The last days of Berlin’s gas streetlamps | Hacker News Reader

The last days of Berlin’s gas streetlamps

atlasobscura.com

45 pointslermontov49 comments

There's this story the ex-mayor of Berlin once told that there was a streetlamp directly in front of Rotes Rathaus (townhall) which was enlightened day and night and he couldn't figure out for a year or so who was responsible for that.

Due to its history the responsibilities in Berlin about simple things like that are separated in such arcane ways that no one really knows who is in charge for what. Even reforming that seems almost impossible and makes Berlin what it is: A likable but highly dysfunctional city state (I think I may say that as a German and ex-Berliner).

Very interesting. This is the first I’m hearing Berlin described as dysfunctional. I had a friend mention while I was visiting how bad the government support was “during Covid” for people who lost their jobs and wages, but didn’t want to pry.

Do berliners feel forgotten by their leaders? Maybe that’s preferred and allows for more individualism (better or worse)?

I'd say 20th century Berlin always was an island of craziness. In the roaring twenties, it became both a poorhouse (hyperinflation) and the city with the wildest parties and openly queer communities. After WW2 the story is that the Allies made sure that Berlin would be barely governable. In times of the iron curtain many many left-wing Germans who didn't want to serve in the military escaped to West-Berlin which was known as a safe harbor. And in the 90s from what I can see, it looked like a big techno party.

So all in all, I think Berliners old and young are pretty fine with craziness and some kind of "governed anarchy". Only recently (to me at least and from what I heard for other people as well), it became really annoying because the government seems completely overwhelmed by pretty much everything. Berlin is btw still said to be the "capital of unemployment" and recently the housing problems and gentrification reached another absurd level.

> capital of unemployment" and recently the housing problems and gentrification

These are sort of mutually exclusive. Berlin used to be poor, but as of 2019 it’s richer than the German average. This is admittedly unimpressive for a city-state, but still: Berlin is no country for poor men. It was, but no longer.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_states_by_GRP_p...

“Average” GDP per capita doesn’t tell you how “rich” the individuals are.

You should look at the median income per capita. Berlin ranks lower there than other federal states and cities.

Look for example here where it ranks 318 out of 400. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Landkreise/Kreise_...

Dysfunctional isn't quite the word - well as far as the usual level of government goes. Chaotic is maybe a better term.

Chaotic maybe pre-covid. But with the pandemic, the skyrocketing energy prices, the housing problems and the numerous Ukrainian refugees things got really bad for the local government. The latest low was that they weren’t able to held democratic elections by western standards. Some bright minds of the public authorities thought it would be wise to held a combination of local and national elections, 1-2 plebiscites together with having Berlin Marathon at the same day while they didn’t print out enough paper ballots and estimated every voter to only take (afair) 2min in the voting cabin. Court ruling decided to repeat that election for Berlin.

I think Berlin is a dysfunctional city but it’s not just the government. It’s baked into the DNA of the city. So you find wild dysfunction in the civil service, and resistance to making anything more efficient. The story of how the repeatedly delayed airport is a good example. The dysfunction was all the way down to the contractors.

If you move district you may need to change your tax number because each district has its own tax office.

If you want the tax office to communicate by email rather than letter you must send them the form to request this by mail. And then they still won’t really do it.

Berliners are obsessed with organic produce, but there seems to be no demand to ban smoking in bars.

Berliners don’t want shops to open on Sundays so workers can have the day off. But they do want restaurants to be open so they can go there with their own families.

I could on and on.

> Berliners don’t want shops to open on Sundays so workers can have the day off. But they do want restaurants to be open so they can go there with their own families.

That's pretty much any culturally christian country. UK and Poland for example. Thank god for migrant workers, to let us have our cake and eat it too.

Poland is unique here in the matter that it has banned Sunday shopping only recently to pander to the religious voter base. Germany has modified their labor laws to give the states freedom to regulate opening hours on 6 days of the week, but never extended this to Sundays (as Sunday is a constitutionally protected day of rest).

> banned Sunday shopping only recently to pander to the religious voter base

More like to the Catholic Church corporation, to ensure that before next elections, church goers will receive proper instructions during Sunday masses, on how to vote.

But the shops do open on Sundays in the UK. And in most European countries now.

Was it still the case 15 years ago? I recall tesco and sainsbury being closed on Sundays and other religious holidays, and the only place you could count to be open was the corner shop.

The change came 30 years ago in the UK.

That's not a Berlin thing, same thing in Austria which is completely different country.

Berlin was always "special" that way. If it would suddenly be a functioning city, people wouldn't know what to complain about, and then what would they do all day? ;)

Take away funding via equalization payments ("Länderfinanzausgleich") provided by the financially responsible states of Germany, and the city would probably collapse in the future due to indeptments, as it is a net transfer recipient:

https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/germany-without-fiscal-transf...

I live in Berlin and I like the old gas lamps. Fortunately, the LED retrofits are very good at imitating the gas lights - I initially didn't expect city officials to care and then do such a good job. I sometimes hold my ear to a lamp post to listen for the typical hissing noise. It's become rare that I hear it, and if I do, it's a surprise.

I'm a bit confused by the article: they say that West Berlin kept the gas lamps, but Unter den Linden, which they give as one of the main examples, was in East Berlin? Especially since the "out with the old, in with the new" attitude was more widespread in the West actually (for instance, West Berlin completely dismantled their tram network, while it was kept in East Berlin). Plus, East Germany had easy access to gas from the USSR...

Found this old article from 2012, towards the end:

"Mr Kujath campaigned successfully against Berlin city government plans to axe gas street lamps back in the 1980s."

