According to the Michigan Department of Transportation, about 20 percent of the approximately 5,500 lights along freeways in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and St. Clair counties are dark, Tom Greenwood reports in the Detroit News.
The culprits behind the blackouts are an aging infrastructure, copper thieves and a lack of funds for replacements.
"We are responsible for about 5,500 light poles and also about 5,000 individual lights that are installed beneath overpasses," MDOT spokesman Rob Morosi said. "Right now we're estimating 1,100 outages to those poles for a number of reasons. First, we have removed at least 200 poles due to structural deficiencies that could cause safety issues."
Interesting reaction on Facebook from Pete Waldmeir, the former Detroit News columnist, who urges the gibbet for copper thieves:
MDOT ought to hang the corpse of that copper thief who was electrocuted along the I-96 service drive by his heels from the nearest overpass. I-94 from I-75 to Cadieux has been blacked out every night for months. MDOT should booby-trap the transformer cabinets on the service drives with high voltage electricity that turns on when any unauthorized person tries to open them.
