Bright Lights, Beautiful City

As the largest city in Oregon with more than three million residents in its metro area, Portland is home to breathtaking natural beauty, a wealth of microbreweries and coffeehouses, and a historic downtown marked by must-see landmarks. The city is also renowned for its thriving eco-friendly scene and focus on sustainability, so it came as no surprise when The Portland Bureau of Transportation began upgrading the city’s 52,000 streetlamps to energy-efficient LED technology in 2014. 

The City of Portland wanted to move forward with new energy-efficient lighting technology, but not at the expense of its vintage streetlamps, which had proved to be an obstacle in the past. 

“We started converting to LEDs about three years ago and began with ‘low-hanging fruit’—our cobra head lighting fixtures,” said Lisa Elbert, P.E., Signals and Lighting Engineer with the City of Portland Bureau of Transportation.