Here's another update on main road SOX in the south Hampshire urban area, broken down and described a bit more.

Road improvement schemes:

M27 Junction 5 - a handful of Philips MA50s (approx. 4no.) on Stainton hockeystick columns still survive on the Stoneham Lane spur to the roundabout. The rest of the old lighting at the roundabout was removed in the past couple of weeks as part of the junction improvement scheme, so these MA50s are on borrowed time.

Asda Havant Roundabout - a handful of old columns with Philips MA50s and Relite Hyperion 135s still survive on the Hulbert Road approaches to the roundabout. Meanwhile, a fair amount of SOX featuring the likes of Eleco GR150s, Philips MA50s and Relite Hyperion 135s still survive on the western Purbrook Way approach to the roundabout. At the current stage of roadworks it seems the SOX may still be with us for a good couple more months.

Whiteley Way - GEC Z9555 "Bricks" still survive on their tapered steel CU Phosco columns on the dual carriageway section of Whiteley Way and the Rookery Avenue/Parkway roundabout. The widening scheme on Whiteley Way has not yet commenced, but is due to start imminently, and due to the nature of the widening the old lighting on the dual carriageway section is likely to be removed early into the scheme.


Other locations with a quantity of SOX

Charles Watts Way - a small handful of SOX lanterns, GEC Z9554Ms and Philips MA50s, survive on PetitJean hockeystick columns to the west of M27 Junction 7. The majority of existing columns in the road have had SON casual replacements over the years. This road was originally destined to have its lighting replaced in 2011, but programming of works by SSE has never been their strong point.

Hulbert Road (Waterlooville) - the Tempest Avenue/Frendstaple Road roundabout and its immediate Hulbert Road approaches are still lit by a good amount of GEC Z9554Ms and Philips MA50s on Stainton hockeystick columns. A replacement scheme on Hulbert Road to the west of this roundabout finished off within the past couple of weeks, missing out this roundabout. Being able to replace all lighting in one street in one go has never been SSE's strong point.

Newgate Lane - this is the last known publically maintained road in south Hampshire to be lit with 90W SOX. South of Tanners Lane there are significant numbers of GEC Z9454s on slimline S&L columns with large cranked brackets, along with Philips MA90 casual replacements. There is also a solitary Eleco HW509 on a chunky, older style S&L column, plus a solitary Phosco P157. This road's street lighting is now the greatest blast from the past when it comes to main road lighting.

Purbrook Way - replacements have been in progress for approaching a month. This road features lanterns such as Eleco GR150s, GEC Z9554Ms and Philips MA50s on older S&L columns and slightly later (late 1970s) Stainton columns. In the past couple of weeks SSE have only achieved about one-day's worth of work, so the works are dragging on with limited progress. Replacing lighting in a brisk and timely fashion has never been SSE's strong point.


Lone SOX survivors

Botley Road, North Baddesley - along with a pair of Urbis ZX3s, a solitary Philips MA50 survives on a mid-1970s Stainton column just west of Rownhams Lane. The last three columns on this road, which are around some overhead power cables, have been missed out, as it would appear they are missing from the street lighting inventory. Either they were missing from the inventory inherited, or when the crews replaced the rest of the lighting missing the ones around the power cables (renumbering columns in the road in the process) they updated the inventory incorrectly. Doing a thorough job with lighting replacements and reporting any problems or anomalies is not a strong point of SSE.

Segensworth Road - from Witherbed Lane westwards towards the Segensworth Roundabout, in amongst a number of Urbis ZX3s, a Philips XGS104 and a Relite Aries, a solitary GEC Z9554 survives on a PetitJean hockeystick column. The old columns around the Witherbed Lane junction were missed out from replacements when the Witherbed Lane gyratory system was built in 2008, most likely due to the overhead electric cables above them.


And that's it! Main road SOX still survives in a few places in Portsmouth, and there are a handful of stragglers on the Highways Agency network and on private land and private roads, but that's all.

Well its all change in both Chichester and Horsham.

In Chichester between the railway station and Waitrose, the shared footpath / cycleway has gained Libras which have replaced the GEC lanterns that were there previously (some joker had even stuck a smiley face on the bowl which had survived for at least a good seven years). One of the side streets, couldn't find the name but it is just off South Street the former AC Ford installation has been replaced with another Libra.

Up in Horsham and the GEC "Turtles" and Alpha 3 combis on North Street have been obliterated with the ghastly Iridium however the GEC "Fishbowl" on the roundabout outside the railway station remains. No change in the town centre which retains its Albanies.

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From streetlighting to radio, dance through the night whilst the streetlights are glowing outside.

It had been assumed by Sotonsteve and myself that this GEC Z5590 that was pictured back in October (and entered for photo of the season) and others in the church grounds of St Mary's church in Southampton were privately owned.



However, when we went past yesterday, this example and the others had all been replaced by square side Victorian style lanterns on the same columns, presumably as part of the PFI.

