Wellington’s faulty streetlights pose a risk to residents

Residents in New Zealand’s capital Wellington have been urged to report “drooping” streetlights as the city council starts to fix its entire network of 17,000 lamps.

The council has revealed that its streetlights pose a risk to residents, with faulty adaptors – which were installed in 2018 – prone to snapping.

Seventeen lamps – which weigh more than 11kg each – have fallen to the ground over the last four years, a situation Mayor Tory Whanau said presented “a clear and unacceptable safety risk”.

“I urge anyone who sees a drooping light to notify us straight away and the council will fix the light within two hours of it being reported, weather permitting,” said the mayor.

Drooping lights

According to a statement from the council, the part at fault is an aluminium-alloy adaptor that attaches LED lamps to poles around the city.

The city says the adaptors are “not suited to Wellington’s strong winds, causing the lamps…to either droop or, in worst cases, detach and fall to the ground.”

Aside from the 17 lamps that have fallen to the ground in the past four years, 161 lights have been reported as drooping since the issue became widely known this year.

While 600 lamps have been fixed since the fault was first observed, the city now faces a huge task ahead in fixing all the remaining lights, which it said will take at least 12 months.

“We are working as hard and fast as we can to solve this issue,” said Wellington City Council Chief Infrastructure Officer Siobhan Procter. 

“Approximately 600 adaptors have been removed to date with more lights being fixed every day. 

“This work is currently being done by the Council’s maintenance contractors and we are going through a procurement process to get additional resource.

“The exact timeframe to fix the network will depend on contractor availability but it is absolutely a priority for us.” 

The council said it would cost around NZ$6 million (US$3.71 million) to fix all the lights, and it was seeking funding from the central government.

It will prioritise 3,200 particularly heavy lamps in high-wind areas.

What went wrong?

In 2018, the council began to change all existing high-pressure sodium lights to more energy-efficient and brighter LEDs.

The project had tight timeframes as the council was able to receive an 85 percent subsidy from the national transport agency Waka Kotahi for the project if completed by 30 June 2018.

Members of the public first reported the drooping streetlights in late 2018, with the manufacturer subsequently undertaking an investigation to determine the cause of the issue.

The city says the manufacturer replaced a number of broken adaptors free of charge as a “gesture of goodwill” but assessed that it wasn’t a widespread issue. 

Council staff were alerted again to the issue in October 2020 by maintenance contractors but still did not consider the faults to be a widespread concern.

Procter acknowledged that a number of lamps – between two and five – fell to the ground each year between 2019 and 2023. 

“It’s clear our processes at the time weren’t up to scratch,” Procter added.

“We’ve now made significant improvements in this area to avoid this issue happening again.

“Our community expects better, and we expect better.” 

Image: Wellington city council