BURBANK : New Lights to Be Installed on Freeway

Caltrans will spend $500,000 to install more efficient, safer and less expensive lighting along a four-mile stretch of the Ventura Freeway in Burbank and Los Angeles from Vineland Avenue to Riverside Drive, transportation officials announced Monday.

Drivers should notice no difference after the existing 130 mercury vapor lights, installed between 1959 and 1961, are replaced by high-pressure sodium lights.

But the new lights will need only about half as much power, said Peter Wong, senior transportation electrical engineer with Caltrans.

The state has been upgrading highway lighting over the last decade. The California Transportation Commission voted to fund the project April 1, Wong said.

The replacement work is scheduled to begin in August, with completion expected in February. The work will require closing lanes of traffic, Wong said, but not during the peak hours of 7 to 10 a.m. or 2 to 6 p.m. on weekdays.

“If these new lights break, they’re not as expensive to replace,” said Caltrans spokesman Steve Galluzo.

The replacement project is part of a $1.9-million effort to replace 823 lights and 58 lighting circuits along a 17-mile stretch on the Golden State Freeway from Western Avenue to Cohasset Street and on the Ventura Freeway from Vineland Avenue to the Pasadena Freeway.

“We feel the project would reduce maintenance costs and the modified electrical system would be less hazardous to maintain,” Galluzo said.