street light spacing

[nik_n_dad]

What are some thoughts on "proper" or reasonable for streetlights in

 

- a modern urban/downtown area

 

- a 1950's - 1970's small town downtown area

 

- modern highway?

 

thanks!

[Guest ___]

Typically, from my time on the transport board here there were no such standards, so I'd be willing to guess it would be the same in most places. It would be a more of a matter of either where public safety dictates, ie curbs side drop off, bus shelters, cross walks, or other shadow obstructions, OR, wherever the a developer, or city worker feels like dropping them in.

[inobu]

I found a good resource for stuff like this. Check out the  D.O.T web site at city or federal level. It has all the standards and info. I found this when I was looking for road markings.

 

Here is a link to a city in Maine. http://www.portlandmaine.gov/planning/sections/section10.pdf

 

Look in the cities back east as they have areas unchanged.

 

This looks to have all the information even for historic districts. 

 

Inobu

[KenS]

I tend to agree with Shashinka, that convention will govern more than strict rules.  However, there are general rules as Inobu points out.  And my preferece is to look at the kind of city/area you want to model, and see if you can deduce their rules/conventions.

 

For modern cities, Google Earth (optionally with Google Maps) with streetview is a really useful tool.  I did this when designing my elevated highway (based on a Tokyo prototype) which has median light poles about 100 feet (30 m) apart.  However, away from a highway, light placement is at least partially controlled by other features (such as illuminating intersections, pedestrian crossings and similar things). It doesn't work as well because the photographic resolution away from cities may not be high enough to locate the poles in satellite view.

 

The process I use is to find a street of the kind you want that is well illuminated (i.e., not shadowed by buildings) in satellite view.  Then use Streetview to identify where the light poles are (it's hard to separate light poles from other kinds of poles in satellite view).  Now that you know where the poles are, go into satellite view and use the ruler (which only seems to exist in Google Earth, not Google Maps) to measure the distance between the bases.  Repeat this for several poles to get an idea of the variation in spacing. I like to use google maps for streetview and google earth for the ruler, switching between the two as needed.

 

Note that in some cases a light will be closely mounted to an electrical pole (and only visible in streetview), in others it will be on a boom placing it over the street (typical around crosswalks, but I've seen both kinds both with and without them). There are also standalone light poles, used where a light is needed away from an electrical pole.

 

I picked a representative large multi-lane avenue in Sumida ward, and found roughly one light per block at a spacing of around 120 feet (37m) near a major intersection (which was likely well-lit by department store lighting), but a two blocks away this seemed to switch to about 80 feet (24m). What seemed to control the spacing was a desire to have either one mid-block (between major roads) or one at each end of a block (one at each intersection). In some cases this ended up with one on both sides of a large intersection (just above the crosswalks), but others did not have them at crosswalks (there may have been small close-mounted ones I just couldn't spot in the tangle of wires).

 

Then I went down a small side street (one lane each way, not a 1.5 car micro street). This had a light at each intersection, and two opposite each other mid-block, which worked out to spacings around 40 - 80 feet (~12 - 24m) on alternating sides.   However, near one end of the block was a small alley (litterally only wide enough for a scooter) which had a pair of light poles in the alley, perhaps 12-15 feet (4-5m) from each end, one of which was fairly close to the light in the street (which was at enough of an angle it didn't illuminate the alley). A second alley (wide enough for one car, and possibly a street) had one light at each end, inset similarly from the larger street. Note that all of this was essentially a commercial district, with stores, apartments and parking garages.

 

Then I picked a small urban residential street (one way, one car wide, lots of two-story multi-tennant buildings).  It had a light at the end meeting a larger two-lane road (the intersection had at least three lights close to it actually). The one on the side street was a small rectangular fixture mounted close to the pole above a crosswalk, and was probably rather directional. Down the street there were lights mounted on each electrical pole (some close, some on a short boom), but no standalone ones.  The electrical pole spacing was mostly 60 feet (18m) with one 110 foot (33m) spacing, but there may have been a pole midway between with a light (streetview cut the top off some kind of pole on the opposite side of the street from the others next to an alley and that corner was in shade in satellite view so I couldn't tell what it was from there).

