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San Jose DOT: copper wire theft pushed street‑light repairs to a six‑month wait
Summary
Department of Transportation staff said copper wire theft and vandalism that escalated in mid‑2024 have stretched street‑light repair times to about six months despite recent budget increases that doubled repair capacity.
Colin Hy, who identified himself as a Department of Transportation staff member during the webinar, told attendees that copper wire theft and other vandalism that intensified in mid‑2024 have created a substantial backlog of street‑light repairs.
“Starting in mid 2024, copper wire theft and street light vandalism grew to be a very very rampant problem… and it has set us back to the point where we now have a standard wait time of 6 months to repair a street light,” Hy said.
Hy said the department received budget in fiscal year 2025‑26 that roughly doubled repair capacity and that crews have addressed hundreds of open requests. He gave a rough timeline and figures for the backlog: in July 2025 there were about 1,025 open service requests for street lights; over the following six months crews addressed more than 800 requests but new reports continued to arrive and the backlog remained large. Hy said the department is prioritizing traffic signals and street lights in sensitive locations.
Hy also said DOT maintains a publicly shared map of theft and outage reports and agreed to post that map in the webinar chat, with the caveat that the map may be about a month behind real‑time conditions.
Regarding SLAs, a staff speaker noted the city’s dashboard lists a 16‑day SLA for street‑light outages but said operational realities have meant repairs can take far longer in practice.
What residents should do: Hy asked residents to report outages through 311; DOT will prioritize safety‑critical signals and high‑impact outages. He said the new funding is helping the city “chip away” at the backlog but that elevated theft and vandalism continue to create recurring workload.
