to go out and do the relamping, it can actually cost less to do group relamping instead of spot relamping.

 

[LuxLuthor]

Yeah, low flying planes would never be able to see the lighted towers or side lighting of the bridge spans. With the sparse 1 or 2 cars an hour, we don't have the tell-tale warning of moving vehicle headlights & red taillights traversing the GWB! Without question, the diamond necklace was installed solely for mission critical aircraft obstructive warnings, since we all know airplanes didn't exist before 1964.

There's nothing wrong with municipal vanity, but don't pretend this is a better solution than removing completely. Then, if desired, private donors could follow the lead of Boston's Zakim Bridge Lighting which somehow managed the airplane risk despite the more intricate spider web cable configuration during its tax savings blackout.

http://www.fortleeonline.com/gwb/trivia.html

The famous “diamond necklace” or necklace lights on the cables of the GWB consists of 148 mercury vapor lights. The lights were added to the Bridge in April 1964, and added a special glimmer during the 1964-65 World’s Fair that continues to this day.

http://nymag.com/listings/attraction/george_washington_bridge

The lights along the cables, or the “diamond necklace,” were added for the World’s Fair in 1964. Seventeen years later, in 1981, the bridge was designated as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.