Responding to a request last spring from the University Park Undergraduate Association, the borough will install additional lighting in the Highlands neighborhood.
However, after following the standard policies and procedures, only one of the five requests for lights in areas deemed unsafe were granted.
Of the five requests, two were denied because it goes against borough policy to install lights mid-block in alleyways. The three remaining spots required surveys from nearby residents, with only one location at the corner of Daisy Alley and Walnut Street receiving a favorable response.
Public works director Mark Whitfield wrote that it goes against borough policy to encourage pedestrian activity in alleyways.
“Because there are no pedestrian amenities in alleys and, historically, the borough does not want to encourage pedestrian use of alleys, they did not meet the policy criteria,” he said, referring to the fourth and fifth items on the following list of requests from UPUA.
- Corner of High Street and Holly Alley
- Mid-block of East Foster between Hetzel Street and Pine Alley
- Corner of Daisy Alley and Walnut Street
- Mid-block of Holly Alley between High Street and Hetzel Street
- Corner of Maple Alley and Clover Alley
Another request, from a resident in College Heights, received favorable survey results regarding a light to be placed mid-block on Glenn Road between Orlando Avenue and Martin Terrace.
Council members expressed concern over the alleyway policy and wondered if it makes sense to have a blanket policy on lighting alleyways.
“There are alleys that definitely need lights. That’s what worries me about this,” councilman Tom Daubert said. “I don’t think that can be a general rule for everything where you just automatically turn things down because of some policy from long ago that we don’t even know who made it.”
Councilman Evan Myers added that policies are important, but only if they’re able to assist in guiding council to an eventual end goal, which in this case is increased safety downtown.
“Policies and processes are ways to achieve a goal, but they aren’t the goal, and the goal is what we’re after,” he said. “If the policies and procedures don’t actually get us to our goal, we should do something else.”
Myers said that the important thing to consider when it comes to the issue of lighting in residential areas is the balance between safety and light pollution.
“We need to weigh the balance between safety and providing lights versus light pollution going into people’s homes,” he said. “Maybe lighting is what we need but not the same kind of lighting with high street lights that we’ve been doing for years.”
UPUA vice president Terry Ford, who originally requested the lights last spring, thanked the borough for approving one of the five requests, but expressed his own concerns about the alleyway lighting policy. As Ford puts it, people are going to use the alleyways as pedestrian whether or not the borough encourages them to.
“We don’t want to explicitly encourage pedestrian activity in alleyways, but regardless of whether you put in lights, students and others are going to continue walking in those areas,” Ford said. “We have an obligation to increase safety in the areas pedestrians are travelling and there’s nothing we can realistically do to keep pedestrians out of those alleyways.”
It is now up to Ford to determine if UPUA will appeal the four rejected lighting requests, though he’ll meet with council before making a decision on any potential appeal.
