In Zoeterwoude they want ‘the night back’ and more lighting, but nature benefits from darkness

Zoeterwoude-Dorp has no HBO or University. There is not even a high school. Dozens of children and students therefore cycle six kilometers to nearby Leiden every day. A route that is known in the Zoeterwoud community as ‘the ghost path’, a winding cycle path through the polder between meadows, streams and forests, in some places extremely poorly illuminated. According to Lisa Smit, a nineteen -year -old student social work, “everyone here” knows that as a woman in the dark you “absolutely should not come” on certain pieces of the road. “Guys lock you, call your things or pull at the wheel of your bike. Very frightening.”

Her mother Annelies Smit (52) found this kind of incidents horrible. She has experienced ‘the necessary’ in the dark in her own life. She heard stories from women who also regularly experienced this. But after the serious crime last week, in which seventeen -year -old Lisa from Abcoude was murdered while cycling home from Amsterdam, the measure of Smit was full. Together with Bianca Choufour (48), she decided to organize a bike ride in the dark on the ‘ghost path’, to ‘demand the night’ and the municipality to ask for more lighting.

Guys lock you, call your things or pull at the wheel of your bike. Very frightening

On Wednesday evening, exactly at nine o’clock, there are about one hundred inhabitants on the Dorpsplein. Elderly people on the electric bicycle, concerned fathers, young couples, daughters and mothers: almost everyone believes that something should change. That men have to take more responsibility, it sounds, have to address each other. And less than five minutes after the start of the trip, Lisa says that “there can really be more lighting, then you feel safer at least”.

Extra lighting

Does extra lighting really contribute to safety during the nights? “It is a very primitive idea to put many lampposts with LED lighting everywhere,” says Ellen de Vries, chairman of the Licht nuisance expert group of the Dutch Foundation for Lighting Science. She sees that many municipalities want to make every meter of a route as visible as possible, or after an incident, but decide to put a light source on that location in a kind of Pavlov reaction.

But too strong or too much light correct counterproductiveshe explains. “Think of a strongly illuminated billboard. Your eyes adapt to the billboard and the environment around it becomes darker,” says De Vries. A silhouette of a person next to the lamppost is therefore more difficult to observe and escape routes are more difficult to spot.

Sharp lighting would unpack disastrous for the bats

In addition, she sees another problem with placing bright lighting. This is not allowed everywhere, due to environmental legislation. As a deputy mayor of the municipality of Zoeterwoude Paul Olthof (CDA) halfway through the bike ride has to brake due to a sharp turn after a descent, he explains that police officers have indicated several times that they would like more lighting here. As he points to the right side of the road, to a stream, he says that “here is Polderpark Cronesteyn”, a nature reserve and a breeding ground for bats. “Sharp lighting in the night would be disastrous for those bats, because they avoid light. So you have bad luck and we cannot place those lampposts.”

Pollution

Ecologist and biologist Kamiel Spoelstra, who is researching the NIOO-KNAW research institute into the effect of light pollution on nature, indicates that the needs of municipalities for more lighting also have one decrease in biodiversity entails. Spoelstra: “Insects are attracted to light sources. Because of that bright light they start flying circles, since it confuses their orientation to the moon at night.” Insects get more tired, cannot reproduce or be grazed by spiders or birds, which cleverly respond to the new light source. “Night animals, such as bats, avoid too bright light. They will flee.”

Another view of lighting is desperately needed, says lighting expert De Vries. According to her, it is better to form an environment with a lot of small lights that both meet environmental regulations and safety. “In Eindhoven we applied that in a park. That attracted many people, so there are many people who check each other and possibly intervene if things go wrong.”

Zoom in

Zoom in

Participants of the bike ride in Zoeterwoude. According to light experts, placing lampposts is not always the best option.

Photos Bart Maat

According to De Vries, landscape architects and municipalities should look at this more consciously. But: “In polders and forests it is almost impossible. It is best to cycle with several people in groups. But at cities it is possible to plan, for example, that you do not have a coffee shop built next to a dark park.”

That this apparently safe, warm environment cannot be formed everywhere, is evident from the last part of the bike ride around Zoeterwoude. It brings the group to a vast area with only meadows, with no one in sight. There are regularly small lights in the road surface that map out the route, but the area is almost completely dark. Magdalena Vlasveld (38), mother of two young daughters, is determined and says to a friend: “If my daughters are big, I will play taxi.”

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