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Lighting Project-West Hyattsville
The Hyattsville Bike and Pedestrian Safety Committee has been tasked with improving the lighting situation in West Hyattsville. But we are also interested in collecting data on other poorly lit parts of Hyattsville. Poor lighting often attracts crime in parts of our fair city.
At the January 22nd, 2007 Meeting of the Hyattsville City Council, the city approved the motion for the Legacy Walking Tour Conceptual Plan.
As part of that motion the city council stated:
| The Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Committee, the Department of Public Works, the Police Department and Councilmembers from Wards 3, 4 and 5 are charged with working together to produce an implementation plan for street lighting upgrades west of Queens Chapel Rd. that have been previously authorized by Council action. The target date for completion of the plan shall be April 15, with a goal of implementing whatever portion of the plan that can be accomplished with the $70,000 in Community Legacy funding the City has received for street lighting by the end of FY2007. |
At a meeting on February 6th, between members of the bike/ped committee, DPW, Chief Holland, the city administrator, and others, night time crime statistics were analyzed and reports of muggings in the area were dicussed. It became evident that everyone was in agreement as to where street lighting needed to be improved in West Hyattsville. In fact the city has made several requests to PEPCO for lighting repairs in the effected area, to be paid for using the $70,000 in funds discussed above. In some instances lights have not been repaired (despite the requests) or work was performed, but did not solve the problem. In at least one instance, money had to be returned to the city for work that was paid for, but never performed. However, returning the money DOES NOT solve the lighting problems.
Unfortunately, cities in Maryland currently do not have control over the maintenance of their own street lighting. The city cannot simply hire an electrician to come repair the lights. But there is currently a deregulation bill before the MD House and Senate to change all of that. In Hyattsville, all work must be performed by PEPCO, and the city pays a hefty sum (tens of thousands of dollars) every year for PEPCO's street light 'maintenance'. The chief response from Pepco is that they are not getting the outage reports from the city. The city says they send them in, but responses are slow or non-existent.
In an effort to improve the city's ability to collect outage reports and to document reporting them to PEPCO, we have created the map below. On it, YOU can report street light outages in Hyattsville, as well as dim lights, blinking lights, and even areas where you feel the city needs more lighting. We are especially interested in hearing from folks in West Hyattsville, but welcome reports from others as well. This information can be exported into a number of formats and sent to PEPCO by the Bike/Ped Committee and the city. You will need 2 things to get started. 1) You need the pole number from the actual street light pole. This is provided on a plastic or tin strip affixed to the base of the pole (see the images above/at right). Generally, you want the number that looks like it was affixed most recently. This information is an absolute neccesity! 2) You need to sign up for a free mapping account with CommunityWalk. This will allow you to add markers to the map. Once you have all of that information, simply click the image below. We have also created a downloadable paper form that you can use and distribute to others in the community (who may not have internet access). It provides instructions for reporting outages or other problems to PEPCO and the city. Feel free to print/xerox as many copies as you need. When you log into the site, be sure to do so from the 'instructions' frame on the left. If you use the other link (the one to the right) the instructions frame will disappear.
MacNachtan |
Latest page update: made by MacNachtan
, Apr 15 2009, 8:12 PM EDT
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Keyword tags:
hyattsville
lighting
street lights
West Hyattsville
More Info: links to this page
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| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | ||
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| Rob_Oppenheim | My experience with street lights in Riverdale Park | 0 | Mar 9 2007, 5:22 PM EST by Rob_Oppenheim | ||
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Thread started: Mar 9 2007, 5:22 PM EST
Watch
I have to tell you - I am pretty envious of the things you guys are doing in Hyattsville with the web.
I reported about 40 street lights out in my ward of Riverdale Park to Pepco last year. (A few of these were actually in Hyattsville - along the edge of my ward on Route One.) It took 6 months and multiple calls and in some cases it took escalating the calls up the chain of command, but eventually they all got fixed. Anyone can call in a single street light complaint to Pepco at 1-877-737-2662. You get an automated system with only a few seconds to respond, so be ready with all the info (wood or metal pole, Pole #, address or intersection, out or dim). One person tells me they had success with this method. I did not. Besides I had 3 dozen lights to report. I am guessing that this may work if the problem is simple, that is, if the lamp is burnt out. But if something else is wrong, the bulb changing crew will just change the bulb and think it is fixed. (Bulb changing crews may not be Pepco's best technitions). More complex problems have to be escalated up the chain of command in Pepco, and Pepco has to be told that it was reported before, and that on [date checked] the problem still exists. (Otherwise, they look at the records and see it was recently serviced and figure it was fixed already.) There is an email address for reporting multiple street lights. I had to promise to not give it out because it is suppose to be for official town use only. If any town officials need the address, contact me off list. But I imagine that Hyattsville has this info in spades. So far I have had no success in getting state highway owned street lights fixed along East-West highway (metal poles). If you have any suggestions or hints please let me know. Keep up the good work Hyattsville. You are a source of inspiration for other towns too. Rob Oppenheim Ward One Councilman, Riverdale Park oppenheim (at) email.com |
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Light_Form.pdf (Adobe Portable Document Format - 61k)
posted by MacNachtan Apr 2 2007, 5:27 PM EDT
Light Outage - Paper Form
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