À Bordeaux, une partie de l’éclairage public sera éteint à partir de cette nuit
Lights out in several Bordeaux streets. 57% of public lighting in Bordeaux will be cut from 1 a.m. this Tuesday and until 5 a.m., reminding our colleagues from South West which draw up a map of the streets concerned.
The measure, announced last December by the town hall in order to respond to “the energy and climate crisis”, does not apply to the hypercentre and priority neighborhoods where public lights will remain on all night.
This four-hour cut off of public lighting will represent, according to the town hall, a saving of “more than 3.4 GWh/year, or 20% of current annual consumption”. 236 tonnes of CO2 will also be eliminated and €880,000 saved according to the city’s first estimates.
Debate around security
The cut of the public lighting in the residential districts had nevertheless caused a sharp debate at the time of a municipal council last December. According to comments reported by our colleagues from Southwest, the opposition would have worried about the “dangers” and the “feeling of insecurity” that such a measure could cause.
“If 80% of burglaries take place at night, no increase in insecurity or deterioration in security in the extinguished sectors compared to those maintained on have been observed to date in the cities that are extinguished”, justify the town hall on its website.
Bordeaux is however not the only city to have taken this kind of decision. Similar measures have thus been announced by several municipalities, as in Gennevilliers (Île-de-France) or in Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin).