The road to the Olympics

20 July 2011

There’s more to the Olympic legacy than what happens to the main stadium after the Games. Andrew Brister finds out that the boroughs surrounding the Park are already benefiting from improved public lighting

Did you manage to get hold of any tickets, then? If you were one of the lucky ones to strike gold in the Olympic lottery, you’ll be making your way to the Olympic Park courtesy of some winning lighting upgrades in the surrounding boroughs.

Improvements to the public lighting in the five boroughs neighbouring the Park will perhaps prove to be a more lasting legacy than some of the sporting venues themselves. Take Waltham Forest, for example. It has received £8 million of much-needed funding to make the area’s streets safer, more vibrant and attractive.

The upgrade to the street lighting sees a move away from SON lamps to white light, along with a central management system. Chris Warner is the public lighting manager for Waltham Forest. “The project board felt that Urbis’ offering met the design criteria for the schemes most effectively. They also liked the style of the main luminaires put forward, the Evolo and Paseo.”

The A106 Ruckholt Road, which leads directly to the main Olympic site, utilises the Paseo luminaire, fitted with twin optic 140W CosmoPolis ceramic metal halide lamps from Philips. In other areas you will find Evolo luminaires, equipped with single 140W Cosmos. The photometric performance of the units ensures that clean white light is spread evenly along the roads, which helps make the movement of large numbers of people safer.

“All the luminaires are fitted with the Harvard LeafNut system which I can access through a web server from my laptop. I can adjust lighting levels to individual lamp columns if necessary,” explains Warner. “During the Games we will need to provide a very high level of light. However, after the games are over, we can then use the system to lower the lighting levels and make significant long-term energy savings. It’s the ideal solution for us.” The new street lighting is expected to achieve 20 per cent energy savings.

Olympian endeavours in Stratford

As another gateway to one of the main entrance points into the Olympic site, the A118 Road in Stratford has been given a makeover with new feature lighting commissioned by Thames Gateway and Design for London, funded from the Olympic budget. The concept for the new feature lighting features a catenary system, with suspended glowing globes in a golden yellow colour chosen to symbolise gold medals.

Aquila Design, specialists in bespoke exterior solutions, worked on the project with the team at the London Borough of Newham. Aquila advised that in order to achieve the required shade of golden yellow, an RGB colour change system was required, and this in turn opened the door to many other possibilities for the clients. During the Olympics the lighting can be used to create a Union Jack pattern should Britain start reeling in the gold medals. After the Olympics the lighting will continue to be a feature, marking important events and occasions, for example green for St Patrick’s Day, pink and red for Valentine’s Day, and festive red and green at Christmas.

The solution, supplied by Urbis, comprises six 13m columns running along the carriageway with twin 140W CosmoPolis lamps in Paseo 600 luminaires that also feature an LED beacon light in warm white. A further three 9m supporting columns were placed along the central reservation. A 400mm-diameter opal acrylic globe was considered to be the optimum size. The final system has

148 glowing globes suspended on stainless steel support cables with full LED colour change capability. The units are controlled by a single DMX controller housed within a feeder pillar on the central reservation, allowing individual control of the LEDs within the globes for scrolling, starbursts, colour fading as well as simple colour selection. Enjoy the sport next summer, but take a few minutes to enjoy the new lighting too.

Tales from the riverbank

The Olympic Park is surrounded by a network of canals and waterways, offering routes to and from the site. A towpath on the River Lea has been made safer by the installation of D W Windsor’s Garda handrail.

The scheme, a joint project by British Waterways and the London Borough of Hackney, funded from the Olympic pot, was not as straightforward as it sounds.Yes, pedestrian access along the towpath was a major consideration, but so were the local bat population and wildlife on the river.

“The section of the handrail that passes through the tunnel under the Lea Bridge Road is illuminated,” explains D W Windsor’s project engineer Scott Pengelly.

“The handrail overhangs the towpath to one side so it is right over the water. We used an asymmetric lens to ensure that light spill in to the water is limited as much as possible. The lens blocks light going to one side and redirects it to the area that you need it.”

Not only does this direct the light onto the path to make the route safer for pedestrians, it has much less impact on wildlife, including the nesting moorhens that have already made the new towpath their home. Equally important are the local bat population, feeding off the little bugs that come out close to the water at night.

“Anything above the handrail had to be in darkness so that we maintain a dark corridor for the bats to use the tunnel for their feeding route,” says Pengelly.

The Garda handrail, made of brushed 316 grade stainless steel, uses LEDs in its lighting module. This results in a low-energy solution, weighing in at only 10 W/m of handrail, that has the knock-on effect of being bat friendly too. “LEDs emit no UV light so they don’t adversely attract the little bugs, which has always been an issue with conventional street lighting,” says Pengelly.