11-12-13 | METRO TIMES NEWS | Lighting Authority Tries to Illuminate Detroit Let there be light. By Bryan Gottlieb ARTICLE HIGHLIGHT It’s the power grid that time forgot or, more aptly, that city government neglected to maintain. According to Fox 2, not a penny has been invested for upgrades in the city’s decrepit lighting utility in 40 years. With less than 10 full-time employees left to maintain the 1,800 miles of service lines serving Detroit’s sprawling city limits, residents shouldn’t be surprised that, by last estimate, 40 percent of the city’s 88,000 street and alley lights are inoperative. However, when Kevyn Orr, Detroit’s emergency manager, took up his posting last spring, he told city dwellers that getting streetlights back online were a priority. On Nov. 8, Orr began a multi-year task to do just that after crews began repairs and reinstallation effort in two city neighborhoods. Labeled as “pilot areas,” one of which is on the east side and the other on the west side, the newly re-skinned Public Lighting Authority began the work of relamping and rewiring the street lighting system. Odis Jones, the executive director of the PLA, which was formed early in 2013, said the areas are demonstration zones and that the project is expected to take three years to complete. The authority and its five-member board of citizen volunteers have set forth the goal of eliminating all outages as crews continue repairs as well as truncate the system to serve the current population. PLA says it plans to eventually maintain 46,000 streetlights. “We no longer have a population of 1.5 million, so the system has to be right-sized to meet the needs of today’s residents,” Jones told The Detroit News last week. The authority already has the funds to pay for the two demonstration areas, which have about 5,000 streetlights all together. That work is scheduled to be completed by year’s end. READ THE FULL ARTICLE @ LINK: metrotimes/news/news-hits/lighting-authority-tries-to-illuminate-detroit-1.1584454
Posted on: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 22:09:18 +0000
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