New York City streets may look mighty futuristic in the near future if a pilot LED streetlamp project takes off. The city's Department of Transportation has tapped the firm Office for Visual Interaction to install six of them. The power savings and reduced maintenance costs are significant, especially if they end up replacing all of the 300,000 current streetlamps.

According to The New York Times Bits Blog...

Not only will the city reduce its power usage 25 to 30 percent, but the bulbs will last 50,000 to 70,000 hours. Today’s sodium lamps are rated at 24,000 hours, which means at that point half of them are dead. The L.E.D. life rating actually means that the bulb will drop below 70 percent of its original brightness after 50,000 hours or so.

What's more, they will sport a sleek modern design with "channels" so that signage can just slot in. Neat!

[via Gizmodo]