Riverdale area residents demand action as streetlight outages persist

A growing number of streetlights across greater Riverdale have remained dark for months, prompting residents to turn to Community Board 8 with mounting frustrations and pleas to urge the city to address the issue.

CB8 officials say outages span numerous streets and corridors throughout the district, including large swaths of the heavily-used Henry Hudson Parkway service roads. Many of the outages have been reported to the city through the 311 system, but despite the repeated complaints, the New York City Department of Transportation, who is responsible for streetlights, have yet to bring timely repairs.

“We provided the DOT with a list of all the lights that are out,” said Debbie Allen, chair of CB8’s Traffic and Transportation Committee. “They wanted more information. We provided them with all the 311 calls that people in the area have provided us and forwarded.”

When a resident reports a broken streetlight through 311, the request is logged and routed to the DOT, the agency told The Press, which then sends the report to a repair contractor responsible for inspecting the problem and carrying out the necessary work. The contractor has 10 days to inspect the site and determine the type of repair needed. Some outages, officials said, require more complex infrastructure repairs and cannot be fixed immediately during the initial inspection.

But that process can stretch on for months when outages pile up.

“It’s disheartening, and it’s frustrating dealing with DOT,” Allen said. “I really feel they haven’t been responsive.”

Among the list of outages the board shared with city officials are lights reported to be out to the DOT since the summer of 2025. They include the strip along West 238th Street between Greystone Avenue and Fieldston Avenue near MacLaughlin Park, along the Henry Hudson Parkway service roads between West 239th and West 250th streets and near the Bell Tower Memorial in the Riverdale Monument area.

Additional complaints have been filed for lighting near Ewen Park and along Palisade Avenue between West 254th and West 255th streets.

In a traffic and transportation committee meeting last winter, residents described a stretch of Palisade Avenue as “pure darkness” during winter evenings, warning that the lack of lighting poses safety concerns for both drivers and pedestrians navigating the roadway.

“We’ve been forwarding emails from our constituents who live in Community Board 8 since December,” Allen said. “For me, one day is too long, because somebody could lose their life as a result of poor lighting.”

Beyond traffic safety, some residents voiced worries the darkened streets could make certain areas more vulnerable to crime.

CB8 Public Safety Committee Chair Ed Green said several neighbors have raised concerns about lighting outages near locations where vehicle crimes have been reported.

“Typically criminals like to do things where they’re not going to be seen,” he said. “So the lights out make it that much easier for somebody to sit there and steal somebody’s tires or rims without having lights on them and anybody seeing them.”

In response to the complaints, the DOT told The Press it had begun addressing several of the outages flagged by the board, but did not provide a timeline of completion.

“Street lighting is essential for the safety of New York City, and NYC DOT has repaired or is working to repair each of these lighting requests from the community,” the agency said.

DOT officials noted repairs have already begun in the MacLaughlin Park area, where they said lighting along Greystone Avenue between West 238th Street and Dash Place was recently completed.

Work is continuing along the Henry Hudson Parkway service roads, in Ewen Park and at the intersection of Riverdale Avenue and West 231st Street, the agency said.

City officials noted that the LED bulbs used in streetlights typically have a lifespan of about 10 years, which can lead to clusters of outages when fixtures installed around the same time begin to fail. The agency does not have a system in place to track the lifespan status to prepare for outages.

For residents and community board members, however, the central concern remains the pace of repairs.

“The failure for us to receive timely services from the DOT — it’s unfair to the taxpayers,” Allen said.