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Kenai consultants find aging streetlights, underlit school-bus stops in citywide assessment
Summary
Avari Consulting and DAO Engineering presented a citywide street-lighting assessment showing most fixtures are LED but nearing end of life, highlighted school-bus stops that do not meet recommended illumination levels, and recommended tiered fixes, standardization and grant-seeking to fund upgrades.
A consulting team told the Kenai City Council that a field inventory and photometric modeling of the city’s street-lighting network found most fixtures are LED but many are reaching the end of their useful life and several school-bus stops lack recommended illumination levels.
"There were a little over 600 lights in total," Brian Gays, CEO of Avari Consulting, said in a presentation to council, adding that about 90% are LED but "they're kind of nearing the end of their useful life." The inventory, Gays said, includes GPS-located data to help the city reconcile billing discrepancies and identify maintenance issues such as fixtures that burn during the day, missing components or copper-theft damage.
Gays and Adam Miles of DAO Engineering described a photometric web application that maps light distribution and helps staff identify overlit and underlit places. "You can actually see lighting gaps," Gays said, noting the tool can overlay crash history, property boundaries and habitat layers to prioritize work.
The consultants singled out school-bus stops as a safety priority. "School bus stops really don't have the recommended illumination levels," Gays said, adding that low winter light makes those gaps more concerning for students walking to and from stops.
Their recommendations include a three-tier approach: quick operational, low-cost changes; near-term projects focused on high-priority locations (including bus stops); and longer-term corridor modernization and standardization. They recommended standardizing fixture families and SKUs across owners (city, Homer Electric and Alaska DOT&PF) to reduce maintenance complexity.
On technical fixes, the consultants recommended replacing legacy direct-bury cabling with conduit and handholes to make future splices and maintenance easier. "Instead of direct-bury cabling, we're doing a conduit with cable system," Miles said.
The consultants also urged low-color-temperature lighting and house-side shielding in environmentally sensitive river corridors, and noted federal grant programs (HSIP, Safe Streets for All) and utility partnerships as potential funding sources.
Next steps outlined to council included onboarding the inventory into municipal asset-management systems, closer coordination with the school district on bus-stop lighting, and pursuing grant funding and partnerships to support tier-2 and tier-3 projects.
The presentation concluded with a brief council question-and-answer session about wiring replacement and implementation timing. The city manager later told council that staff had already prepared and reviewed a Safe Streets for All grant application for a nearby repaving/lighting package.
