Don't be afraid of the dark
On the possibility of illuminated winter trails
A couple of years ago, around this time, I had a conversation with a City of Boston official and I asked him a question that I had seen someone post on Facebook. Why did the city shut off playground lights earlier during the winter? From a parent’s POV, the sun may set at 4pm during the winter, but that doesn’t make your three-year old any less of a wild-haired rapscallion at 4pm. Public playgrounds are places where kids can burn off the last reserves of their wild boar energy, under the watchful eyes of a parent. But it’s hard to keep eyes on your kid when the playground lights are off, and a darkened playground just doesn’t have the same inviting quality as a lit one. I expected the city official to tell me that Boston didn’t have the budget for keeping playground lights on past sunset, and while that was partially true, it still begged the question of why the city didn’t budget for this. And the answer that I got stunned me.