The light complaints in Ward9 have more than doubled between 2014 and 2015, according to the 311 dataset from the open data website of the City of Ottawa.
In 2014, ward 9 received 77 light complaints, making it the 19th ward out of 23 for the number of complaints received. However, 157 complaints were recorded in 2015, placing the ward in the 9th position.
Keigh Egli, councilor of Ward9, says common complaints are traffic lights and light trespass. “There are too many files for us to go through to pinpoint exactly the reason of the increase”, he said.
Light trespass can come from neighbors outdoor lights as well as bad streetlights. According to Robert Dick, chair of The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s Light-Pollution Abatement Committee, light trespass is most often due to bad light fixtures and too intense lighting.
A number of bad light fixtures are present on the streets of Ward9, most of them in parking lots of stores, either their glare being too bright or the fixture pointing towards the sky.
Here is a map with pictures showing some bad light fixtures in Ward9.
Ottawa’s Strategic Plan to convert all its outdoor sodium lights for new LEDs before 2020 could, according to Dick, increase the light trespass complaints by a lot, but not for a long time.
Egli says if it is the case and light complaints increase, “we will deal with it then.”