BATON ROUGE - After Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome's Five Pathways to Progress Initiative — one of which calls for increasing community safety — a total of 124 LED lights have replaced traditional mercury vapor bulbs.

Three areas have seen the change thus far: Scenic Highway, St. Gerard Street and North Third Street.

North Third Streets falls within the Downtown Development District, who started advocating for new LED lights to replace traditional bulbs back in November and December. The DDD conducted a survey last spring and found that respondents felt unsafe downtown, especially at night. One of the ways the DDD believes safety can be increased is through LED lights.

“Our actual crime statistics are very low here, but you have to acknowledge that those feelings are here," said Whitney Hoffman Sayal, executive director at the Downtown Development District. "If you want people to feel safe when they’re walking around, as you do in a downtown area that is very walkable.”

One runner, Harold Enclarde, runs the downtown area of North Third Street almost every morning. He did not notice the lights until they were pointed out to him. After noticing the visible difference in brightness, Enclarde believed that the lights could drastically decrease pedestrian-vehicle accidents, which he fears as a runner.

"With those LED lights, yeah, those are brightening up the streets very well," Enclarde said as he gazed around. "And if we had those all around, it’d probably look like daylight at night."

North Third Street has seen as many as 44 LED lights go up since the LED light project began in January. 

"If you're looking to reduce crime and increase feeling of safety, when you compare the environmental design part of that, lighting is a huge factor," Sayal said.

The DDD believes that brighter lights can increase feelings of safety and decrease crime.