My 2 cents worth on sensible reduction in street lighting costs and their contribution to pollution.
It would be great to keep a watch on this experiment in Perth.
Just so happens that our wonderful council has just placed a high mounted Sodium Vapor street light on our road intersection that shines directly into two of our bedrooms - not happy Jan!
We live in a small acreage area between two conservation parks our street lighting is low level well spaced mercury vapor lights (installed c.1985). The majority of our 177 property owners are very environmentally conscious and have maintained high quality native vegetation across our connecting corridor which is now recognised by state and local government as a bio-regional corridor.
This is the only Sodium Vapor street light within our community and we have lodged a complaint with council that whilst these lights are the best for motorways and arterial roads they are not suitable for local street lights.
Yes these lights are high efficiency and emit light in one narrow band:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-vapor_lamp
Whilst this makes it easy to use an LPS filter for astronomy, the light band is one most sensitive to the human eye, so where it shines directly on a visual observing site guess what! I support a previous comment that Sodium Vapour light is very effectively reflected off cloud and will reflect that light much further than other types of lighting.
We have external security lights with motion activation as well as central control. We have visual and IR security cameras plus signs notifies would be burglars. Our insurance company provides a small additional discount.
So I would be delighted to have street lights switched off from 0001-0500 Mon -Fri (We know vandalism increases on Fri & Sat nights).
Power companies install and control street lights (not the local council) and power companies already control off peak power via line pulses, so the technology is already present at the light pole - just a small pulse activated switch is required!
My personal view is that street lights on suburban streets have both positive and negative impacts on burglars and vandals,
so switching them off in these areas will have little effect on burglaries providing residents take reasonable steps to discourage these criminals.
Time to apply pressure on councils.
David