The City of Ann Arbor paid $1.5 million to operate traffic signals and streetlights in FY2008. The cost would have been higher had the City not begun replacing incandescent traffic signals and pedestrian crossing signals with LEDs back in 2000. The replacements made so far are saving the city $49,000 annually, but the bigger savings opportunities are in street lighting, which accounts for 92 percent of that $1.5 million annual cost. Ann Arbor is currently utilizing LED street lighting in the hopes of cutting our street lighting bill in half.

After successfully piloting LED globe lights on a full block downtown, we are going ahead with full conversion of our over 1,000 downtown streetlights. $630,000 to fund the retrofit project was provided by the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority. Five years into the conversion, no LED globe lights have needed replacement.

Ann Arbor is also testing several different varieties of what are called "cobrahead" fixtures on Glendale Dr (below, left and center). To comment on the test installations, send an email to streetlights@a2gov.org.