urbanSTL

Hell, even the bridge in Alton looks nice at night, they should be able to do something with this one.

Good lighting should not equal light pollution. Bright white lights like what Alex just posted aren't so great to me. If I drove on that road, i'd probably be unable to see anything but the road.
I like that you can see stars in St. Louis, there's no reason to blot them out. The best night time skylines are the ones without an orange haze looming above them. I was saddened to see that Hong Kong's night time laser light show was muted by giant white billboards for Canon and Hitachi.

Simple rules really. Don't point lights straight up or in people's faces. Don't use absurdly bright lights that undermine the beauty of other lighting jobs.

Seoul has a massive river cutting it in half and dozens of bridges. A year or so back they decided to redo four of them and make them iconic. A couple are far too bright, but some are tasteful. The good ones use colored lights that aim at the river. The bad ones use bright white lights take away from everything else.

This is Banpodaegyo, notable for it's massive bikeway on its lower level,


This is Hangangdaegyo. That orange addition on the side is an added pedestrian path / bikeway. Both sides of the bridge have that,


They're going to put an opera house in the middle of this bridge, so that will surely change how the lighting works in the future,



I can never remember the name of this one, but it has always been a helpful landmark. "That green bridge" I call it.

^ Seems like LED's would be able to accommodate the color changes you're talking about. And maybe the bridge should be the Lewis Bridge - a partner to the cable Clark bridge at Alton.

The New Hardee's Bacon-Cheddar-Burger Bridge.
In the near future they'll prolly sell off naming rights. The LED lights will be the logo colors. I hope not, but....

Moorlander wrote:I thought it had something to do with the Corps not allowing lights on the bridge because the barge captains can't see well???

That's the only explanation I've heard.

The bridge landings are lit and there are light posts on the bridge, but the span itself is dark.


This is how it used to look with lights on the spans:

That is a bogus copout reason not to light the bridge. Are you telling me the barge captains are just guessing where the banks are around Memphis, because the Hernando Desoto bridge is lit like a christmas tree. Not shooting the messenger... just sayin'.

^ Right. I think that they complained about the specific lights that were once on the bridge so they were turned off. I bet that if someone wanted to pay for new lights they could install ones that would work for barge traffic. It's a matter of $$$$, but then again, isn't it always?

As I remember this going down, the lighting of the Eads was costing the City o significant amount of money to power and maintain. Like above, the type of bulbs used were expensive and they did draw complaints from the barges for brightness. IIRC the cost was over 1M a year, and that was when the city was facing worse financial issues than they are now. I believe that while it was done for $$$ reasons, the River Captains werent complaining. Then again, how does brightly illuminating the bridge make it harder to navigate around it?

Did they turn out the lights when the bridge was refurbished for Metro? If so it might of needed a complete new lighting system which I'm sure also would have been to much up-front for the city. In today's day and age, I bet we could get Ameren to donate power to the bridge for a write-off if a LED or other power efficient system was installed.

Random thought: Solar powered LED system? Non glare lights so no navigation issue and no to little power cost...
It would be awesome to see that beauty lit up again.

So I guess we've decided that it was money issues that turned our bridge dark. FWIW, one other thought I had regarding brightness of lights though; I took one of those riverboat dinner cruises in Memphis and the captain simply pointed his searchlight at the daylight sensor and bridge lights were out for 20 mins at least.

Just found this potential "illuminating" tidbit:

The VP Fair sponsors planned on paying for the bridge to be lit, but backed out after only a few (2-3) years due to the enormous expense. Once they bailed and it was left to the city to keep it lit, it was turned off in a matter of months.

Anyone else else recollect/able to substantitate this?

Driving by the Bottle District north of the Dome, there are about 20-30 huge prefab road deck pieces (like the size of a semi trailer each) on flat beds just chillin' waiting to be put somewhere. I'm assuming they're for the bridge project...but they may be for the Tucker replacement?

Anyone else have info on where these huge pieces are going? Definitely look like prefab road deck from a distance...

Obviously they wouldn't be for the bridge itself yet...but I was thinking maybe some of the renovated overpasses over I 70.