Heavy construction, light maintenance, and management difficulties exist

The problem of incomplete management mechanism and inadequate system for street lamps still exists

In some projects, the phenomenon of heavy construction, light maintenance, and light management is still quite common. Especially, due to the inability to keep up with maintenance and management work in the later stage, the lighting rate and lighting effect of some projects are difficult to maintain at the level before acceptance for a long time after project acceptance. The root cause is the lack of mechanisms and management talents in facility maintenance and management, which has led to prominent problems such as difficulty in implementing lighting facility maintenance responsibilities, difficulty in finding specific responsible units, and difficulty in mastering high-end street lamp maintenance techniques.

For example, in the workplace, management responsibility units are often divided based on the types of functional street lamps, resulting in street lamp offices, road and bridge offices, or other management responsibility entities. This naturally leads to problems such as multiple departments, unclear responsibilities, and mutual shirking of responsibilities. The maintenance work of street lamps in the same area may belong to different management units, and in some cases, the maintenance work of street lamps in the same area may be divided into multiple units such as street lamps and road bridges. In these units, there are occasional drawbacks such as vague management, overlapping responsibilities, and slow implementation of street lighting maintenance work. At the same time, it is difficult to ensure the safety of nighttime travel for surrounding residents.

Poor communication mechanism and lack of effective communication channels between departments

In general, the management unit for urban street lamp construction and the management and maintenance unit for urban street lamps after project acceptance are often not the same unit, and even do not belong to the same department. In such a situation, it is difficult for the construction responsible party and the operation and maintenance responsible party to establish effective communication channels between departments, establish smooth communication mechanisms, and achieve the exchange and sharing of street lamp management information. In the current bidding system, the responsible party for urban streetlight construction often wins the bid through a low price bidding strategy. In this situation, the responsible party for construction may sometimes sacrifice some engineering quality in the pursuit of their own profits, such as making compromises in terms of energy-saving and lifespan of street lamps; Sometimes it is difficult to accurately grasp the balance point between the economic and social benefits of street lamp engineering projects; Sometimes, even disregarding the social benefits brought by urban streetlight construction projects, they arbitrarily lower construction standards and choose streetlight products with outdated exterior designs and poor urban lighting effects.

From the perspective of the management unit responsible for operation and maintenance in the later stage, some units still have problems such as unclear street lamp inspection workflow, inconsistent daily maintenance operation standards for street lamps, inadequate management mechanisms, and low work efficiency. In addition, the contradiction between the rapid increase in the scale of urban street lighting construction and the relatively limited operation and maintenance capabilities of management units is also an important reason for the difficulty in stabilizing the performance of urban street lighting, the inability to keep up with later maintenance and management work, and the difficulty in maintaining normal levels of lighting rate and lighting effect for a long time.

The problem of the lack of supervision mechanism for the operation and maintenance of street lighting still exists

In certain sections of the city, especially in small and medium-sized cities, manual inspections are still the main means of regulating street lighting. The outdated regulatory measures have led to a lack of supervision mechanism for the operation and maintenance of street lamps and lighting. For example, individual criminals steal street light supporting facilities in places that cannot be manually inspected and supervised, resulting in low lighting rates and poor lighting effects on certain road sections.

Emphasizing image over planning may lead to quality risks

At present, in order to present the city's image perfectly, some cities have excessively high night lighting brightness, lack a reasonable argumentation process, and even have a phenomenon of not attaching importance to scientific planning. This phenomenon is specifically manifested in the following two aspects. On the one hand, there is an excessive emphasis on image. Some areas that do not require night lighting are very bright, while areas that urgently need night lighting are very dim. On the other hand, there is a lack of scientific planning. The main and secondary aspects of urban lighting planning are unclear, the characteristics are unclear, and the layout is scattered and disorderly. Under the extensive planning concept, the street lamp planning of some road sections did not consider the actual needs of alternating operation such as midnight lights, all night lights, and intermittent lights. In addition, due to the excessive emphasis on the urban night scene image, some departments tend to prefer street lamps with good lighting effects and good image in the process of purchasing street lamps, not only ignoring the energy-saving factors of street lamps, but also neglecting the issues of street lamp service life and quality.

Heavy brightness, light energy saving, with light damage phenomenon

At present, many cities in China have encountered the problem of urban lighting emphasizing brightness over energy conservation, which is particularly prominent in the selection of street lamps for main urban areas. For example, due to excessive emphasis on lighting effects and the failure to use new lighting fixtures (such as LED solar fixtures) as the main lighting equipment, many areas still mainly use outdated and high-energy high-pressure sodium lamps, while those low-energy fixtures are only applied to individual pilot road sections. At the same time, overemphasizing the brightness of street lighting may also cause light pollution. For example, in China, the national standard for the average illuminance of urban arterial roads in the main urban area is 30lx, which means that the brightness of main road lights should not exceed this value, and the average value of street lighting in the main urban area should not exceed this value to meet the standard. However, according to reports, some cities have an average road illumination of 105lx, which not only causes energy waste but also brings about urban light pollution problems.

Emphasizing landscape over functionality, there is a problem of waste

At present, some city street lighting projects in China overly emphasize landscape effects. The basic principle that lighting engineering projects should adhere to is to balance aesthetics while meeting lighting functional requirements. However, in some urban lighting projects, there is often a phenomenon of putting the cart before the horse, focusing on the landscape function of streetlights while ignoring their basic attributes in terms of lighting brightness, energy consumption, and lifespan. This phenomenon sometimes causes certain energy and resource waste, which should be of concern to relevant departments.