The City of Toronto and Toronto Hydro will spend CAD 577 million (420M€) over the next decade to convert every municipal streetlight to LED, renew critical underground infrastructure and deploy smart lighting controls across the city by the end of 2035. The plan, embedded in Toronto’s 2026 budget, covers approximately 173,100 luminaires, more than 60,000 poles and around 2,500 kilometres of overhead and underground cabling, and is structured to front-load capital spending so that roughly 60 percent of streetlights are converted to LED within the first five years.
A Decade-Late Catch-Up With Peer Cities
Toronto is one of the last major North American cities to commit to a full LED streetlight rollout. Comparable conversions were completed years ago in Los Angeles (started 2009), New York, Chicago, Vancouver and Calgary, and across Ontario in Mississauga, Brampton, Ottawa and others. Internationally, Madrid, Paris, Rome and the City of London converted between 2012 and 2017. According to the Streetlighting Infrastructure Investment Report prepared by Toronto Hydro, the largest 314 U.S. cities with populations above 100,000 have either completed or are actively executing LED retrofits, and 93 percent of Ontarians outside Toronto served by mid-sized municipalities are already on LED street lighting.
Why the Project Is Now Urgent
The investment is being driven less by climate ambition than by deteriorating asset condition and the global phase-out of conventional luminaire production. Toronto Hydro reports that 33 percent of streetlighting assets and 86 percent of underground cabling are past their useful life. Approximately 11,000 faulted underground cable segments across Toronto have been bridged with temporary overhead “jumpers,” concentrated heavily in Etobicoke and Scarborough where direct-buried cable was historically used. In 2025 alone, Toronto Hydro logged more than 25,000 service calls for streetlight outages and emergency repairs.
Most major manufacturers have discontinued high-pressure sodium (HPS) and metal halide (MH) luminaires, the two dominant light sources in Toronto’s existing inventory of roughly 109,900 cobra-head and 36,500 acorn fixtures. Only around 15,900 LED units are currently in service. Toronto Hydro has been forced into reactive LED replacements at a rate of approximately 6,000 luminaires per year since Q3 2023, creating a patchwork of yellow HPS and white LED light along the same streets.
Investment Structure and Funding Trade-Offs
The CAD 577 million (EUR ~392 million) Proposed Streetlighting Infrastructure Investment Framework is the middle of three options modelled by Toronto Hydro. A status-quo path of CAD 294 million (EUR ~200 million) would have left 40 percent of assets past useful life by 2035 and only reached 38 percent LED penetration. An accelerated CAD 784 million (EUR ~533 million) path would have brought the system to 11 percent past useful life and converted 100 percent of luminaires, but was ruled out due to broader municipal budget pressures including pandemic-era revenue shortfalls. The selected option achieves full LED conversion but leaves around 56 percent of underground distribution cable past useful life at contract end, requiring additional post-2035 investment.
Annual spending under the proposed framework rises from CAD 60 million (EUR ~40.8 million) in 2026 to a peak of CAD 74 million (EUR ~50.3 million) in 2027 and 2028, before tapering to CAD 45 million (EUR ~30.6 million) by 2035. Net incremental cost to the city, after accounting for energy savings, averages CAD 24.1 million (EUR ~16.4 million) per year above the existing service fee.
Technology, Standards and Smart-Lighting Integration
The conversion will use 3000 Kelvin LED luminaires with integral lighting controllers, in line with Toronto Public Health guidance and the American Medical Association recommendations on minimising blue-light emissions and sleep disruption. Lighting design will follow Recommended Practice 8 (RP-8) standards from the Illumination Engineering Society of North America for arterial roads and intersections, while collector and local roads will match existing illumination levels to limit residential complaints.
The integral controllers enable remote outage detection, scheduling, dimming and group management. Toronto Hydro projects energy consumption reductions of 40 to 60 percent from the LED conversion alone, with an additional 20 percent achievable through adaptive controls, and annual energy savings exceeding CAD 6 million (EUR ~4.1 million). Per-luminaire 20-year net savings are modelled at CAD 1,646 (EUR ~1,120) for cobra-head conversions and CAD 573 (EUR ~390) for acorn conversions, with decorative LED conversions running at a CAD 619 net cost per unit (EUR ~420). Total greenhouse gas reductions over the contract term are estimated at 6,065 tonnes CO2e versus the status quo.
Smart-City Implications
The control layer creates a citywide network capable of supporting additional sensors and Smart City applications, although the current funding does not include incremental sensor deployment. The platform potential is significant given Toronto’s parallel smart-city activity, including the Rogers and University of British Columbia 5G-powered AI traffic management pilot at five downtown intersections approved by Toronto City Council. The LED conversion mirrors the smart-lighting model already proven in Ontario peer cities such as Mississauga, Ottawa, Richmond Hill, Vaughan and Waterloo, all of which paired their LED rollouts with central management systems. Outside Canada, the Roads and Transport Authority of Dubai is pursuing a comparable retrofit of approximately 160,000 HID streetlights to LED smart lighting under a public-private partnership model.
Underground Renewal as the Hidden Cost Driver
Approximately CAD 251.8 million (EUR ~171 million) of the proposed budget is allocated to capital expenditure on underground duct, cable, pole and bracket replacement, with CAD 132.8 million (EUR ~90 million) for the LED retrofit itself. Direct-buried cables, which dominate Toronto’s underground network at 728 kilometres, are the single largest contributor to outages due to water-treeing degradation. Toronto Hydro will replace failed cable with direct-buried cable in duct, which carries a 50-year expected life compared to 22 years for direct-buried installations. Neighbourhoods with the largest backlogs include Milliken (74 percent past useful life), Agincourt North (82 percent) and Malvern East (72 percent), all in Scarborough, alongside Etobicoke City Centre and Mimico-Queensway.
Comparative Benchmarks
Vendor identities for the LED luminaires, control nodes and underground cable supply have not been disclosed in the budget approval or Toronto Hydro’s investment report and remain to be confirmed through future procurement. Past Ontario LED conversions have drawn on suppliers including RealTerm Energy under the AMO/LAS turnkey programme, although there is no public confirmation that Toronto will use a similar procurement vehicle. Reported maintenance savings from comparable Ontario rollouts include 50 percent in Ottawa and 80 percent in Brampton, according to LightSavers Canada data cited by Toronto Hydro.
