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Mayor and supervisors debate streetlight ownership; city cautioned against buying PG&E-owned assets
Summary
Mayor Ed Lee said mixed ownership of streetlights — SFPUC and PG&E — complicates maintenance; he advised against purchasing PG&E lights and outlined SFPUC capital plans to repair aging city-owned lights.
Mayor Ed Lee told the Board of Supervisors that San Francisco’s streetlighting system is split between the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and Pacific Gas & Electric Co., and that mixed ownership complicates accountability and repairs.
Supervisor Scott Wiener had convened a hearing and asked why street and pedestrian lighting is frequently unresponsive. The mayor said SFPUC owns and maintains more than 25,000 lights while PG&E owns roughly 19,000. He cautioned against the city buying PG&E’s lights, noting it would not be wise in the current constrained environment. “Regardless of the purchase price, it would be it would cost approximately 35 to $42,000,000 to convert just the 1,103 of PG and E's lights from the very old street loop circuits,” Lee said.
Lee said PG&E ratepayers should expect PG&E to maintain its own assets and that SFPUC-owned lights are also past useful life, pointing to the PUC’s adopted 10-year capital plan that includes about $47,900,000 for repair and replacement of SFPUC-owned streetlights. He suggested three near-term strategies: updated electronic mapping of PG&E and SFPUC lights to assign responsibility faster; working with PG&E to adopt similar service-level goals (e.g., 48-hour outage turnaround); and enhancing 311 reporting and tracking for both owners.
Why it matters: Poor lighting has safety and livability impacts; unclear ownership and inconsistent maintenance standards can slow repairs and frustrate residents. The mayor’s response frames the problem as operational and financial rather than solely policy.
What happens next: The mayor asked the SFPUC to examine funding in departmental budgets and explore operational fixes such as updated mapping and 311 reporting; he recommended against immediate purchase of PG&E assets.
