Street Lamps in Singapore

You may have noticed that Singapore’s street lamps have become brighter in recent years! This change is because our streets are now illuminated with white LED lights instead of the orange hue that was previously used.

But #didyouknow that the first street lamp in Singapore was an oil lamp and it was lit #onthisday, on 1 Apr 1864?

Back then, these early street lamps burned coconut oil as fuel. Every evening, lamplighters had to climb up ladders to light each lamp. With more than 4,000 street lamps to light then, this was an exceedingly tedious task, not to mention the scale of work needed to extract oil used to fuel the lamps.

Since then, in 1906, the first electric lamps were introduced in Singapore, and subsequently fully replaced the gas lamps in 1956. Over the next few decades, the Public Works Departments, and later the Public Utilities Board (PUB) continued to refine Singapore’s street lighting system via efforts like the Brighter Streetlighting Scheme of 1975, which gradually introduced brighter lamps. PUB also introduced shorter lamp posts to conserve energy and avoid cases where the lamp’s light was blocked by trees.

With the latest upgrade in our street lamps completed in 2023, these white LED street lights are brighter, making the roads clearer and more visible, resulting in increased safety for drivers as they drive at night. Brighter LED lights also adds to the safety and security of our streets.

Yet these lights, while brighter, are also approximately 25% more energy-efficient, more reliable, and require less frequent replacement, reducing consumption and maintenance costs, introducing greater sustainability in road lighting. According to LTA, the switch to LED lighting has saved more than 25 million kWH in energy consumption, amounting to cost savings of about $5 million to $7.5 million per year!

Just like how our lighting evolved from coconut oil lamps to modern electric lights, to the robust LED lighting we enjoy at our streets and walkways today, our island nation had also similarly developed and evolved through time into the modern metropolis that it is today, adapting new practices and technologies to keep Singapore constantly growing and transforming to the benefit of all Singaporeans. In many ways, the evolution of our street lamps can also be seen as a microcosm of our nation indeed.

So as we walk through the safely illuminated streets of Singapore which are often #takenforgranted, may we also remember how far our island nation has come and how transformed through the ages.

#singapore #OnThisDay #TIL #History #safety #streetlighting

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