What’s Up With These Random Purple Street Lights Throughout Lansing?

When you're driving along certain stretches of road in Lansing, have you noticed that some random street lights are this weird purple blue color?

This odd hue is almost reminiscent of a black light, it has that kind of eerie bluish purple glow to it.

What's With These Weird Purple Streetlights?

If you've seen these oddly colored street lights, you might be wondering if there's any rhyme or reason to them. Like, did someone buy the wrong light bulbs? Or, am I about to get abducted by aliens?

Well, to learn what they were all about, I did some digging, and it turns out that these purple lights are unintentional.

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According to the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT), it has to do with the LED bulbs being used in the streetlamps. When these LEDs reach the end of their lives, they start to degrade.

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Certain LED chips where made with a "silicone phosphor layer" that turns the blue light that LEDs emit into the white light that we see. Basically, because that layer is degraded, the blue light ends up coming through and changing the color of the light we see.

So, no... these street lights aren't haunted. And no, you're not about to get abducted by aliens or anything.

Instead, these are just light bulbs that need changing essentially, and they'll get changed as soon as MDOT can get to it.