Yeah, in a similar vein, I don't like the obsession some utilities/automakers have with using 5000K LED. I suppose it makes sense for some commercial districts that are illuminated at high light levels but for a lot of night uses, 3000K and lower looks a lot better and is easier on the eyes compared to 5000K. The worst offenders are those cars that come with 5000K LED headlights from the factory. I'd argue that whatever safety benefit from 5000K you gain is offset from the effects you have on other driver's night vision from using bright 5000K headlights.

Fortunately it seems like utilities here are at least switching to lower colour temperatures in their newer installs. Now just do something about all the 5000K LED headlights out there.

I find my halogen headlights to be perfectly sufficient as long as there aren't any cars with HID or LED lights oncoming or behind me. I've always thought having those is a nice way to make it easier for you at the expense of others. Similar to people who prefer driving huge trucks or SUVs simply because it's "safer" for them while completely disregarding others.

I keep reading about lack of standardization with LED streetlights like it's a new thing , GE and Westy did it for YEARS !  A lot of those old lights are a real PITA to install a modern ballast into Both used weird core sizes and shapes ! Before I figured out how to fix my 700w OV-50 I considered just putting a modern 1000w ballast inside . The amount of major surgery required convinced me to push on with diagnostics until I found and repaired the problems and got the original gear back in working condition .   

 Besides , a vast number of municipalities/utilities just replace anything that can't be fixed with just a lamp or P/C anyways . Plus , probably 90% of the old lighting I've gotten has had some form of rotten wiring inside either the fixture or arm requiring a complete rewire anyways . From a financial standpoint it makes way more sense to just replace everything with new every decade or two than it does to frequently diagnose and repair/rewire an aging system as failures occur .

 Also , for those who don't remember seeing any of the vintage advertisements , GE had a "Retire the Relics" campaign going in the 60's which encouraged replacing "old outdated incandescent systems" with new GE Mercury Vapor lighting ! The add actually showed a maintenance truck and trailer piled full of removed incandescent streelights from the 20's and up ! 

@Lumex120 - Same here, without some other vehicle with a HID or LED headlight shining facing me or behind me, I find my halogens to still be sufficient, even on dark roads. Yeah, I agree with the making it nice for you to see at the expense of others. Same goes with what you said about people driving SUVs and trucks because it's "safer" than a car. Especially since SUVs and trucks are the top offenders in my area for overpowered headlights due to the higher ride height compared to cars. The worst however are the ones that drive a SUV/truck because it make them feel safer, yet proceed to feel empowered to drive aggressively/dangerously because they're in a larger vehicle.

@wide-lite 1000 - Yup, I used to have a standard 175w MH ballast in my Crimefighter and that took some creativity to install without drilling any new holes in the brackets or housing. I got it installed but it never really looked stock so I opted to eventually restore the original ballast and reinstall that. Comparatively Powerlite luminaires used more or less standard ballast sizes so any replacement ballast looks right in them. I think even newer GEs more or less used their own ballast sizes so only GE renewal ballasts will fit right in them.

The common practice in areas still using HID is to replace the luminaire if a new lamp or PC dosen't fix it. I don't think the crews here even stocked ignitors, much less replacement ballast kits. I think most utilities were like that too which is why quick repair features such as power doors, plug in ignitors never really took off, even when they were ordered I don't think they were taken advantage of much here.   

Yeah, in a similar vein, I don't like the obsession some utilities/automakers have with using 5000K LED. I suppose it makes sense for some commercial districts that are illuminated at high light levels but for a lot of night uses, 3000K and lower looks a lot better and is easier on the eyes compared to 5000K. The worst offenders are those cars that come with 5000K LED headlights from the factory. I'd argue that whatever safety benefit from 5000K you gain is offset from the effects you have on other driver's night vision from using bright 5000K headlights.

Fortunately it seems like utilities here are at least switching to lower colour temperatures in their newer installs. Now just do something about all the 5000K LED headlights out there.

The bright white look is in for whatever reason. I think people associate it with clean.

When I was looking at light bulbs a few days ago, I overheard a lady telling the guy with her, “I want white light, I can’t stand that yellow (censored)!

The ornate style vintage LED reproduction type fixtures don’t seem to be all that popular compared to the cookie cutter LED flyswatters. I think it’s between the utility wanting to just do their usual changeouts and not need to do anything different than that, and cities/municipalities not wanting to pay extra for them.

Today a lot of stuff is function over form/durability, which is evident in how few parts/how small they can make these LED lights. Energy efficiency and cheap reign supreme these days.

The bright white look is in for whatever reason. I think people associate it with clean.

When I was looking at light bulbs a few days ago, I overheard a lady telling the guy with her, “I want white light, I can’t stand that yellow (censored)!

Ugh, to be honest 5000K LED with the CRI in the low 80s seem to be the worst. A 5000K source with a good CRI is a pretty nice looking pure white but in lower CRI everything just has this nasty blue cast, not exactly what I call clean looking. It actually reminds me of how older fluorescents with low CRI had this green cast to everything.

The GE ad I was referring to : https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=search&cat=0&pos=1&pid=13925

I hate inferior LEDs very much, but there are places that nominally want to save energy and do not invest too much money in using better LEDs, making the new LED effect not as good as the previous traditional lamps.

