Springfield residents press Eversource for faster streetlight repairs after fatal crashes; company points to online reporting and LED conversion

Springfield city leaders, grieving family members and Eversource officials met Dec. 18 to confront continuing streetlight outages that residents say contribute to pedestrian deaths on major corridors.

The meeting’s public-comment period centered on State Street and Boston Road, where residents and councilors recounted fatal crashes and persistent darkness. "Springfield continues to rank among the most dangerous municipalities of Massachusetts for pedestrians," said one resident, citing prior crash investigations and poor nighttime visibility. Family members described recent losses and demanded immediate, reliable fixes.

Eversource managers acknowledged the tragedies and outlined both short- and long-term steps the utility is pursuing. John Caldwell, manager of community relations, urged residents to report outages through the company website and said the online form creates a single timestamped corrective‑maintenance ticket that feeds the company’s work queue: "Please put it through the system because that'll automatically...it'll be time stamped. You'll be able to track that request to understand when it was submitted." David Velez, director of field operations for Western Massachusetts, told the committee his team has completed "over 1,000 corrective‑maintenance tickets this year alone" and performed 67 tickets in the last week.

Councilors and residents pushed back that the system is not delivering timely relief in many neighborhoods. "It took four years and two fatalities before the lights on 521 State Street got repaired," a resident said, asking why urgent action seemed to follow only after a high‑profile press event. Multiple councilors said they had counted numerous lights that remain dark and asked whether Eversource can adopt more proactive monitoring, or dedicate local crews to high‑risk corridors.

Eversource described a multi‑year capital replacement that replaced traditional sodium cobra‑head fixtures with LED cobra heads for more than 12,000 of Springfield’s roughly 14,000 streetlights; that project, the company said, was completed in November. "What remains are decorative fixtures — about 2,000 — and outages caused by underground wiring faults," Velez said, noting such repairs require digging and conduit replacement and therefore take longer than routine lamp swaps.

Councilors asked for follow‑up work from both sides: cost estimates for replacing decorative fixtures with LED cobra heads; outreach to 311 and neighborhood associations so residents understand how to report outages; and an assessment of temporary lighting solutions for locations that will require extended underground work. Eversource said it would provide links to the online reporting form, share details of the maintenance teams and investigate longer‑term 'smart' monitoring technologies that could detect outages without human reports.

Councilors also sought clarification about interagency work. Several residents raised tree‑trimming as a contributing factor; council members said tree trimming is managed by the city parks department and encouraged families to pursue requests with the mayor’s office and neighborhood C3 (police‑community) groups.

The committee concluded with mutual pledges to continue the dialogue: Eversource will supply resource links and cost estimates, and the council will follow up with the families and municipal departments about neighborhood outreach, parks maintenance and potential temporary safety measures.

What’s next: Eversource will provide the city with more detailed cost and staffing information and share links to outage‑reporting and bill‑assistance webpages; the council said it will remain engaged and push for proactive monitoring in high‑risk areas.