As part of the continuing effort to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions whilst improving the safety of road users, a central London tunnel has recently been fitted with a state of the art LED lighting system.

In what is expected to be the start of a tunnel lighting revolution, the Upper Thames Street project is the first tunnel in the UK to be provided with a fully linear lighting installation exclusively provided using LED technology. The T-line luminaries from Indal, in combination with their B-Scout™ tunnel lighting control system, have contributed to energy savings in excess of 75% compared to the existing installation of high intensity discharge luminaires.

The introduction of this technology, in combination with a linear lighting arrangement, has resulted in a variety of benefits in addition to the obvious environmental gains for Londoners and the 35,000 vehicles that use the tunnel each day.

There are considerable safety advantages, which include:

• High uniformities which are achieved with a fully linear scheme, eliminating the debilitating flashing effect on driver’s dashboards.
• Improved colour recognition through the use of white light, creating a more secure environment for drivers and cyclists.
• Better visual guidance created by a single line of white light along the tunnel soffit, better preparing the road users for the shape of the road ahead.
• Greater lighting redundancy, through the use of a high density layout, eliminating the risk of dark areas.

Maintenance savings were also a key consideration of the new installation. As a result of placing the majority of LED driver units in the vent shaft, a unique feature of the T-line luminaires, the installer has eliminated future maintenance within the tunnel confines with the exception of periodic cleaning.

Steve Ebbrell, Operations Manager with i-TunneL^®, Indal’s tunnel lighting division, said: “T-line offers the best of both worlds. There has been a recent trend towards point-source tunnel lighting, largely due to concerns over energy consumption and running costs. T-line uniquely challenges this, by providing the high quality linear lighting that motorists and lighting engineers prefer, for an improved cost of ownership and lower carbon emissions.  Whilst this is the first tunnel in the UK to be lit in his manner, it is expected to be the start of a wholesale adoption of LED technology for the lighting of our tunnels”.

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