There is quite a bit of planning that goes in to lighting a road tunnel, you see the aim is to ensure that drivers approaching the tunnel have sufficient visibility so as to avoid potential obstacles both on the entrance and exit of the tunnel.
During the daytime this requires quite a bit of energy to provide sufficient light so that drivers with their sunlight adjusted eyes can see into the tunnel further than the braking distance for the speed they are travelling at. In the middle to save energy there are less lights but still sufficient to see, and towards the end they get brighter again so you aren’t suddenly hit with blinding sunlight as you emerge from the darkened tunnel.
This is not rocket science.
It seems unlikely to me that with so many act public servants in this town that no-one anywhere related to ‘roads and not being blinded while driving through tunnels’ hasn’t driven through this tunnel is the evenings in the last month and thought geez that’s a bit bright I better get the boys to have a look at it . Alas every time I drive through at about 8pm I don my sunglasses so as not to excite my rods and cones, and wonder if I am the only person in this town who gives a s*** about things working right any more.
Have I let someone know you ask….no, my intent is to crash into the tunnel wall and sue the act govt for not notifying me of its presence. Seriously though the last time I used that useless fix my street rubbish I ended up walking down the road with trimmers and a mower and fixing it myself.
I seriously doubt that the act govt actually employs anyone with the skills and position description to fix it, it’ll get contracted out like the mowing of grass, collection of rubbish, and fixin of roads that a municipal govt should have the ability to do internally.
(/rant)
TL;DR: tunnel bright, govt crap
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I’d just assumed the timers were out of sync (probably turned off for some maintenance and the contractor wasn’t bright enough to think to reset it – or that part wasn’t in his contract?!). It used to be light up with bright yellow lighting during the day and then in the night it would be dimmer white lighting.
I haven’t driven through for a while, but the last few times, it had dim white lighting during the day, making it very hard to see into the tunnel on approach and for the first few seconds of driving in the tunnel. Then I went through it at night (about 11pm) and all the yellow lights were on – it was so bright it made my eyes hurt, and then I got out the other side into the dark and couldn’t see a thing for the next few seconds.
c_c said :
🙂 Fascinating! Thanks.
Thoroughly Smashed said :
I thought red was better for the eyes, it doesnt cause your pupils to change with the sudden redness. In old star-gazing days, we’d put red plastic over our torches as other colors would play funny business with your eyes and would take a few moments to adjust (not what you want when entering or leaving a tunnel).
The new orange lighting didn’t last too long. Back to the standard, dull white lights that have little effect of lighting the tunnel.
gooterz said :
Low pressure sodium is more efficient than any LED.
And what makes green better for the eyes?
Lets get Green LEDS!
saves power the only downside is colour blind people might think its red.
Green is meant to be better for the eyes.
The lights are probably manual and occasionally someone forgets to switch them over.
Have been an avid reader for a while but never posted. I saw this topic and knew I had to break the duck.
Not sure if others have noticed but as you travel through this tunnel with the orange lights on you may notice that red cars become a very distinct grey.
Not sure if it turns brown eyes blue though…..
Regards
S. Pete
Cheap said :
Too dark for daylight use.
Why not just use regular street lights at even spacings in the tunnel like every other piece of road?
I used fix my street the first day it was introduced to report a pothole. The thing was gone a couple of days later.
I’ve had partial success with a fix my street job. reported a pothole near a bridge over a stormwater creek thing, within a week someone had been out and done something about it.
they sort of slopped a bit of tarmac on and around it. suffice to say, no effort to level the hole or taper off the edges, so within another week it was back to where it started. then a few more potholes formed around that area. then 8 months later they redid the whole strip of road over the bridge. they seemed to NOT use that blue-chips-all-over-the-place method, and it’s actually a half decent 5 metre stretch of road.
I’ve logged jobs with Fix My Street (mostly potholes) and they tend to get fixed within a week. Never taken much notice of Parkes Way tunnel lighting.
EvanJames said :
The orange lights are low pressure sodium.
trevar said :
well, at leat you acknoweldge it is a ‘problem’… on a site that is more or less a blog site for the capital of a first world country, what is the relevance of decrying ‘first world problem’ at anything that seems petty to your globally-focussed world problem solving razor intellect? or mebbe you could go inhabit on of these non-first world environments and go from there..?
davo101 said :
they’ve put sodium lights in the Parkes Way tunnel? Ye gods, those things are bright-as. What happened to the old orange lights, I wonder?
“…the last time I used that useless fix my street rubbish I ended up walking down the road with trimmers and a mower and fixing it myself.”
I really think you should make contact with TAMS. Not sure your trimmers and mower will be much use to you this time.
Right, sodium, duh. Sulphur is yellow… damn you brain!
Dilandach said :
I saw one ajar the other day, should we be worried?
davo101 said :
Look it up people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_lamp
davo101 said :
…and now you know why they keep those doors on the sides closed.
niftydog said :
I think you mean sodium. Unless the Parkes Way tunnel is actually one of the nine circles of hell.