DOE Report Looks at Lighting for Pedestrians

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Gateway Report series is one of the more interesting efforts to provide a reality check on applications of new lighting technologies. DOE’s most recent release, “Pedestrian Friendly Outdoor Lighting” (available in PDF format from the DOE’s website at www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/ssl/gatewaydemos_results.html) reports on a study of two demonstration projects in which lighting in areas for walking needed improvement.

The report points out that parameters for most outdoor lighting is oriented toward the needs of vehicle traffic more than foot traffic. In this study, DOE followed two pedestrian-focused projects at sites where the pedestrian-scale lighting needed improvement: Stanford University in California and the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York. The results from these projects reveal that pedestrians may have different criteria and priorities than drivers, especially in areas where cars are subordinate to bicycles and users on foot.

The report looks at a variety of factors that affect pedestrian comfort with the lighting, ranging from safety from tripping, slipping and falling to personal security from harm or intimidation to unwanted light in residential windows.

Some of the findings the DOE reports include that pedestrians cared about the daytime appearance of the luminaire; they found glare to be a significant factor and preferred soft-edged patterns of light on the ground with warm light colors (2,700K to 3,000K) and were fine with illuminance at the low end of the levels recommended by the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) recommendations so long as glare was reduced.

Pedestrians found diffused light more acceptable even if measures of spot illuminance were high, meaning even with well-balanced LED arrays and clear metal-halide tubes the use of frosted refractors and flat panels improved walkers’ comfort levels.

DOE pointed out that applications of lighting for pedestrian spaces will always vary depending on activities and that tradeoffs will invariably have to be made. There is no glare metric that works reliably for pedestrian lighting, so full-scale mock-ups are necessary to get useful user feedback.