In Santa Fe, more than half of the lighting service is “bad, very bad or average”

The capital Municipality presented the “Recovery and refunctionalization plan for public lighting in the city of Santa Fe.” This is an intervention in 19 “critical neighborhoods” – that is, where LED lighting is inefficient, if not non-existent -, with an investment of 300 million pesos.

But the salient fact that municipal officials announced is that, according to an official survey of the current state of the public lighting system, In 87 neighborhoods of the city, 34% of the lighting is “bad or very bad”; 18% are “regular” and 48% are “good or very good.” In clean terms: in 52% of the entire urban area, public lighting has deficiencies.

The other striking element is the number of vandalisms reported by the local government: There are 521 columns partially destroyed to date. Regarding their geographical location, most acts of vandalism are concentrated in the center of the city map, towards the north. But also in the macrocenter and the southwest.

The presentation took place within the framework of the Public Safety Emergency, declared by law at the provincial level and to which the city adhered, after sanction by ordinance of the Santa Fe Council. 19 neighborhoods considered the most “critical” will be intervened. The amount of the work, as stated, will be about 300 million pesos.

In this sense, the municipality will open a price competition for all companies that are interested in providing this service to apply, based on the technical specifications that were prepared.

“One of the management axes is that we want an illuminated and safe city. And just as they listened to me in critical terms, shortly after assuming, when I said that I saw the city was dark, this plan (recovery of public lighting) is a step in what we want to change,” Mayor Juan declared to the press. Pablo Poletti.

The local president admitted that this issue “is a critical point in our management. For this reason, we are activating the tools to solve” the problems that the city’s public lighting system faces. He added that the program will be implemented “in the short term.”

To design the plan, a survey was carried out “luminaire by luminaire, throughout the city,” Poletti assured. Sometimes, where a problem had been solved, we had to put lights back in, because the first ones had been vandalized,” he added.

The study allowed, sector by sector of the city, a classification-diagnosis of public lighting. “More than 50% of the neighborhoods in this capital are in a fair, bad or very bad state. That’s what worries us. For this reason, we present this plan to recover the luminaires.”

And there is only 6% with very good lighting. “This implies that these sectors have more than 90% of the lights working correctly,” he later admitted. “We are going to take this whole x-ray, which is negative today, seriously and we will try to reverse it in the short term,” Poletti asserted.

This issue is “urgent” for the current management, because “it is framed with the vandalization” of lighting equipment and, also, “with the neighborhoods that are suffering the most insecurity,” added the mayor. The plan will be implemented in parallel with the daily maintenance carried out by the municipality on lighting in the city.

The Secretary of Urban Management and Environment, Guillermo Ferrero, said that when the current municipal administration took over, There were 17 thousand unresolved complaints about public lighting. “The lighting problem, however, became worse as time went by,” he told the press.

And he reviewed: “We had only one truck to be able to make light replacements. Currently, five hydroelevators have been recovered. Furthermore, upon assuming we found half of the Suspension Bridge turned off. “It was partially refunctionalized.”

Then, they intervened in Puente Oroño. “This took us about 20 days. The viaduct had been off for more than three years.”, he questioned. Later, the maintenance plan for street lights began, the official said. Those who intervened were Gral. López, Av. Gob. Freyre, Facundo Zuviría, and today we are concluding Gorriti and Peñaloza, among others.

“We handle on average 30 complaints a day for public lighting. This not only implies the replacement of 30 luminaires, but many times it is necessary to intervene in sectors of several blocks that are out of service,” said Ferrero.

Among the anti-vandal measures, the covers are being welded and concertina wires are being placed in the columns of the luminaires to “mitigate these events that threaten the assets of the city,” the secretary concluded.

These were selected “depending on the precariousness of the public lighting system, vandalization and levels of insecurity. Therefore, this is in line with the Targeted Neighborhood Interventions (IBF) that the province is deploying”, complemented the Secretary of Urban Development and Water Management, Felipe Franco.

For 90 days, the neighborhoods to intervene are: San Jerónimo; Saint Ignatius Loyola South; Ceferino Namuncurá; Centenary; United North; Leiva Cabin; October 21; Brigadier López; North Zone High School; Santa Marta; Bernardino Rivadavia; Flowers; Altos de Nogueras; Candioti South; Candioti North; The hole; San Agustin; Juventud del Norte, and Yapeyú Oeste, reported municipal sources.

Public lighting survey… by El Litoral