City of Detroit Dept of Public Lighting Blackout today

[HistoryNotHisStory]

Pld should have been privatize and its assets sold 20 years ago.

In 1990 they lost their major accounts with the water dept.

When coleman made that agreement, pld was done.

[DetroitPole]

I was at work. We lost power. Everyone was sent home after sitting in the dark for two hours.
Yes, the second time this summer. Huge blow to productivity. We brag about Wayne State University and the Cultural Center all the time, but the lights can't even be kept on. This is truly a third world city, I thought, shaking my head as I walked around the halls with a flashlight. An entire day we absolutely needed to get vital work done, lost.
Welcome to skewl, Wayne State students. Many of you are from the suburbs, across the country, or overseas. As you can see, what you have heard about Detroit is true. We are an absolute, disgraceful wreck.
Best was the response of the city and PLD. Well, there was no response. No one answered their phones. You couldn't get through to anyone. They must have been out "doing the best they can."
Meanwhile the street lights on E. Outer Drive have been out for a year now, East Warren was out as of last night.
The point is that these people, whatever their excuse, cannot, almost inexplicably, provide the basic service they are charged with providing. This absolutely must change. Yesterday. I don't care if everyone has to be fired and the whole outfit handed over to DTE or nationalize the fucking thing. It is an absolute wreck and downright dangerous.

[kraig]

Pld should have been privatize and its assets sold 20 years ago.

In 1990 they lost their major accounts with the water dept.

When coleman made that agreement, pld was done.

And please, let's ignore the fact that DTE has had thousands without power, continuously, the entire summer. Right now DTE isn't faring any better than PLD.

[DetroitPole]

And please, let's ignore the fact that DTE has had thousands without power, continuously, the entire summer. Right now DTE isn't faring any better than PLD.

I have no love loss for DTE, which I think is a monstrocity, but at least their blackouts usually follow storms. Further, in the past 5 years, I have lost power exactly once under DTE, for 26 hours after major storms.

PLD openly admitted their substation went down because...it was wet outside. Yes, it gets wet here at times.

Further, they offer the classic Detroit excuse: "This stuff happens everywhere." Just like with homicides and the crime rate in general, the big excuse for the past 30 years has been, "this is a major city, this happens everywhere." Well, look how far that mindset has gotten us in solving THAT problem.

I'm also sick of hearing how old this junk is. This is Detroit, it isn't Damascus. In the grand scheme of the world, we're an incredibly young city and our infrastructure was built to last, when we were booming. It isn't being maintained. I want to know how many resources are being devoted to people sulking at desks or shuffling around reading meters when the infrastructure has been left to rot for decades.

I also don't know why I should be so quick to believe that PLD is staffed by industrious do-gooders, when my experience with the city is either mind-numbing bureaucracy at best or grand theft at worst. I think it's probably just a few notches under the Department of Human Services.

What you won't hear about in the news [[unless this crap goes down again): We under PLD had a brownout this morning. Just enough to cut off the computers. Multiply that by all the buildings [[think WSU especially) served by PLD. Think of what that does to productivity.

[JBMcB]

And please, let's ignore the fact that DTE has had thousands without power, continuously, the entire summer. Right now DTE isn't faring any better than PLD.

Thousands? Out of how many customers? Two million? Spread out over how many counties and thousands of square miles?

How many customers does DPL have? Somewhere around 2,000, mostly confined within Detroit city limits? What percentage of them regularly loose power?

So, who is doing the better job?

[kraig]

Thousands? Out of how many customers? Two million? Spread out over how many counties and thousands of square miles?

How many customers does DPL have? Somewhere around 2,000, mostly confined within Detroit city limits? What percentage of them regularly loose power?

So, who is doing the better job?

It's safe to say that between 713,000 residents and all of the commuters that come into the City that rely on the traffic lights and street lights to work that PLD is over the million mark. Which is far more than the paltry 2,000 number that you're trying to push. I can see why you didn't factor in the residents, like I said in an earlier post. Who gives a damn about the residents?

And may I add that it's been tens of thousands, bordering on if not exceeding a hundred thousand, of customers that DTE has had go without power for extended periods of time this summer. And of course, the ones who went the longest before DTE fixed their system has been Detroiters. But I'm sure that's just some kind of coincidence.

[JBMcB]

It's safe to say that between 713,000 residents and all of the commuters that come into the City that rely on the traffic lights and street lights to work that PLD is over the million mark.

From the DPL's website: "With a citywide power distribution system, the Department now serves more than 890 public buildings. The Department's customers are various City departments, the Detroit Board of Education, Wayne State University, Joe Louis Arena, Wayne County Community College District, Cobo Conference/Exhibition Center and other federal, state and county agencies."

So how many residents are serviced by DPL? Can you give me that number? The only number I could find was 1700 commercial addresses, which I generously rounded up to 2000.

As far as maintaining street lights and traffic signals - do you *really* want to go there? I can count the occurrences of stoplight outages I've seen this summer in Macomb and Oakland counties on one hand. It was a nearly weekly event whenever I traveled through Detroit. Detroit is also the only city I've ever seen a signal turn green going both directions. My friend got out of a ticket for running a red on Warren a few years ago with a video of the signal turning green in both directions simultaneously [[he didn't run a red, there was no red to run!)

The other experience I've had with DPL was trying to run some servers on WSU's wonderful power grid. Everything ran great as long as I kept the UPS batteries well maintained. That was the only time in my IT career I've seen UPS batteries melt from overuse.

[kraig]

From the DPL's website: "With a citywide power distribution system, the Department now serves more than 890 public buildings. The Department's customers are various City departments, the Detroit Board of Education, Wayne State University, Joe Louis Arena, Wayne County Community College District, Cobo Conference/Exhibition Center and other federal, state and county agencies."

So how many residents are serviced by DPL? Can you give me that number? The only number I could find was 1700 commercial addresses, which I generously rounded up to 2000.

As far as maintaining street lights and traffic signals - do you *really* want to go there? I can count the occurrences of stoplight outages I've seen this summer in Macomb and Oakland counties on one hand. It was a nearly weekly event whenever I traveled through Detroit. Detroit is also the only city I've ever seen a signal turn green going both directions. My friend got out of a ticket for running a red on Warren a few years ago with a video of the signal turning green in both directions simultaneously [[he didn't run a red, there was no red to run!)

The other experience I've had with DPL was trying to run some servers on WSU's wonderful power grid. Everything ran great as long as I kept the UPS batteries well maintained. That was the only time in my IT career I've seen UPS batteries melt from overuse.

Sigh. My friend, if you're going to tell a story, please tell the whole story. Also from their website, directly following your info:

OTHER SERVICES
The Department also inspects and regulates the use of utility poles in the city.

Public Lighting also maintains the city's traffic signal system. There are approximately 1286 intersections in the system. Wayne County government also operates and maintains 235 Intersection in Detroit.

In addition, PLD maintains the Police and Fire communications network, which includes the extended 911 and automated dispatch systems.

It appears to me that's more than a mere 2,000, as you so generously rounded up, customers. Just saying.

[JBMcB]

It appears to me that's more than a mere 2,000, as you so generously rounded up, customers. Just saying.

So how do you know how reliable DPL is? As far as I know they don't measure "customers" affected by traffic signal and streetlight outages. DTE reports their outages from paying customers - if 1,000 customers are without power, that's 1,000 residential and commercial accounts without power.

By your logic, if DPL drops all power to the WSU campus [[which I've seen) that's actually tens of thousands of "customers" without power, though it's only counted as one [[WSU)