Each colored zone shows how many streetlight outage complaints have been filed with NYC 311 in that area since January 2024 — darker red means more reports. Switch to "all spots" to see individual addresses where outages keep coming back.
A note on 311 data: Complaint volume reflects who has called 311, not an objective measure of where streetlight problems exist. Neighborhoods differ in their propensity for using the 311 system, and some outages are never reported. This data is an important signal of where residents see a problem, but it is subject to reporting bias and should not be treated as a complete inventory of dark streets.
Source: NYC 311 complaints filed as "Street Light Condition" via the NYC Open Data API, starting Jan. 1, 2024.
Included complaint types: Street Light Out, Multiple Street Lights Out, Street Light Lamp Dim, Street Light Lamp Missing, Fixture/Luminaire Out of Position, Fixture/Luminaire Damaged, Fixture/Luminaire Missing and Flood Light Lamp Out.
Not included: Traffic signals, pedestrian signals or any non-streetlight complaints. These have separate 311 categories.
Excluded locations: Parks, playgrounds, bridges, expressways, parkways, highways, cemeteries, greenways and other non-street infrastructure are filtered out by address pattern matching.
Repeat locations: Complaints are grouped to roughly 50-meter blocks. A "repeat location" has two or more complaints at the same spot.
Chronic dark spots: Locations with 10 or more (or 20 or more) total outage complaints since Jan. 2024, depending on the view selected.
Per square mile: Total complaints divided by the census tract's geographic area in square miles, using 2020 census tract boundary data from NYC Open Data.
Neighborhoods: Derived from NYC community board boundaries mapped to common neighborhood names.
Full methodology document — data sources, calculations, filters and limitations.