In my area, SOX was really only marketed during the 1970s and 1980s with the majority of the installations that I know of installed during that time frame. Interesting to hear about it's use for crosswalks. Over here, crosswalks are amongst the few remaining installations of SOX here. They were more or less still installing crosswalks with SOX illumination until it was announced that the production of lamps was ending.

Another interesting snippet is the lack of illumination on sidewalks with some LED luminaires. I've noticed in my area, after the LED conversion, some wider streets had smaller luminaires added on the back side of the pole to light the sidewalk at night. These are wide suburban arterial roads that don't receive much pedestrian traffic after dark. The HID luminaires previously installed were HPS drop lens style cobraheads which I suppose threw enough spill light on the sidewalk to not warrant the additional luminaires.

Not one mention of the overall least moth or insect attraction?? LPS/SOX is a winner here!

I think the key detail there is 'abysmal quality'! Some of the LEDs I've seen around here actually seem pretty decent. I think its the low-quality junk is in part what's given LED such a bad name here. An honestly I see nothing wrong with an anti-LED rant...when it'd directed at crap that doesn't even do the job it was put in place to do.

Whatever the quality (or lack of) of an L*D, it's still white light, and I hate white street lighting. Ok, you could use yellow L*D's but they will never be as good as SOX to me.

Sorry if I ranted, but you really have to see what we have here to believe it 

OMG YES! You explained perfectly.

A busy road that has all LED now seems to be a lot darker now, they are  just small patches of light, surrounded by dark. I can’t see pedestrians well either, and this is on a main road, the streets are almost worse.

Also if your windshield is dirty, you can’t see a thing.



But to be fair the LED can illuminate well, but only if the posts are very tall in my observation.

Part of the problem with the new LED roadway illumination, is that the luminaires are made with 90° cutoff optics, where as before, there was a lot of light spillage. This is all intended as a way to preserve the night sky. Here in the US, there is a general requirement in urban areas called 'dark sky compliance'. Whether municipalities enforce it, or not, it is strongly encouraged. (If they do, using NEMA-style luminaires, standard wallpacks, floods and drop-lens cobra-heads is definitely out of the question.)

@ James...Thanks for the synopsis. All of your points make perfect sense. I was pretty much thinking the same thing, but you can articulate it better than me. 


As to using LPS/HPS lights for streets, I subjectively find them better for visibility. Here in the PNW, I much prefer yellow lighting versus white on our mountain passes, especially when its snowing.
Back in '83, when mercury vapor was replaced with HPS here in the Seattle area, I found that I could see better. This of course is subjective.

Part of the problem with the new LED roadway illumination, is that the luminaires are made with 90° cutoff optics, where as before, there was a lot of light spillage. This is all intended as a way to preserve the night sky. Here in the US, there is a general requirement in urban areas called 'dark sky compliance'. Whether municipalities enforce it, or not, it is strongly encouraged. (If they do, using NEMA-style luminaires, standard wallpacks, floods and drop-lens cobra-heads is definitely out of the question.)

Yeah that makes sense, interestingly I found the HPS cobraheads without the diffuser lens seem to have less light spillage than the LEDs in my experience.

Not one mention of the overall least moth or insect attraction?? LPS/SOX is a winner here!

Yeah, I heard about the serious problem with the ecosystem, particularly insect decline, one of the biggest contributors, if not the biggest, is light pollution they say.


I believe it more than ever when I see these harsh, broadband LED lights with their blue wavelengths, totally makes sense how they can mess with birds and insects.

Light pollution was a big problem of LPS and HPS. The sky was seen from far away in a huge orange veil. I'm pretty happy ,to say the truth, the orange/yellow light will disappear. Here was LPS used only for some special parts like on crossings, pedestrian crossings, tunnels in combination with FT and water gate lighting. However the fixtures kept holding the standard SOX and the SOX-E with modern technic was uncommon at all. You can't get anymore new SOX lamps so there's no other way than replacing them against LEDs.

I must confess I've never come across the 'huge orange veil' you mention anywhere, but at least with LPS or even HPS the visibility is excellent and the colour does not disturb the diurnal rythms of humans or wildlife like the blue from LED. We have LED's right outside our bedroom window and it's impossible to sleep without a full blackout blind, curtains are simply not good enough.

I’ve seen it, with both SOX and SON, especially on snowy nights, but LED skyglow is much more noticeable with low cloud!, I have a photo somewhere?

I must confess I've never come across the 'huge orange veil' you mention anywhere,

Also known as nuclear waste sky!
Yep I see that here.
A cloudy night enhances the effect...
And snow on the ground+cloudy makes it really visible...

...but its becoming more white (which does look 'cleaner') now with all the LED chandeouts
If I look out my back windows at night, anymore its "what's a star? We don't have those here. (I think LED has actually made this worse!)
Going outside & looking up, or out the front windows, ofcourse I do see stars. Just not allot.

 All I can say is that over the years , it seems that new streetlights seem to get brighter and brighter !! You just don't need 20 zillion lumens of light on the road to drive at night ! When gas lights got changed to incandescent , they got brighter , when incandescent got changed to MV they got brighter , when MV got changed to HPS , they got brighter ! 95% of nighttime lighting is just way too bright !  I have personally seen 400w MV streetlights get replaced by 400w HPS which is an increase of more than double the lumens ! GEE , why do we have skyglow I personally don't believe the light source has as much to do with the problem as the AMOUNT of light emitted does .

Well, living in a city centre, we don't get sky glow at all. In any case, we rarely venture outside at night any more, due to the awful quality of the so-called street lights we are now forced to endure.

And Tim, the new "street lights" they're fitting are getting dimmer and dimmer. It's only the glare that increases 

Well, living in a city centre, we don't get sky glow at all. In any case, we rarely venture outside at night any more, due to the awful quality of the so-called street lights we are now forced to endure.

And Tim, the new "street lights" they're fitting are getting dimmer and dimmer. It's only the glare that increases 

That is true in my experience, and scratches, dust, or any film of dirt or dust, you won’t see anything.

The problem I've seen around here is replacing "normal" streetlights with those stupid highmast things. Lets redesign a freeway interchange and remove the roughly 3-4 dozen 200w HPS streetlights and replace them with 8 highmast poles with 6-1000w HPS (or LED equivalent) fixtures on each pole .