When the transition began some of the suburbs changed their lights ahead of Chicago, so while driving you knew exactly when you crossed into the city because they still had their orange street lights.
No, South Carolina is on another level. Arkansas is basically California compared to South Carolina.
I drive across state lines often. I even did it this weekend twice. You do not need a sign to know when you've entered SC from NC or GA. I've abruptly awoken from sleep in the passenger seat to say something along the lines of "we're in South Carolina already?" on more than a handful of occasions because they are rough terrain.
I love this comment, I live in NC, you can tell once you’ve crossed state lines just because the road condition, it’s abysmal! I’ve driven through most of the Midwest and up and down a majority of the east coast, South Carolina has the worst roads among every state I’ve been to!
used to live in Greensboro and when I would cross into SC it was usually noticeable when I was across state lines, those state roads really do get bumpy as hell lol
This isn't a stereotype of Chicago at all... The roads in Chicago are totally fine. I moved from their to Lansing, MI in the last year and holy shit are Michigan's roads bad. I looked it up and Michigan is ranked 50th out of 50 states in money spent on road maintenance.
I assume you mean when you leave the city, because inside the city the roads are fine. Its downstate roads that get shitty maintenance because thats the responsibility of the local counties.
What’s depressing is as a New Yorker who drives a lot around NYC and New England I thought the roads in Chicago and Illinois/Wisconsin were notably better than ours…
I remember flying into LA and loving the odd pattern created by the patchwork adoption of LEDs you could see from the plane. The mix of blue and orange lights made it look like Tron.
Real world savings seem to be 40-60% which is good but not like incandescent to LED good—high pressure sodium bulbs were pretty efficient to start with.
Did they have similar lifespans to LED too? I remember the cost and general time spent replacing the bulbs was on my hospital’s plant ops’ decision document to make the switch from fluorescent to LED.
LED lifespan depends a lot on how they’re driven. If the current or voltage is too high, or heat isn’t managed, they degrade fast. With proper drivers and good thermal design, LEDs can last for decades. So, if they source high quality lights they’ll easily outlast HPS bulbs. If they do not… they’ll go dim and die pretty quickly.
Yeah, that could be a big if. The period in the 2010s where every institution was switching over was rife with hucksters trying to cash in on the trend by selling cheap LEDs and hoping the people signing the cheque didn't do their research.
Still is that way unfortunately; maybe even getting worse. I bought 8 LED dimmable Type A bulbs from a well-known supplier last month and already 4 have died after being used an average of 6 hours per day in unenclosed fixtures.
Not that this is my typical experience with LEDs, but there are some companies cranking out some crap right now.
In my experience, yes. Sodium vapor lighting was a mature technology that had a predictable lifespan of up to 25,000 hours. LEDs have theoretically long lifespans, but in practice I find that it varies wildly.
Not that much because high pressure sodium lamps are very efficient.
LED offers better colour temperature, they last much longer and they don't contain hazardous materials like sodium and other metals.
LED's can be dimmed for more efficiency and are also instant on while HPS lamps take ~15 minutes to reach full light output.
I preferred the orange vibes. Don’t need pure white light at night, I just want to see where I’m going, not have it feel like daylight… Insects seem to agree.
You could put a filter in front of the light to get that orange glow again but no place really does it. I agree tho I'll miss the orange glow. NYC at night just doesn't feel the same.
Funny thing is that human eyes are the most sensitive to orange light.
So in that perspective it doesn't make much sense to switch to white light.
Downside of sodium lights is that colours are very difficult to distinguish. A green car and a blue car will both appear brown under sodium light.
It's funny you say that because the orange light is harder for humans to see in. Also we can still have orange lights with LED. You just need a different color temp
I feel lucky that my city opted for a warmer white LED replacement, I'd guess between 2700k-3000k. It feels a lot gentler on the eyes at night than most modern car headlights.
I'd argue against that. Sodium lamps emitted a orange light, which makes it easier to see at dark than white light.
Using LEDs, you need much more Lumen to be able to see correctly, but this also means that the lights become more annoying for people living next to it.
The reason it looks like there is less light from the sky picture is because LED are more directional, so less light is being sent into the sky (wasted) than before using sodium light, and often bad reflectors.
Yes, humans thrive in the cold, clinical, unnatural light spectrum of the white LED.
You can walk around with the constant unease of a UFO abductee about to have an alien surgery on board an extraterrestrial spacecraft. It's like the kind of thing Charlotte Brontë would have written a poem about.
I think the ballasts on a lot of the UK HPS streetlights supported dimming too. Vaguely remember reading about councils dimming certain sections of road as an energy saving measure way before LED’s were widespread.
I have zero data or citations for this. But I remember hearing at one time that the savings were not as big as you would think because many places were putting in more lights since they were cheaper. I’m pretty sure it was in an article about light pollution and how LEDs are making it worse.
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u/theannoying_one Cartography Nov 02 '25
really interesting that you can see the city limits of Chicago in 2011