My neighborhood was switched out with LED just last week (we had a few spot replacements before, but now it's all LED).  I'm constantly reminded how fringe the anti-LED views espoused here truly are.  As much as we might prefer conventional electric light sources, in the industry at large the debate ended long ago and LED has won.  I think it's been at least five years since I've seen any serious arguments outside of enthusiast forums that a HID/fluorescent/incandescent solution might be preferable choice for a given application.  Only inertia is keeping traditional sources in place, and given the momentum I expect most large-scale LED conversions will be complete or nearing completion by the middle of the decade.  I'm a little surprised more municipalities and utilities didn't demand easily serviceable fixtures, but with the limited exception of ornate fixtures containing screw-in retrofit lamps or replaceable modules, it seems they are content with swapping out lanterns entirely every 5-15 years or so.

Yeah I agree I am surprised not more of them are designed to be serviceable. The HPS light accros the street from me was cycling when I moved in a couple months ago. I reported it and they replaced the fixture with LED, and it's the only LED one of the whole street now. It's annoying that they are not consistent.

Sad to update you on this but the towns of Mont Vernon, Hudson, Candia, Pittsburgh, Kingston, and Francestown have all gone LED with the same terrible company. Mont Vernon and Francestown NH had incandescent! Kingston and Pittsburgh had decently old MV lights! All gone now to crap LED that won't last five years! There's only a few more towns with incandescent now, I feel like I must act to keep them up! I swear I don’t know what I should do but I’m really pissed off!

I've been living in Pittsburgh for years and it's mostly still HPS, although that is changing. The new LEDs they are using are not the same ones from the pilot program that often turned into strobe lights. What MV fixtures are you referring to? I can only think of 1 street here that is MV lit, and I think it's MH now.

All LED lanterns are fully serviceable, their just no longer done at the reported outed column.
I’m guessing it’s the same in the US as it is here, where its easier to change the entire lantern ‘on site’, then bench fix the dead lanterns back at the depot ready for replacement to the next one to go out. 

It’s funny how ‘none lighting enthusiasts’ I talk to here think dead LED lanterns are just taken down and skipped and then a new one is put up!
And when you explain that just isn’t the case, and their fixed off site, I always get the same answer…
“Oh, I never thought of that”! 

Yeah the general mentality of the utility companies in my area regarding HID luminaires was to take them down and replace them if a lamp and PC change does not fix it. Some utilities swapped ignitors (pretty simple with the plug in ignitors) but I think capacitor replacements or field reballasting was rare even though some places reballasted MV luminaires to MV back then. I suppose they might have been serviced on a bench.

I've heard of some utilities refurbishing old fixtures and then reinstalling them in other locations but seeing how new the spot replacement luminaires were back then, I suppose they were just pitching the failed lights. Ironically they now sometimes save a few old HPS luminaires from LED conversions for use as spot replacements.

LED luminaires seem to be just pitched and replaced when they fail, even though you could replace the drivers and even the diode modules if you managed to get them. Drivers are easier to obtain though since a good 90% of LED road luminaires here use something by Philips/Advance. 

Anyway my point is that utilities here didn't really service the more serviceable HID luminaires here so I'd imagine they probably don't care too much about serviceability when seeking LED luminaires. Features to aid serviceability for HID luminaires such as power door mounted gear, plug in ignitors, etc weren't specified often.

The prices have stabilized and come down enough that it is often easier to just take off the bad one and put a new one up.  The bad one will likely stripped and parts sent to the recycle bin.  The utilities buy in large enough quantities that they get significant discounts from the manufacturers and what not, so it's not a huge deal.  Some utility companies do in fact have someone who will troubleshoot the fixture when it is brought in.  However- if a fixture is 5+ years old and has a bad driver or led panel, it'll likely be scrapped instead of repaired. 

It all boils down to the fact that just a bit more than a hour of technician work time is more expensive than a brand new lantern. So repairing something makes financial sense only when the technician time spent on it is way less than the fraction of the new lantern cost corresponding to its residual lifetime expectation.

So because the designed lifetime uses to be 10 years (beyond that fixtures are kept only when needing no more than relamping) an 8 year fixture becomes worth fixing only if that means less than 15 minutes of a technician work time. You can not do more than replace some small component that is only snapped in on a few connectors like the lamp, PC or eventually ignitor.
Replacing the ballast, capacitor, or even a socket will takes you longer (the time includes everything, from initial disassembly, diagnostic, eventual corrosion protection repaint, till final inspection), so will be effectively more expensive than a brand new fixture (which is expected to have its full 10 years of lifetime ahead).

Let go of what you have no control over.  You'll live longer.

Not sure I want to, the way things are going these days 

Yeah, in a similar vein, I don't like the obsession some utilities/automakers have with using 5000K LED. I suppose it makes sense for some commercial districts that are illuminated at high light levels but for a lot of night uses, 3000K and lower looks a lot better and is easier on the eyes compared to 5000K. The worst offenders are those cars that come with 5000K LED headlights from the factory. I'd argue that whatever safety benefit from 5000K you gain is offset from the effects you have on other driver's night vision from using bright 5000K headlights.

Fortunately it seems like utilities here are at least switching to lower colour temperatures in their newer installs. Now just do something about all the 5000K LED headlights out there.

Yes don't get me started on night driving these days!
From streetlights that only light the ground below them and the blinding 5000K LED headlights on modern cars night driving is a treacherous task now! Needless to say I try to only go out during the daylight hours now, but that is not always possible especially this time of year.