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Drivers left in the dark

200 street lamps installed along a dangerous stretch of U.S. 19 in Pasco County are now out.

By JODIE TILLMAN
Published December 27, 2006

Darkness had fallen. But as he drove down U.S. 19, Ron Woods thought: This is too dark.

Up and down the highway, the streetlights on the way from Gulf View Square mall to his Hudson home were out. Not just one here or one there, he said, but "a whole big section."

Turns out Woods was on to something.

At least 214 streetlights along U.S. 19 between the Pinellas County line and State Road 52 are out, according to state transportation officials.

And it is not a simple matter of the county, which maintains the lights, changing bulbs. This fix is going to cost the state $50,000.

So what happened to the lights, which were installed to make U.S. 19 safer?

In simplest terms, water damage.

A state-paid contractor, Mastec North America Inc., installed each light pole with a safety component known as a cable distribution system. Such a system prevents electrocution by shutting off the power if, say, a car hit a pole and caused the wires to be exposed.

But the box that encloses the component on each pole turned out not to be waterproof, said Department of Transportation spokeswoman Kristen Carson.

That means water has seeped into the components of some poles and blown the branch circuit breakers, each of which handle up to 10 lights, said state transportation engineer Bijan Behzadi. So if water gets into the system on one pole, it can shut down as many as nine other lights.

The cable distribution systems were built by a Texas manufacturer and sold to the contractor by DOT Lighting, a New Port Richey company. The one-year warranty on the equipment expired before the problems became apparent, Carson said.

DOT Lighting president Terry Worthington said he was unaware of the situation and had not heard of any other problems with this particular system. "No one contacted me," he said.

The boxes are waterproof-tested, he said, and he suggested that the components may have been incorrectly installed, which would have led to the water seeping in. The contractor price for the systems runs about $700 apiece, he said.

The streetlights were installed in phases, starting in 2000.

Transportation officials are working now on a fast track contract to correct the electrical problems over the next two months. Behzadi, the state engineer, said the department is no longer using the cable distribution systems.

The lights were put up as a safety measure on U.S. 19 in Pasco County, a stretch of highway named the deadliest road for pedestrians back in 2002. TV newsmagazine Dateline last year analyzed five years of federal crash data and concluded that U.S. 19, which it called a "six-lane meat grinder," is the nation's most dangerous highway for pedestrians.

Studies have shown that adequate street lighting can reduce pedestrian accidents by as much as 40 percent, Behzadi said. Lighting can also cut down on the number of vehicular accidents.

"The purpose of the lighting is for safety," he said.

In July, a witness to a fatal pedestrian accident on U.S. 19 told the Times that he had missed hitting the victim on the highway shoulder moments earlier because streetlights had illuminated her figure. But then the woman, Marie Howarth, left the shoulder and darted into the road. The witness looked into his rearview mirror and saw the coming headlights.

Jodie Tillman can be reached at jtillman@sptimes.com or 727 869-6247.

[Last modified December 27, 2006, 06:31:01]