A shot in the dark.

It's no secret that I'm a fan of the river path here in Reno/Sparks.  It's a perfect fit for my commute and let's face it, it's probably safer than some of my surface street alternatives (Mill St.).  It is however that time of year when it gets dark early and even with a good light there are some pretty dark and isolated portions of the trail.  It doesn't particularly bother me (and I've never had a negative experience), but I'd wager that some riders find it a little uncomfortable.

I realized however, it really doesn't have to be this way.  When the trail was built someone was on their "A game" and incorporated lighting all along the trail!

And the numbers are impressive!  There are a total of 92 lights between the "start" of the trail at the Automobile museum in Reno and Fisherman's park in Sparks (yep, I counted).


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(Roughly the area shown above or 1.8 miles of trail)

The problem is that about 50 to 75 percent of the lights are not working (I'm guessing at this)!  So that "A game" designer has been defeated by one of three things (at least in my mind).

One option is simple lack of maintenance.  If this is the problem we should be able to resolve this quickly because almost every pole is numbered and should be able to be reported to the appropriate city, county, or "other" entity.  Assuming one can locate the correct person to contact.

Hello, City of Reno?  Yeah, light post #8 on the river trail is out.

Option two, is a little more bleak.  Maybe the powers that be have chosen to kill the lights along the path to save a few bucks on the power bill!?  I hope this isn't the case (since some of the lights work), but you never know.

Option three, is that some of the less reputable folks who use the river trail have messed with the lights over time to try to get access to power and have buggered up the wiring.  This would be the worst scenario as it involves finding $$$ to fix whatever has been done.  However, I've taken a look around several of the lights and there are no obvious signs of destruction.

So, tonight I'll repeat the count on the way home and see if I can actually tabulate the percentage of "out" lights.  Then I'm going to try my hand at some serious city politics and see if we can't get them working!  Lord knows the city wouldn't tolerate street lights that were burnt out in high percentages.