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Cantons like Friborg want to turn off street lighting at night. The city of Zurich has already receded.
Across the country, the authorities are racking their brains about how to save energy because of the impending electricity crisis. The canton of Fribourg, for example, wants to reduce or completely switch off the lighting on the canton’s roads between 11:30 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. Other regions such as Thurgau are also examining this measure.
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By no means all street lamps can be remotely controlled like these LED lights.
Keystone/Arno Balzarini
This sounds good in theory, but in practice it’s complicated. The municipalities have to implement the electricity-saving campaign. They are not very happy about this: “This measure is not a solution, but rather an alibi exercise,” says the senior official of the Freiburg Sense district, Manfred Raemy.
This measure is not a solution, but rather an exercise in alibi.
Because alone in the Sense district there are 2000 street lamps. Not all can be controlled remotely. “It would take five months to reprogram all the lamps,” says Raemy. According to the electricity company, 400 control units would have to be replaced for this. “It got me excited that the canton was making such a proposal at all,” the senior official continued.
Canton admits: It’s not that fast
How does the canton react to the official’s harsh statements? The government is well aware that switching off the lights at night is not easy. “We are now at the beginning of a demanding process,” said spokesman Guido Balmer first to the “Freiburger Nachrichten”.
There are a number of demanding questions to be clarified – technical, safety-related and probably also financial. One thing is clear: street lighting cannot simply be switched off overnight.
Zurich crawls back when street lamps are off
A look at Zurich and other regions shows this. The Zurich city government has recently made a U-turn in terms of street lighting: Contrary to an earlier announcement, the city has decided not to switch off the street lights at night. This measure is now considered “problematic” by the city council and is not being pursued for “reasons of safety and technical feasibility,” it said.
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The city of Zurich also wanted to reduce some of the street lighting. And now it’s back.
Keystone/Gaetan Bally
The original plan was to do without the street lighting between one and five in the morning from the autumn holidays, i.e. when there are no more trams and buses and fewer people are on the move. There should only have been exceptions at sensitive points, such as Langstrasse.