 

So there's a lot of variation.  Intersections should be well lit, typically with more than one pole (up to four for larger ones) either at or very near them, mid-block lights may or may not exist.  Spacing for tall standalone poles can be quite large (80 - 120 feet, or 24 - 37m), but can be closer where warranted.  Smaller lights can be more closely spaced, particularly if buildings create shadowed areas that need a second light to illuminate them (and have reason to be illuminated).

 

For modeling purposes, spacing should also depend on the area the light actually illuminates and the impression you want to convey.  Do you want dark areas between pools of light (more typical for residential neighboorhoods and office areas) or continuously illuminated streets (more realistic for a shopping district)?

[Guest Closed Account 1]

Zoom into your own metropolis down to 57-60 feet on Google Earth and see. Do not try to measure anything on your monitor for N scale and trust the results.

 

Kato uses one every 124mm or 65 people feet on their Tram plates.

[cteno4]

i think ken and webskipper have the best advice of taking a look at where you want to model to see what is there. taking a quick look around its highly variable due to the variables involved of how bright the light, how hight the pole, how wide the lens, how much lighting is desired.

 

also this may depend if you want to light your street lights and how much illumination you want on the layout from them. im betting that most of the n scale light posts put out a whole lot more light than a full scale streetlight does. you can back this off with lower voltage to them. this is the issue with scale lighting as it does not scale linearly as light intensity drops with the inverse square of the distance from the source.

 

you can use google satellite view and then scale something like a car length to measure on screen to get a rough approximation of how far apart the posts are.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[nik_n_dad]

All very useful info.  Thank you!

 

I probably should have worded my question a little differently- it was more of a question of what have people done that worked on their layouts, balancing real-life and what light n-scale lights put out.

 

Thanks again.  Great ideas.

[keitaro]

on my layout I placed on the corner of the street then went dark and placed another so the light spread for both would just touch each other.

 

If that makes sense.

[Mudkip Orange]

I did some illumination plans for some arterials in Texas. We actually used a lighting software (originally for architects) that had the standard fixtures (cobrahead etc) worked in and could calculate light levels based on that. You ref'd in a CAD drawing and then placed the fixtures on it; each fixture had a contour map showing different lumens levels for that fixture.

 

State and national standards for roadway lighting usually specify two values, (i) a minimum average lighting level and (ii) a maximum difference in light level over a certain distance; i.e., the dark patches can only be so much darker than the bright patches.

 

I think trying to locate the exact distance of light poles in real life for a layout is meh. All longitudinal distances on our layouts are always compressed - city blocks are smaller, buildings are shallower, etc. So I say go with what looks right.

 

In residential sections a single streetlight at each intersection is sufficient. On commercial streets or highways you'll want to "stagger" the light poles on each side. For example, if you have light poles on each side of the road, 8" apart, but staggered so that every 4 inches there is a light pole on the opposite side of the street from where it was before.

[KenS]

I think trying to locate the exact distance of light poles in real life for a layout is meh. All longitudinal distances on our layouts are always compressed - city blocks are smaller, buildings are shallower, etc. So I say go with what looks right.

 

That's a good point.

 

What I'm looking to gain with my measurements is a sense of what the original would look like, for something I haven't experienced myself (I've never been to Tokyo). But in converting that to a model it's important to remember that a scene in a model railroad is rarely an exact representation of the prototype in any sense, and instead is modified (via omission of detail and selective compression, as well as other tricks like "forced perspective") to provide an impression of the original.

 

In residential sections a single streetlight at each intersection is sufficient. On commercial streets or highways you'll want to "stagger" the light poles on each side. For example, if you have light poles on each side of the road, 8" apart, but staggered so that every 4 inches there is a light pole on the opposite side of the street from where it was before.

 

I'll disagree slightly here. In the former case, it depends how long the blocks are.  In my Tokyo example, mid-block lights were used on longer residential streets and were on essentially every electrical pole.  And in dense suburban residential areas in the U.S. I've seen lights on every other electrical pole.  So if you model a dense mesh of residences with short blocks, one light per intersection makes sense.  But if you have a longer residential street (e.g., a "suburban" street along a linear module) what "looks right" may differ.

 

But I agree that "looks right" rather than "matches prototype distance" is the goal here.