A few weeks ago, the City of Fayetteville announced brand new lights on the Scull Creek Trail from the north side of the Fulbright Expressway to just beyond North Street.
But the lights, as well as all city trail lights, automatically shut off from 11:00 pm through 5:30 am. Until now.
According to City of Fayetteville Trails Coordinator Matt Mihalevich, the City has made the decision to leave Fayetteville’s trail lights on all night from now on.
“We found that a lot of people were using the trails between 11:00 pm and 5:30 am – a lot more than we originally thought,” Mihalevich said. “According to our counters, about 1,300 people had used the trail between those times in the last month and that was one of the reasons we decided to leave them on.”
Mihalevich said that the cost/energy savings from turning the lights off nightly was not significant. Also, the timers used to control the lights were malfunctioning, further contributing to the decision to leave the trail lights on.
“Someone brought up that we don’t turn the street lights off at a certain time so why do we turn the trail lights off? We thought that was a good point,” Mihalevich said. “We want our trails to be a useful form of transportation.”
