SAN ANTONIO – How much of San Antonio is still in the dark?
There are more than 73,000 streetlights in San Antonio’s residential areas, but under a 5-year-old program, the city has been trying to close a projected 4,275-light gap to brighten up darkened neighborhoods.
With the $13.9 million allocated over that time nearly exhausted, just over 1,500 streetlights have been installed —about 35% of the original, projected gap —and staff say they have enough money for maybe about 100 more.
“I mean, at this point again we are utilizing every penny we have, and I know this budget we did not get any additional money at this point,” Development Services Director Amin Tohmaz told members of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee at a Wednesday briefing.
Tohmaz said when the program started, the purpose was to address illumination gaps and improve traffic and pedestrian safety.
Staff looked at neighborhood and residential streets built prior to current streetlight requirements or annexed into the city and then compared it to modern code requirements.
“So we need additional lights to fill those gaps to make sure the illumination is appropriate, again, for pedestrians and for traffic. The focus was mainly on hotspot areas where we have more crime,” Tohmaz told committee members. “If there is an area where the visibility is very low, those were areas that we put as top of the priority to make, that’s the areas we need to address first for safety reasons.”
Some residents, like Nora Hernandez in the Sunrise neighborhood on the Northeast Side, have been waiting a long time for the streetlights.
The city promised residents they would get them when the area was annexed back in the mid-90’s, she said, but that “never happened up until about the last two years.”
There were some lights beforehand, she said, but very few of them.
“You have problems with crime, people breaking into cars, not being able to see coming into the neighborhood other than the lights on your car,” she told KSAT.
Now, the city’s dashboard shows a few dozen newly installed streetlights, and Hernandez believes crime is down and says drivers can see the road better.
The city’s dashboard for the program still shows a chicken pox rash of a few thousand red dots, indicating “proposed” spots for streetlights. However, not every site works, and not everyone wants one.
According to the city dashboard, there have been more than 300 streetlights canceled, which a spokeswoman said could have been for a variety of reasons.
It’s possible the number is even higher, though. The website shows numerous red “proposed” sites in the Terrell Heights neighborhood but no “cancelled” ones. That’s despite one longtime resident telling KSAT he and at least one other neighbor he’d spoken to had received notices from the city asking for easements to install lights.
“Fortunately, as far as I know, everybody’s turned it down,” he said. “We’d rather not have the light pollution — or I would rather not have the light pollution.”
After Wednesday’s briefing and discussion, Councilwoman Sukh Kaur (D1) asked city staff to return in early 2027 with an idea for a “revamped program,” possibly with recommended code changes around schools and busy public spaces, how the city confirms new lights are warranted, or using the 311 program.
“So like a revamped version of what you might think the program could look like, that we could then go try to find magic money to install some of them,” she chuckled.
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