East Del Mar Boulevard Street Lighting Upgraded With LED Fixtures

The city’s Public Works Department replaced five streetlights with LED fixtures outside the urgent care facility on East Del Mar Boulevard, according to Public Works Director Greg de Vinck’s update in the City Manager’s March 12 weekly newsletter.

The five lights represent incremental progress in a broader effort to convert approximately 1,063 conventional streetlights that remain on 16 outdated high-voltage circuits citywide, according to the city’s fiscal year 2026-2030 Capital Improvement Program. The LED fixtures reduce energy costs by at least 50 percent compared to conventional lighting, according to city documents.

The work was performed by the Building Systems and Fleet Management Division Electrical Shop, an in-house crew within the Department of Public Works, according to the newsletter. The existing high-voltage streetlights run on 6.6-amp series circuits, for which transformers are no longer manufactured and incandescent and mercury vapor lamps are no longer available, according to the city’s Linda Vista Avenue street light conversion project page.

On those older series circuits, if one light fails, all lights on that circuit go dark, according to the city’s CIP documents. Public safety and worker safety are the two primary justifications for converting the high-voltage systems to lower-voltage circuits with LED technology, according to city documents.

The city has not disclosed how many of its approximately 17,716 streetlights — a figure reported in 2018 by the Pasadena Star-News — have been converted to LED to date.

The conversion effort aligns with Pasadena’s Climate Action Plan, which the City Council unanimously adopted on March 5, 2018, according to the city’s Planning Department. The plan sets a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than half by 2035 and identifies energy conservation and efficiency as its first climate strategy, according to the Planning Department.

The count of remaining circuits awaiting conversion has decreased over time — from 23 circuits with about 1,226 lights in the fiscal year 2021-2025 CIP to 16 circuits with about 1,063 lights in the current five-year plan, according to city documents.

“It’s highly rewarding to deliver successful Capital Improvement Projects as well as efficient and reliable services to the public,” de Vinck said when he was named Public Works director effective December 2, 2024. “Making lives better through public infrastructure and municipal services is what public works is all about.”

Residents can report faulty streetlights to the City Service Center at (626) 744-7311 or submit an online service request through the city’s website.

Whether the city can convert the remaining 1,063 streetlights before its 2035 climate deadline remains an open question. City documents do not include a specific completion target for the street lighting program.