Boston's Gas Lights

Arlington

Arlington

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Dec 10, 2011
Messages
5,599
Reaction score
2,701
Boston maintains gas lighting in certain neighborhoods. Apparently one issue is the cost/quality of the "mantle" (the mineralized "net" on whose surface the gas burns and whose glow gives off the light). They start out as a fabric mesh that is "frosted" (like a donut) with minerals. Once installed, the net burns away and the mineral "shell" remains. Since gas lighting is rare, quality mantles are rare. They are also fragile and inefficient.

My suspicion is that LEDs are now fully capable of mimicking the color, shape, brightness, and slight flicker of gas at a fraction of the cost (of gas, CO2/Lumen, and maintenance). All the good stuff, without the leaks, odor, and explosive danger.

In the same way that we don't require that historic structures be lit only with candles or gas, Boston's historic gas streetlamps need not be lit with gas either.
 
Historical interests might have a problem with that. Really, the gas lights are not that expensive to maintain with the infrastructure being there for centuries. I get the motivation to turn them off during the day, but they're located in prime historic territory and are a big draw. I think it would stink if they did anything 'inauthentic' to them. LED's have come a long way, but it's still not the same. Walking Marlborough St. is a neat experience. You can't put a price tag on it...except that people visit Boston because it has neat experiences like that.


What I wish they would do is start using the LED lookalikes elsewhere in town. The city's spent a fortune over the last decade on faux-historic lighting that has the same godawful orange sodium bulbs in it. Start retrofitting more of those things so Beacon St. isn't a wall of glarebombs as far as the eye can see.
 
I'm ambivalent about replacing them.

One thing I can say is, in 26 years of my time in Boston, I've never seen one being replaced. Must be elves. On overtime.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
What I wish they would do is start using the LED lookalikes elsewhere in town. The city's spent a fortune over the last decade on faux-historic lighting that has the same godawful orange sodium bulbs in it. Start retrofitting more of those things so Beacon St. isn't a wall of glarebombs as far as the eye can see.
Click to expand...
I'm totally with you on that. Whether the gas is eventually replaced or not, the prior efforts of using organge sodium vapor lights to replace them is totally wrong (wrong size, wrong color, wrong shape). Any "faux gas" LEDs developed should go first to eliminate the Back Bay's oranges. I think people will like them well enough to see the real gas ones replaced eventually. Or I'm wrong, and we still get the win killing the orange.
 
JohnAKeith said:
I'm ambivalent about replacing them.

One thing I can say is, in 26 years of my time in Boston, I've never seen one being replaced. Must be elves. On overtime.
Click to expand...

Yeah they dont seem to go out often either.

And theres no copper wiring to steal.
 
I've stumbled on a few gas lights in alleys in Jeffrie's Point while exploring Eastie. They add a unique and more importantly authentic charm to a place. If you're going to replace it with LEDs, then you might was well just replace the whole fixture too, otherwise its a sham.

If we were talking about non-operational gas lights being restored with LED's that's one thing, but to replace working gas lights with LEDs to save a few pennies is no better then those who slapped up asphalt "brick" or formstone on their buildings to save from painting wood.

More importantly, it is also the exact opposite of historic preservation, as I've previously discussed regarding facadectomys. It is in blatant defiance of the US Secretary of the Interiors standards on Historic Preservation. It is the second worst thing you can do to a historic structure, short of wholesale demolition.
 
davem said:
I've stumbled on a few gas lights in alleys in Jeffrie's Point while exploring Eastie. They add a unique and more importantly authentic charm to a place. If you're going to replace it with LEDs, then you might was well just replace the whole fixture too, otherwise its a sham.
Click to expand...
Boston has 2800 gas fixtures, typically with 3 mantles (680 lumens per mantle) Each mantle uses about as much gas a pilot light (runs continuously). My own pilot lights cost me $5/mo for gas alone. Each fixture probably costs $15/mo or $180/year. $500,000 per year to run them all. These numbers fit very closely with a gas-company estimate for how much a 3-mantle lamp would cost to operate.

Each gas mantle costs about $12, so each fixture has $36 worth of mantles. It would likely cost the same $36 for 2040 lumens worth of LED bulb as we now spend on 3 fabric-mineral mantles.

Incandescent fixtures would require 150W to produce a similar number of lumens. Running continuously, that's 1315kWh x .143 $/kWh = $188 if left on continuously (same as Gas). Or $63 if run only an average of 8 hours perday ($176400 to run them all).

LEDs now offer about 100 lumens per watt. To produce the same 2040 lumens that gas produces requires just 21 watts, or 1/7th what the incandescents would take (the Berlin article says 1/10th the cost to power LEDs).

Still, the city would go from spending $500,000 on gas to spending $71,000 (if the LEDs ran 24hr/day, or $23,000 if they ran only 8 average "dark" hours. $8 per year instead of $180 for fuel.

If LEDs last 4x as long as Mantles, (say 12 years vs 3 years), and it costs $36 to change a fixture. Then mantles (material + labor) costs $72/3 = $24/year vs LED's $72/12 = $6.

So gas costs $200 per year (parts+labor+fuel), and LEDs would cost $14. The next time you see a gas fixture, is there really nothing better you can think of Boston doing with that $186 *per year per fixture* than burn it?
 
