A TYPE of smart lamppost that features several functions, such as street lighting, surveillance and car plate recognition, will be introduced in the city to save space on the streets, sznews.com reported.

The first batch of such smart lampposts will be tested along Qiaoxiang Road in Futian District. The trial lampposts will be installed before the Spring Festival in February next year, said Chen Shu, an official with the city’s road management bureau.

In a seminar of the Shenzhen Municipal People’s Congress on Friday, a group of lawmakers gave voice to their opinions and suggestions on the regulation and integration of telecommunication infrastructure. The introduction of the lampposts was one of the key issues discussed during the seminar.

The initial draft of the design for the smart lamppost has already been finished, according to Wang Binyan with the Shenzhen Municipal Economy, Trade and Information Committee.

A research program on the smart lampposts was carried out earlier this year. One of the lawmakers, Wang Hailong, introduced the background of the research. He said that there are currently several different types of poles installed on nearly every street in Shenzhen.

The poles, for street lamps, traffic signs, surveillance cameras and base stations for different telecommunication carriers, are taking up too much space on the streets, causing inconveniences for pedestrians and urban management, said Wang.

Chen agreed with Wang, during the seminar, that there are indeed too many poles on the streets. The installation of the poles concerns multiple government departments, including the traffic police, the public security bureau and the urban management bureau.

According to Huang Ya, director of the light management center, there are a total of around 240,000 street poles in Shenzhen. To renovate and change all of the electric wiring and poles will require a large sum of money, said Huang. It is estimated that at least 50 billion yuan (US$7.53 billion) would be needed for the project.

The traffic police bureau is also in favor of the renovation project, which consolidates all poles of different functions into one smart lamppost, as it will avoid the repetitive work of digging up land for the further construction and maintenance of various poles, said Zou Jianping, an engineer working in the technology section of the traffic police bureau.

A trove of officials from several government departments paid visits in May to Chengdu, Shanghai, Hangzhou and other cities, where multifunctional lampposts are in use, to gain more experience.

Some other issues relating to telecommunication infrastructure were also raised and discussed during the seminar.

(Zhang Qian)