Indianapolis has all-new streetlights. We need a new color.

Indianapolis Star

25-04-2025

The day after daylight savings time sprung ahead, I was driving to work. I was used to making the trip in the light of day and was shocked at how different the streets looked when the sun was back below the horizon.
Every Indianapolis driver is on edge driving in early spring. You never know when a chuckhole is lurking in the dark. Luckily, my drive is lit by cobra lights from start to finish. I trucked along in confidence, scanning my field of view, until not eighty yards away from my destination – 'CA-CHUNK!...CA-CHUNK!'
I heard the awful rimshot of my car entering and exiting a pothole on my front left, and then the inevitable repeat as the back left followed it in and out. The streets were lit, and I was vigilant. How had I missed it?
One of the best initiatives of Mayor Joe Hogsett's administration has been Operation Night Light. This much-needed initiative ended a 35-year moratorium on new streetlights in Indianapolis. In doing so, it not only added around 4,000 new streetlights to sidewalks and roads that had been pitch-black at night, but also swapped out the old bulbs for brighter, more energy-efficient LED bulbs.
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Better lighting at night is well-understood to improve public safety. That is, if it's implemented correctly.
The reason I'd hit that pothole had actually been because the light was too bright. The undirected, harsh white flooded my field of vision, creating a glare that blinded me and hid obstacles in newly formed shadows.
This is actually a common problem – extreme glare can hide the crime it was supposed to prevent. The bright-white LEDs create more glare and actually cause more accidents than warmer, dimmer, yellower colors. Of course, lower lights at night also help with sleep and mental health.
But it's not just us that I'm concerned about. It's bird migration season, and twice a year, over 40 million birds fly through, and over, Indianapolis in search of sprouting plants, hatching insects and lengthening sunlight. These include fragile species protected by the Migratory Birds Act and the Endangered Species Act.
However, while visiting our city, millions of them will die, distracted by harsh lights at night and confused by all-glass skyscrapers downtown. One thousand birds were killed in a single night by a single building in Chicago. The images of the carnage are unsettling, and the downstream ecological impacts are enormous.
Migrating insects are affected by this light too. They hatch before the last frost, or migrate in the wrong direction or incinerate themselves. The global insect population is nosediving just as we're beginning to understand they are essential to our survival. Insects are the base consumers that feed the animals we eat, and they are the most efficient way to pollinate our fruits, vegetables and grains. We starve without them.
Now, to be clear: I love Operation Night Light. I'd just suggest a small tweak to its implementation that would save the lives of millions of birds and insects, while also protecting people's lives and property better.
Change the color of the lights.
Warmer colors attract fewer insects and birds than cooler colors, like bright white, while also casting less harmful glare for humans. Anyone who has stared at pure white headlights and wondered if the brights were on knows this.
There are other ways to help these creatures, including lighting shields that direct light downwards, and UV coatings on windows that birds can see but are invisible to humans, preventing the all-glass bird murderers downtown from being so lethal. But those cost money, while changing the color of an LED bulb is typically a flick of a switch.
Ensuring consistent light colors seems like a win-win for all of us. Sometimes the small changes make the biggest difference.