This must have been in West Berlin, because "successfully campaigning" wasn't really possible in 1980's East Berlin (and at least the other campaigner mentioned in the article - Ilja Richter - was a West German TV celebrity).

Maybe it's some weird "West-Berlin nostalgia" going on there.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/berlin-s-gas...

That this whole thing has a 40 year history without being resolved is also sooo "typical Berlin" ;)

Maybe they were kept in both parts of the city, but for different reasons: successful campaigning in the West, and lack of money in the East?

That's actually very likely.

> Electric lights also have a grim impact on the local ecosystem. During a summer night, one light kills roughly 250 insects; by comparison, gas is harmless.

Wait, what? Do gas lamps somehow not affect insects?

They don't attract insects. Couldn't tell you why but I've actually exploited this for throwing outdoor parties at night.

Those floodlights will be swarming with bugs but doting the place with kerosene lanterns they couldn't be less interested.

The CO2 concentrations around them probably causes insects to stay away.

> The CO2 concentrations around them probably causes insects to stay away.

Which insects would that be? I thought, if anything, CO2 attracts at least some insects (but, reading https://askentomologists.com/2020/08/25/email-question-are-f... only in combination with other stimuli)

Gas lamps are way dimmer.

Also, bugs have probably evolved not to go near the glowing embers of fires.

Anyone who's ever lit a fire in a forest or wildland can attest this isn't true. Thousands of insects will fly directly into a fire at night.

Gaslamps work by converting the infrared light into visible light via gas mantle made from cerium or thorium oxides.

The resulting spectrum is mostly in the visible wavel lengths and has nothing in common with the spectrum you get when burning things. So no evolutionary adaption to this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_mantle

London also has gas lamps, but they seem less under threat.

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0fm4f8m/the-last-remaining-l... has a nice video explaining the tech, explaining that, nowadays, they’re switched on and off mechanically, with a mechanical clock in each lamp post.

There's some in the town of Malvern in the West Midlands too which I think are specifically perserved. I like having a bit of living history kept around!

It seems like some of them are at risk of being replaced by LEDs.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-63092357

In the US, a few towns in New Jersey still exclusively use gas streetlamps. South Orange has over 1400 of them, which is somewhat ironic since Thomas Edison was based in neighboring West Orange. Glen Ridge has either 666 or 667, depending on the source, which makes me wonder if they installed an extra one during the 80s Satanic panic.

I've spotted a few in Philadelphia, but they're the exception, not the rule. The only specific place that pops in my head are the lamps in front of the Fireman's Hall Museum in Old City.

LED lights mess with my brain. The flashing is problematic.

Flicker isn't intrinsic to LEDs, just cheap ones people flock to.

Flicker is intrinsic to LEDs. It's how their brightness is modulated.

Not all LEDs are even dimmable, either. For something like streetlamps, which are typically either full off/on, paying extra for brighter dimmables to then run them at a less bright setting doesn't sound an appealing option anyways.

But while we're on the topic of dimmables anyways, quality dimmables should have a switching frequency >1 KHz which is a different kind of flickering than e.g. low quality drivers which flicker at a perceivable rate (50hz/60 hz or double depending on the design).

Seems like if there is more than 1 LED, you could just drive them at different phases like at a minimum you could have half could be driven 90 degrees out of phase to practically eliminate flicker.

Just smoothing the rectification is cheaper and prevents the light from looki bc weird. It also makes your light brighter vs letting elements dip in cycles.

Flicker isn't intrinsic to LEDs themselves, but rather driver circuits that are efficient and cheap, doubly so for ones that run off low frequency AC mains power. To design a circuit that didn't flicker, first you'd need bulk capacitance to ride out the 100/120Hz AC waveform dips, especially if you didn't want the device to draw peak current around the zero crossing. Then you'd need a high switching frequency and either enough bulk inductance to ride out that off period, or a bunch of bulk capacitance and some wasted power to control the current.

You can modulate the brightness without flicker, you can try it yourself with a lab power supply.

It is just that filtering the output of the regulator is “expensive” as you need a relatively large capacitor. If this is omitted in combination with a low frequency PWM, you will experience flicker.

Not if they are designed halfway reasonably. Any good LED should be driven with a PWM driver at high frequency, with low frequency mains AC (the source of the flicker) completely separated from the LED.

This costs slightly more than alternative methods that use mains directly and don't properly isolate the AC component :(

Motion detector and dimming through discrete brightness levels make me hate this technology. I hate when stingy idiots start to cut costs, they purchase the cheapest crappiest plastic and install it everywhere.

I’m gradually developing a loathing for conservationists. Reading about these people blocking progress on the fossil-fuel phase-out is very grating. I’m sure they’re also opposed to nuclear power and other good things like happy children.

I can't tell if this is sarcastic so maybe I'm taking the bait here.

Regardless, there is probably a middle ground for the lamps between "widespread use" and "extinction". It's not great that they are inefficient, but they are certainly historical, and the emissions from a few thousand gas lamps are a drop in the bucket for Berlin and the world.

I would argue that the cultural, historical and educational value of the lamps should be given weight against the downsides and preserved to some extent.

We have museums for obsolete technology.

Yes, and sometimes we instead leave obsolete technology in place as a living museum.

Again, surely a compromise could be found -- replace, say, 98% of the gas lamps, but leave 2% functioning in a special historic district.

With smart leadership and marketing, such historic areas can drive considerable tourist and economic activity as well.

It’s not obsolete. It’s just deprecated.

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