Stroll through the streets of Los Angeles and look up. Take a moment to notice the streetlights and think about how street lighting plays a major role in our everyday lives. With approximately 220,000 streetlights that have more than 400 styles, the Bureau of Street Lighting illuminates two-thirds of the roadways and sidewalk areas in the City of Los Angeles.
Since 2006, the Bureau of Street Lighting has been solely responsible for all maintenance work of the streetlights in the City. In the last year alone, Bureau of Street Lighting crews repaired nearly 38,000 streetlights. As a result of a dedicated workforce, efficient response times, and new technologies, the Bureau maintains approximately 99% of the City’s streetlights operating normally at any given time.
Street lighting is woven into our streetscapes and provides public safety, security, and visibility for motorists and pedestrians. The streetlights that you see every day help to enhance the character of our communities and add a beautification element within the public-right-of-way. For these important reasons, the work that is being done by the Bureau of Street Lighting to maintain and repair streetlights is an integral part of making Los Angeles livable and safe.
The Bureau is responsible for five maintenance districts throughout various areas within the City of Los Angeles. Maintenance and repair work includes fixture or lamp failure, circuitry failure, post damage and vandalism to streetlights or pullboxes. Through an interactive GIS mapping system, the Bureau of Street Lighting can track all its streetlights and associated attributes, such as pole type, circuitry type, lamp type, and history (from installation to maintenance). This technology is utilized by MyLA 311 to assist with reports on streetlight outages or other issues and then sent to the Bureau of Street Lighting’s field operations team for crew assignment.
The City’s street lighting system continues to evolve from the conversion to energy-efficient LED fixtures to the installation of the first SmartPole streetlights in the nation. The Bureau has installed remote monitoring units on streetlights that report when a streetlight is malfunctioning. This is another way in which technology is being utilized to maintain and repair streetlights, sometimes, before the public even notices an issue. In the future, the Bureau of Street Lighting hopes to use new technology to incorporate other sensors that will provide valuable information regarding the noise, air quality, motion, or other measures that will be beneficial to Angelenos and further improve livability in Los Angeles.
For additional information on the Bureau of Street Lighting, visit bsl.lacity.org. To report streetlight issues, call 3-1-1 or submit a request online.
