Nonworking streetlights abound in Cleveland: Road Rant

By John Horton, The Plain Dealer [1]

Lisa Dejong, The Plain Dealer The streetlight in front of Margaret Udovic's home along Hamlet Avenue hasn't worked in about two years. It's one of an untold number of dark streetlights scattered around the city. Sundown lured Margaret Udovic to the end of her Hamlet Avenue driveway. Darkness creeping over the East Side neighborhood usually drives her inside, but on this November night . . . well, she just couldn't stay away from the street.

She wanted to witness a rebirth.

An automated call from Cleveland Public Power earlier in the day promised new life in the long dead streetlight fronting Udovic's home. For two years, the inoperable overhead lamp spread little but worry about who or what lurked in the shadows. That would cease, though, once that bulb flickered and the filament glowed.

"I wanted to see it light up," said Udovic, 52. "I had waited so long."

And she's still waiting. The light atop pole No. 04369 on Hamlet continues to offer no illumination, just like thousands of others in Cleveland.

The problem knows no boundary within the city limits. Inspect almost any neighborhood -- East Side, West Side or the heart of downtown -- and gaps mar sparkling lines of streetlights. Dim-and-dark pockets surround homes and businesses, museums and sporting venues, hospitals and schools and government offices.

A crusader for public radiance -- Henry Senyak, 46, a semiretired electrician -- personally reported to CPP more than 2,000 malfunctioning streetlights in and around his Tremont home last year. (He provided a detailed list, too.) The good news is that repair crews took care of roughly 1,400 of those as of last week. The bad news? That left about 600 fix-it projects just in his area.

Senyak's best guess is that upwards of 5,000 streetlights don't shine citywide, and he thinks the number grows daily: "It's cascading," he said.

But not in the eyes of CPP.

The utility's commissioner, Ivan Henderson, said he has hard facts showing the agency has shown "substantial improvement" in addressing illumination the past few years. In 2009, CPP stats indicate crews handled 14,000 repair requests -- about 1,000 more than the previous year -- and typically resolved problems within 16 to 17 days.

CPP estimates that only 2 percent of its roughly 65,000 streetlights don't work on any given evening. That equates to 1,300 no-shine lights. As of Friday, less than 1,000 active complaints existed in the CPP tracking system.

"Go out," Henderson challenged, "and take a look to see what's on."

Or more precisely, what's off.

On Wednesday night, Road Rant randomly zigged and zagged from east to west across Cleveland to search out do-nothing streetlights along a few main corridors. Twenty-five miles on the odometer brought a tally of nearly 300 out-of-order lights. (Note to City Hall: Take a look outside -- the streetlights are out on one side of Lakeside Avenue on the half-block from your home to East Ninth Street.)

Other lowlights include:

• Two traffic camera locations where safety's obviously a priority -- Carnegie Avenue at East 55th Street and Chester Avenue at East 71st Street -- featured multiple outages at or near the intersections.

• Every bulb on the short stretch of West 56th Street between Clark and Train avenues offered no glow.

• Thirty dead streetlights turned Carnegie Avenue into a dark tunnel from Progressive Field to East 14th Street.

And the list goes on and on. It seems far more needs fixing than what CPP realizes.

Now bulbs do burn out. That's a fact of life, as every homeowner who's stubbed a toe on a chair in a suddenly dark room understands. But the worry is that CPP simply can't keep up with the never-ending troubles of Cleveland's expansive streetlight system: "The system and the process is overwhelmed," Senyak said.

In 2008, the city purchased 18,000 streetlights from FirstEnergy and took on the added maintenance responsibility. CPP added crews, Henderson said. Three teams work at night to replace bulbs. Four crews fan out during daylight hours to deal with circuits and fixture issues.

Last year, the agency also debuted a new Complaints and Tracking System (CATS) to better manage phoned-in repair requests.

So CPP's trying, it really is.

But more is needed.

The CATS system -- as Udovic learned -- seems prone to reporting repairs that never took place. Senyak's log sheet shows more than 200 instances where CPP notified him of a phantom fix and forced him to re-report a malfunctioning light to get the job done. Several other callers and e-mailers relayed similar stories.

Henderson said an inaccurate fix call is an exception rather than the norm. However, he acknowledged that the CATS system "hasn't met every expectation" and needs to be upgraded.

More than that needs tweaking, though.

Councilman Joe Cimperman said streetlights needs to be a focal point for the city this year. He called for an "all-hands-on-deck" approach to understand the full extent of the problem. Every eye in the city needs to be looking. Every dead bulb needs to be on someone's radar.

But that's just the start. The city needs a more user-friendly system to report outages and encourage participation, the councilman said. Tracking also should be improved to ensure complaints truly get handled. New lights need to find their way onto the streets, too, in order to eliminate deteriorating equipment that's making a tough job even tougher.

This city can shine brighter. It needs to. Well-lit streets deter crime and make people feel safer. Every glowing bulb adds a vitality to the street. It's welcoming. It's comforting.

"We know this is an issue," Cimperman said. "We just need the will to address it. It's on us to do it."

Yes, it is.