The Coney Drive neighborhood gets a light facelift

Since its construction in the summer, the roundabout at the intersection of Coney and Princess Margaret drives has alleviated congestion during the morning and evening rush hours.  Students from the nearby high schools, as well as those from the University of the West Indies, the University of Belize and St. John’s College traverse the area in the evening and often risk getting mugged near the dimly lit junction.  While the adjacent pedestrian crossing will take some getting used to, lighting in the area, for the most part, has been very poor.  That is until the Belize City Council decided to take up Amko Solara, a Taiwanese energy company, on an offer to provide an energy efficient street lighting system.  That system, which sees the installation of twenty induction lights, was inaugurated this evening.

Darrell Bradley, Belize City Mayor

Darrell Bradley

“This is a partnership between the City of Belize, BEL and Amko Solara, which is a Taiwanese company and Amko Solara last year had expressed an interest last year in doing there induction lighting system in Belize.  I had met with personnel from the company last year at my office, they gave me an explanation in terms of the technology and they expressed their interest in wanting to come to Belize.  This is a company that is a leader in induction lighting in the region.  They recently launched a project in Acapulco with forty-five thousand of these induction lights and what we will be doing today is inaugurating the lighting system around the Coney Drive area and they have gifted the city twenty-five induction lights and we put it around this year at the start of Coney Drive.  We’ve gotten a little bit of criticism in terms of the roundabout here that it’s dark, especially being traversed by people from UB in the night and different things like that and so we really wanted to amplify the area and the induction lighting was a good partnership.  The savings cost, the widespread, the quality of the light, everything is a good fit for this project and I drove around here last night and you see the difference in terms of the light, compared to other streetlights that we have in Belize City.”

According to Mayor Bradley, the new lighting system should see a significant decrease in the consumption of electricity since the streetlights will adjust to the time of day.