Street lighting in Nantes
Which streets are lit at night in Nantes? This map draws on the complete inventory of street lights opened up by Nantes Métropole — close to 100,000 points — to show where the light actually falls.
Interactive map in Nantes — street lighting.
The most complete inventory on the service
Nantes Métropole publishes its entire street lighting estate as open data: 97,473 units at the last count, two and a half times what we have from OpenStreetMap alone.
These official units are complemented by the points recorded in OpenStreetMap. Duplicates between the two sources are discarded automatically when two points sit within a few metres of each other.
Where the light stops
At this resolution, it is the breaks that become readable. The Loire, the Erdre and the green corridors trace sharp discontinuities in the sheet of light: riverbanks and park paths are pleasant by day and dark by night.
Street lighting is no substitute for bike lights, which remain compulsory. And several municipalities switch their lighting off in the middle of the night: a street marked as lit may be dark at two in the morning.
Frequently asked questions
- How many street lights does Nantes Métropole have?
- The official inventory records 97,473 units, published as open data by Nantes Métropole, complemented by those recorded in OpenStreetMap.
- Why is the Nantes map more precise than elsewhere?
- Because Nantes Métropole is one of the few authorities to publish its complete lighting inventory. Elsewhere we rely mainly on OpenStreetMap, which is patchier.
- Does a lit street stay lit all night?
- Not everywhere. Several municipalities switch off some or all of their lighting in the middle of the night. The map shows where the lights are, not when they are on.
- Is lighting taken into account when planning a route?
- Where Sécu’Cycle plans routes, yes — lighting feeds into each segment's safety score. Route planning is not available in Nantes for the time being.
Sources and licences
- OpenStreetMap — collected via Overpass · openstreetmap.org · ODbL
- Luminaires d’éclairage public — Nantes Métropole · data.nantesmetropole.fr · Licence Ouverte
Each dataset and its licence are listed on the Data sources page.