City Of Tulsa To Begin Project To Repair, Replace Light Poles

Despite millions of dollars spent to fix highway lights in Tulsa, hundreds of them are currently dark, waiting for repairs to electrical cables, replacement of fuses, or poles.

At the same time, a major repair project on the inner dispersal loop is wrapping up as the city comes to the end of $5.8 million dollar push to get the lights on.

The problem was mainly people stealing copper wiring a few years ago and now it's a backlog of routine maintenance. The City says vandalism cases  dropped substantially once workers started using aluminum wire, installed inside more secure conduit and junction boxes.

Now the problem is more routine: blown fuses and downed poles, or outages caused by aging equipment. "We have lots of cars that run off the road and poles seem to be the thing that everybody hits," says Terry Ball, the supervisor in the Streets Department who oversees the repairs. "When we have storms come through, they'll knock out sections, blow a fuse and take a circuit out."

The city says some old lights are rusting out and funding for replacements usually comes only with large highway projects. Ball says now that the vandalism repairs are nearing completion, the City will go back to replacing the dozens of poles that are down next month.  

The City relies on citizen reports of outages through 311 to establish its list of where repairs are needed.