Shining spots
Counting the meters between street lights
Are you tired of constantly screwing in light bulbs in the entrance to your building? Have you broken your heel on the uneven and completely unlit stairs of your building, your attention distracted by the blinding neon signs advertising playing machines? If you answered yes, it means that you don’t live downtown and the lighting on your street is not standardized. The Day decided to find out who is responsible for street lights, neon ads, light bulbs in building entrances, and other spots in the city that are anything but bright.
“There are uniform lighting standards in Ukraine,” says Volodymyr Makarenko, head of the Kyivmisksvitlo’s production department. “Street lights must be installed every 35-40 meters. However, it depends on the kind of light and the height at which it is mounted over the street.”
Some sections of streets require additional and stronger lighting. These are mostly avenues, highways, and dangerous areas on footpaths. If a street light near your home is not working or dim, call the local housing department or the Kyivmisksvitlo dispatcher at 458-0510. We pay for utilities, which include lighting near our homes. From my own experience I can say that this service will quickly ensure that your journey home is better lit.
The lighting situation in the entrances to Kyiv buildings is also not reassuring. Although many residents pay for the upkeep of their stairwells and other amenities, they have to keep an eye on their buildings themselves. No one knows where the money from the municipal bank accounts goes.
While struggling for a bright future on their floors, tenants have come up with a number of tricks to scare away light bulb snatchers. My grandmother daubs her light bulbs with lipstick, so malefactors think twice before unscrewing the bulb. When it’s her neighbor’s turn to replace the bulb, she uses an ugly brown paint. Sometimes tenants use nonstandard (colored) bulbs or replace bulbs with neon tubes. Often people screw on, weld, or install various protective shades. But none of these measures has ever stopped pilferers of light bulbs.
Utility workers are responsible for lighting in building entrances. The dispatcher at Housing Department No. 802 took my report about a missing light bulb and gave me a piece of useful advice: “Go buy a lightbulb, screw it in, and cover it with a liter-sized glass jar; then people won’t steal it. If they keep stealing bulbs, try to spot the thief and hand him over to the district militia officer. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait a long time, because the housing department receives just one box of light bulbs for every housing section, and this happens very seldom. These bulbs are enough only for the first couple of floors.”
Neon lights brighten pedestrians’ lives. Now all shop windows and signs have them. Often light boxes and neon billboards function in place of street lights. But the flip side of this coin is that neon lights cause a great deal of discomfort to people living in neighboring buildings, who are forced to sleep in a room illuminated by multicolored lights shining through the windows. This does not make for a sound sleep, especially for children. The Kyiv Administration for City Improvement and Urban Design told us that they have nothing to do with the matter and that this is the advertisers’ area.
