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A Los Angeles street with traditional high pressure sodium streetlights and new, starker LED artifical lights installed by the city in 2013.

(Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting)

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the coming age of Tron-like blue-tinted LED lights in traffic, when the comforting yellow glow of traditional tungsten headlights and high-pressure sodium streetlights will be just a memory.

Many readers struggling to adjust to the new light technology took umbrage at me telling them to "get used to it." Sorry, but as commuters, that's what we'll have to do.

In fact, three months after New York City announced that it is replacing 250,000 streetlights with LEDS, the Portland Bureau of Transportation told The Oregonian on Wednesday that it is in the process of making the same transition.

High-definition LED lighting is less scattered and will help motorists see the road in greater detail, meaning it will also be harder for bicyclists and pedestrians to get lost in the shadows.

More on that in a minute.

First, evidence proving that this kind of change goes beyond traffic science. It also has some serious cultural ramifications; it will change the way we view the world. The entertainment industry, for example, is getting used to the unscripted future of lumens and how it affects colors.

You see, Los Angeles' new LED streetlights are about to radically change the look of American cinema, Gizmodo reports:



Although LED lights expose truer colors at night, the piece by Geoff Manaugh suggest that the yellow hue of traditional streetlights are about to become the new sepia:

Now, back to the Northwest.

Portland and Seattle, among many U.S. cities, have already started bathing some areas in stark (some would say "painful"), high-definition illuminations. In Portland, PBOT has installed LED street lights at the Lents Town Center and other parts of outer Southeast Portland as well as in the "lollipop" streetlights in the South Auditorium district.

“PBOT wants to do what other cities have done,” said PBOT spokeswoman Diane Dulken in an email. The agency wants to “convert streetlights to LEDs, a change that will yield significant cost and energy savings as well as lower greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining the same safety role and performance that current lights do.”

The city, she said, is working with Portland General Electric on an agreement that will allow a full conversion over the next five years or so.

(PDF) said the conversion will cost about $18.5 million, with savings from electricity and maintenance to easily cover the price tag.

The majority of the city’s 55,000 streetlights are “cobrahead” lights that use high-pressure sodium bulbs, which last about five years. “As streetlights in various parts of town near the end of their useful life we will replace them with LEDs,” Dulken said.

By contrast, LEDs are expected to last 20 years and use half the energy, PBOT said.

What's more, said Peter Koonce, PBOT's chief signal engineer, the color of LEDs is something that has evolved over time, so the current bulbs are much less harsh to the eye.

"We are rolling these out slowly to get public input," Koonce said. "We are working on a Google map that will allow public to provide input in advance of the replacement on issues like brightness."

Of course, like L.A., the LED lights will also change the look of Portlandia at night. If you like going night walks, bike rides and drives in the yellow glow of traditional street lights, enjoy it while it lasts.

-- Joseph Rose