The other night I was standing in a road which had trees on both sides every
twenty metres or so, and also had lampposts at a similar sort of spacing. It
occurred to me that they could have hung the lamps from the trees, and so
not needed the poles, and the street would have looked a lot better. Is
there a reason this isn't done?

On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 14:52:01 -0000,
John Rowland
wrote in :

The other night I was standing in a road which had trees on both sides every
twenty metres or so, and also had lampposts at a similar sort of spacing. It
occurred to me that they could have hung the lamps from the trees, and so
not needed the poles, and the street would have looked a lot better. Is
there a reason this isn't done?

Possibly that trees tend to grow, which might put a strain on
fixed wiring or lead to branches obscuring the light.

--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. ] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

John Rowland wrote:
The other night I was standing in a road which had trees on both
sides every twenty metres or so, and also had lampposts at a
similar sort of spacing. It occurred to me that they could have
hung the lamps from the trees, and so not needed the poles, and the
street would have looked a lot better. Is there a reason this isn't
done?

In case you hadn't noticed, trees have leaves in summer, and sway in the
wind, so hanging a lamp from one is not a good way to light the road.
Mind you, Ealing erected some new lampposts close to trees a few months
ago. Perhaps the plans on which they based the spacing didn't include
the trees. One example is at
http://rjweb.myby.co.uk/images/Chisw...e_lamppost.jpg (The
post has since been moved.)

--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 14:52:01 -0000, John Rowland wrote:
The other night I was standing in a road which had trees on both sides every
twenty metres or so, and also had lampposts at a similar sort of spacing. It
occurred to me that they could have hung the lamps from the trees, and so
not needed the poles, and the street would have looked a lot better. Is
there a reason this isn't done?

There are some trees on London Road in Elephant & Castle that have lights
in them, but they're more for decoration than lighting. They are, however,
quite pretty.


--
Alex Pounds (Creature) .~. http://www.alexpounds.com/
/V\ http://www.ethicsgirls.com/
// \\
"Variables won't; Constants aren't" /( )\
^`~'^