Boston Says Its Own Crews Upgraded 7,202 Streetlights This Year, Nearly Triple 2025, at a Third of Contractor Cost
The city's Street Lighting Division has 68,000 electric lights and 2,800 gas lamps and has moved to a 10-year replacement cycle. The release does not say what the work cost or how many lights remain on the older schedule.
Boston's Street Lighting Division completed 7,202 streetlight upgrades so far in 2026, nearly triple the 2,483 it completed in all of 2025 and the highest annual total since 2016, according to a city release issued Monday. The city said its own crews did the work at about one-third the cost of outside contractors.
"Quality of life in our neighborhoods depends on the quality of lighting on our streets," Mayor Michelle Wu said in the release. "Street by street, Boston is upgrading more light fixtures throughout every neighborhood on a faster replacement schedule and with lower costs."
The scale of the system explains why the pace matters. The city says its network includes about 68,000 electric streetlights and 2,800 gas lights. At the 2025 pace of roughly 2,500 upgrades a year, replacing every electric fixture once would take more than 27 years. At this year's pace of more than 7,200, the same cycle would take a little over nine years. The city says it has accelerated its replacement schedule from 15 years to 10 years, which this year's total, if sustained, would meet. The release does not say how many fixtures were upgraded in each year before 2025, or how many of the 68,000 are already on the newer technology.
The upgrades are part of a move to "smart" LED lighting, which the city says allows individual lights to be adjusted for brightness and timing and reduces light pollution. The release says upgrades have been completed in every Boston neighborhood, along major transportation corridors, business districts and residential streets, and that the work is part of the city's State of Good Repair Program.
The cost claim is the most consequential number in the release and the least detailed. The city says the division did the work at "approximately one-third the cost of outside contractors," but the release does not give a dollar figure for the in-house work, a per-fixture cost, or the contractor price it is being compared with. Without those figures, the savings cannot be checked from the release alone.
The division also handles day-to-day repairs. The release says it responds to more than 8,000 service requests a year submitted through Boston 311, the city's service-request system, in addition to urgent maintenance. It does not give average repair times for those requests.
The city also tied the work to job training. The release says the division partners with the Madison Park Technical High School electrical program in Roxbury, and that nine graduates of that program have gone on to become full-time employees of the Street Lighting Division.
Lighting is often raised in public-safety discussions, and the city framed the upgrades that way, saying they improve "street visibility and public safety." The release does not cite crash or crime data for upgraded areas, and Boston Uncut did not find a city analysis linking the 2026 upgrades to safety outcomes.
What remains unknown: the total spending on the 2026 upgrades, the per-fixture cost compared with contractor bids, how many fixtures are left on the older schedule, and whether the 2026 pace is funded to continue in future budgets.
