SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — The city has a bright idea to repair streetlights in our community. Leaders say most of these lights across San Diego are more than 70-years-old. They've allocated $3.5 million in federal funding to replace streetlights in Pacific Beach, Point Loma and Logan Heights.
“As nice as it is out here, this is old infrastructure,” said Scott Peters, U.S. Representative for California's 50th congressional district.
If one streetlight fails, it impacts all the lights on that circuit, resulting in a lot of outages at the same time.
“Many of us remember growing up old fashioned Christmas tree lights where one light would go out, and the whole string wouldn’t work,” said Todd Gloria, Mayor of San Diego.
These repairs can improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists. The city says they'll fix a total of 200 streetlights, but that’s just a small amount of the 6,000 lights that still need repairs.
“It’s no secret that street lights are failing faster than we can repair them,” said Joe Lacava, City Council member for District 1.
The mayor says they need a lot more electricians before they can move forward. Workers are digging into the ground to look at the circuitry today. They hope to have most of the lights running by the end of the week.