John wins the Internet. Shut it down. We're done here.
 
If LED lights are going to be incorporated into existing fixtures, you also have to factor in the cost to add heating elements to keep the glass defrosted in the winter. One benefit of gas lamps is that the waste heat serves a useful purpose in the winter. Cold areas switching to LED traffic signals have faced a similar issue.

As a past, and soon to be future, resident of Beacon Hill, I think it would be a terrible thing to get rid of the gas in favor of LEDs.
 
fatnoah said:
If LED lights are going to be incorporated into existing fixtures, you also have to factor in the cost to add heating elements to keep the glass defrosted in the winter. One benefit of gas lamps is that the waste heat serves a useful purpose in the winter. Cold areas switching to LED traffic signals have faced a similar issue.
Click to expand...
On traffic lights, the issue is the scoop-shaped sun-shade holding snow against the vertical surface. Theyve already solved it with an air-scoop that uses wind to blow the snow out (http://ledsmagazine.com/news/7/1/4)

Gas lights don't have the scoopy/holdy parts that traffic lights do. Plus, we can see how Berlin does.
 
Arlington said:
Boston has 2800 gas fixtures, typically with 3 mantles (680 lumens per mantle) Each mantle uses about as much gas a pilot light (runs continuously). My own pilot lights cost me $5/mo for gas alone. Each fixture probably costs $15/mo or $180/year. $500,000 per year to run them all. These numbers fit very closely with a gas-company estimate for how much a 3-mantle lamp would cost to operate.

Each gas mantle costs about $12, so each fixture has $36 worth of mantles. It would likely cost the same $36 for 2040 lumens worth of LED bulb as we now spend on 3 fabric-mineral mantles.

Incandescent fixtures would require 150W to produce a similar number of lumens. Running continuously, that's 1315kWh x .143 $/kWh = $188 if left on continuously (same as Gas). Or $63 if run only an average of 8 hours perday ($176400 to run them all).

LEDs now offer about 100 lumens per watt. To produce the same 2040 lumens that gas produces requires just 21 watts, or 1/7th what the incandescents would take (the Berlin article says 1/10th the cost to power LEDs).

Still, the city would go from spending $500,000 on gas to spending $71,000 (if the LEDs ran 24hr/day, or $23,000 if they ran only 8 average "dark" hours. $8 per year instead of $180 for fuel.

If LEDs last 4x as long as Mantles, (say 12 years vs 3 years), and it costs $36 to change a fixture. Then mantles (material + labor) costs $72/3 = $24/year vs LED's $72/12 = $6.

So gas costs $200 per year (parts+labor+fuel), and LEDs would cost $14. The next time you see a gas fixture, is there really nothing better you can think of Boston doing with that $186 *per year per fixture* than burn it?
Click to expand...

The daily shutoffs that they're experimenting with now would bring that figure down a lot and preserve the mantle lifespan. They just have to roll it out to more fixtures.

If they go dawn-to-dusk and that lops $200K/yr. off the operating price, that probably is a price worth paying for the 'authenticity' angle. Don't forget, Boston mass-deploying LED's to all its electric fixtures so seriously reduces the total cost of electricity and maintenance of the city's several hundred thousand aggregate fixtures that BPW's street lighting division's budget shrinks substantially. The gaslights become chump change with the savings on the electric lighting side, especially if dawn-to-dusk burning lowers their costs too.

This really isn't much of an issue for only 2800 fixtures clustered in the neighborhoods that pump in the most tourist bucks and poshest residential incomes.
 
Last sentence nails it, the charm factor. Nickle and diming that makes no sense for such a miniscule savings.
 
Someone upthread mentioned Jeffries Point, which is not even a slightly tony or touristed neighborhood. What other parts of Boston have gas lights, beyond Back Bay and Beacon Hill?
 
MBTAddict said:
Charlestown.
Click to expand...

The trapezoid of side streets between City Sq. / Winthrop Sq. / Bunker Hill Monument / Thompson Sq. & Rutherford Ave. Different style than in Back Bay and Beacon Hill...these have the silvery rounded domes.
 
I moved from the South End to Charlestown over the summer. Fun fact I learned about the lamps in Charlestown:

There's lots of old public pathways and side streets that have been privatized. Like old Thonmpson St. Or this old pathway.

You can tell what used to be a public way because they still have city gas lights on the property. Not sure how the land became privatized in most instances. I'm told people just started parking in the middle of Thompson Street back in the day and eventually everyone sort of forgot (or didn't care) that it had ever been a public street.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
The daily shutoffs that they're experimenting with now would bring that figure down a lot and preserve the mantle lifespan. They just have to roll it out to more fixtures.
Click to expand...
I'd love to read more about that. If they get it automatic (or even power down 2 of the 3 mantles, with the other on as a pilot and to generate thermocouple power) I agree the economics & aesthetics can make keeping gas a winner.

But what I read says that the mini-explosion and thermal shock of re-lighting is bad for mantle life (same as with incandescents).
 
Our streetlights on Worthington St were just replaced (but they probably were not gas) with LEDs. It's definitely brighter, but it's just such an awkward white light. This street has been relatively unchanged since the 1940s and its charm has been completely obliterated.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top