Buffalo, National Grid launch campaign to replace downed streetlight poles in city

Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - The City of Buffalo has partnered with National Grid to launch a new initiative called "City of Light" that will replace downed streetlight poles and restore lighting in neighborhoods across the city.

The partnership addresses a backlog of more than 500 downed poles, while establishing a streamlined process for future replacement of poles in the city.

"Working streetlights, we all know they're important. They help people see, they give a feeling of safety, they feel safer walking home - especially as the days get shorter - and it helps people look out for one another. But they also show residents that their neighborhoods matter. Their neighborhoods are being cared for," said Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan on Thursday during an announcement along Memorial Drive in the city's Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood.

"The City and National Grid have long shared responsibility for [more than 40,000] Buffalo streetlights, and for a lot of years it became a finger-pointing game. But at the end of the finger-pointing, no poles got restored and no lights got fixed. Until now, when a city-owned pole fell, the city had to replace it and install it before National Grid could come and reconnect the electrical service to the light. This partnership brings these steps together."

National Grid will now install the replacement poles and completing the work needed to restore lighting under this partnership. Offered through National Grid's outdoor lighting service tariff, the arrangement requires no upfront payment from the city.

"After Mayor Ryan took office, we worked with his team to identify how we could best address the city's backlog of down streetlight poles that needed to be re-erected, so we could restore light to those areas, to make those areas safe for both residents and automobiles. So National Grid is going to take over, what was, the city's responsibility to re-erect a pole at a location where the pole had been knocked down," said National Grid regional director Ken Kujawa on Thursday.

"We are going to work through our existing inventory of poles, and as Mayor Ryan said, we're going to hit this hard come spring of 2027. Because of the volume of poles and infrastructure that we need, we had to order that equipment. There are lead times in order to be able to bring that amount of inventory into National Grid. So our plan is go through the inventory that we have now through the fall, and then when we get into the spring, we're going to hit this hard.

The service tariff will be roughly between $30-to-$50, depending on the make and model of the pole.

Initial work includes the installation of 14 new replacement poles along Memorial Drive near the Buffalo Central Terminal traffic circle. National Grid expects the bulk of replacement work to ramp up beginning next spring on April 1.

"The city will provide us with the locations and priority order that they want us to address, and then we will make the necessary repairs at each streetlight location, and then ultimately get that area relit," Kujawa added.

Over time, vehicle crashes, corrosion and deterioration have contributed to a growing list of fallen or nonworking streetlight poles. The approximately 525 poles covered by the arrangement represent less than 2% of Buffalo's overall streetlights in the city.

Existing city-owned poles that are standing and working will remain owned and maintained by the city unless the city requests National Grid to replace them under this arrangement.

"The 'City of Light' builds on Buffalo's proud history, with a practical investment in our neighborhoods and services that people depend on every day," Ryan said. "It is ironic that the City of Buffalo had the first lit grid in all of the world, but now we have all these down poles. So we might have been doing it better 100 years ago than we're doing it today. We're replacing the poles, turning the lights back on, and continuing the work to fix the basics."