The City of Tulsa’s streets and stormwater department is getting ready to start in on a three-year-plan to add neighborhood street lights.
The city’s current budget included $25,000 for the work, which is intended to whittle down a backlog of requests that built up during a 10-year moratorium on new lights. The funds will go toward PSO’s installation work. The utility owns and maintains street lights in the city, which the city pays a fee for.
"For roundabout numbers, about $10 per month, so $120 a year per light, that gets us 150 foot of wire, a pole and a light fixture. If there’s not an available electric source close to that, then we have to pay whatever costs – if they have to set additional poles, if there’s a transformer needed," said Streets and Stormwater Director Terry Ball.
Ball's department and the Tulsa Planning Office are using a scoring system to prioritize the list of requests, with half the weight given to safety considerations.
"A lot of the requests in the past we got were people that had crime happening in their neighborhoods and felt like if they could get a street light added, that would help at least deter people," Ball said.
The concentration of car crashes involving bicycles and pedestrians are also considered in the safety portion of the score.
The scoring system also considers an area’s reliance on alternative transportation, proximity to things like shops and employment centers, and economic conditions.
The actual work may take some time.
"What’s going to delay this a little bit is we also have 144 lights that we’re installing as part of the Vision school safety money. So, right now, PSO is working on our 144 lights that we requested new around schools," Ball said.
Ball hopes to see lights start going in spring or summer.
