Assessment of road lighting changes on energy usage and driver behaviour and support for EU numelite project

Completed

Energy Efficiency(Other)
Not Energy Related

Applied Research and Development

SOCIAL SCIENCES (Business and Management Studies)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (General Engineering and Mineral & Mining Engineering)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Civil Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting
Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Policy and regulation)
Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Technology acceptance)

Project Contact
TRL

Standard

DfT

28 February 2003

31 December 2005

34 months

£298,217

Transport

South East

DfT Traffic Management

Project Contact, TRL

It has long been established that lit roads reduce the number of night time accidents, but there is little known about the threshold of lighting level where this becomes effective. Various highway authorities are already considering using lower lighting levels. There are also claims and limited research to suggest that lower lighting levels can be used if light which is spectrally closer to white is used. The publication of a new European Standard for road lighting may encourage more highway au thorities to light roads in different ways to established practice. This research is to help determine how far levels can be reduced without losing the safety benefits of lighting. The research will also examine driver comfort on roads with different lighting levels.

This project relates to a European Commission project, NumeLiTe (NUMErical LIght for TEchnology) - an integrated approach to designing high intensity discharge lighting systems. The key objective of NumeLiTe is to formally prove the feasbility of an optimal and energy efficient outdoor lighting source for road lighting and urban lighting generally. This optimisation will be performed using a numerical software suite especially developed and validated experimentally within the framework of theproject. The research will access data available to TRL as a partner in the NumeLiTe project and conduct additional work, where necessary, to relate this to UK custom and practices. A literature search is to identify international experience of lighting levels and white light. Studies conducted to complement work on the NumeLiTe project will examine the possible effects of lighting on traffic speeds and flows. traffic characteristics and acident rates are to be monitored and reported at sites where alternative lighting has been used.

21/01/08