Hi all,

We are seeing some councils commencing major relighting schemes, as in Herts & Essex, by going straight to LED instead of SON or MH. The South Coast PFI began way before LED became popular and mainstream, if the SC PFI began this year then I don't believe we would see Iridiums on main roads, most likely Lumas.

If the SC PFI decided at some point to go LED, it could be costly to replace every luminaire so would retrofits be more economical? As the majority of main road luminaries in Hants & W Sussex are Iridiums, I am wondering if LED optics would be fitted into the existing luminaries. The Iridium2 has a LED optic available then this optic could also fit into the original Iridium design as there are no Iridium2s as far I know installed by the SC PFI.

What does anyone think?

Jake

I suppose it could depend on contractual arrangements. As LED street lighting has become more mainstream the benefit to cost ratio has improved, and pay back times of LED easily fall within the contract period. In cases, councils are paying PFI contractors to upgrade to LED, as even though the existing lighting is new, with a payback of around 8 years it is seen as money to be saved. There is the maintenance element as well as the energy cost.

If the South Coast PFI were going LED, I'm not sure what order they would go in. For example, the Libras are pretty low energy anyway, but the lamps they use require more regular replacement. Meanwhile, the Arcs and Iridiums are higher energy, but the lamps last longer. My suspicion would be that Iridiums would be replaced outright if LED upgrades were happening. If Arcs and Libras were being upgraded, they may just go for gear tray/optic swaps.

At the 11th hour when tenders had been returned for the SC PFI (but no contract signed), it was realised by the councils that an all SON option was unaffordable in terms of energy costs. The tender was therefore revised to use "white light" on the majority of residential streets (as that's where there are the most lanterns).

Further energy savings are realised by the use of dimming outside peak traffic hours.

The Libra also has the advantage of low cost compared to a LED lantern and low lamp costs.

As a result the cost saving is not so clear cut compared to other regions, and given the capital investment as already mentioned.

Therefore the saving by changing to LED is mostly driven by lamp and labour costs for re-lamping.

Whilst I wouldn't say never for mass LED for Hants and West Susssex, its not likely in the short term.

The core investment period of the South Coast PFI has ended, but works to upgrade street lighting in Southampton, Hampshire and West Sussex have not wiped out existing installations like envisaged, following on from trends seen in earlier PFIs. The question is what happens now?

The Southampton and Hampshire elements of the PFI were to feature a central management system to remotely control and monitor all of the street lights in these areas. This should have seen all lanterns in these areas replaced, or in the case of some heritage and modern lanterns upgraded internally. The roll out of the radio frequency nodes has been haphazard, even though the parent company to the PFI is also the parent company to the control system company. Sometimes new lanterns were installed complete with nodes. Sometimes new lanterns were installed with photocells, with return visits made to retrofit nodes. A number of new lanterns have been installed with photocells and no return visit has been made to retrofit photocells. Sometimes whole streets lack nodes, sometimes it's just a proportion of lanterns in streets, and sometimes it is just random lanterns. The network of "connected" lanterns is far from complete, and those that remain to be connected aren't all CMS ready, as not all old lanterns on existing columns have been replaced yet.

Aside from existing lanterns not being replaced on some columns being retained, there are a number of installations that have dropped off the inventory. Whilst some of this may be down to the information being incorrect prior to the PFI, there definitely appears to be a sizeable element of incorrect updating of the inventory. As an example, the replacement crews may replace all of the columns in a street, but miss out the last couple because a different column type is required which isn't in stock. Rather than this being flagged up, it appears replacements may have been noted as being complete when not, with the old installations deleted from the inventory prematurely, suggesting they no longer have responsibility for them.

Of course, whilst there are old columns the PFI deny they are responsible for, there are a number of old columns that they acknowledge responsibility for which have not yet been replaced, including heavily corroded 1960s steel columns and concrete columns. Lazy contractor syndrome has also saved a few old columns, whereby columns marked with the fateful "X" or "141" have been retained and had lantern swaps, and no doubt marked in the records that column replacement has happened.

Mopping up time. Will the PFI contractors get the central management system fully operational, making easy pickings of remaining old lanterns on modern columns to be retained in the process? Will the remaining old columns be replaced in a timely manner? And will they identify the significant gaps in their inventory in a timely manner before complaint from residents or, worse, structural failure of abandoned assets?

In actual fact the 36/55w PL/L lamp used in the Libra lanterns have a better life span than the alternative Cosmo. In this case the argument for a vastly more expensive LED version of negligeable wattage saving could be unfounded.

The south coast PFI has (generally) not been changing columns/lanterns fitted to bridges. I therefore assumed that this was the reason that this Philips MA50 still survives on the A327 at Fleet in Hampshire. However, GSV clearly shows that the column is mounted in the embankment, so perhaps this forgotten 135W SOX will live on a little longer!

During the last weeks of the PFI, Philips LED floodlights replaced the existing SON versions in the pedestrianised part of the High St. This example has 64 LEDs in rows of 8. It is unclear why the old installation wasn't removed.

This example has additional rows of LEDs, giving a total of 96 LEDs to enable it to create a different beam pattern.