Early 3pm Christmas light-up on Orchard Road gets flak for wasting money and electricity

The main arch on Orchard Road.
The main arch on Orchard Road.

If you’ve strolled down the Orchard Road stretch in the afternoons this past week, you may or may not have noticed the Christmas lights twinkling under the bright, sunny rays. For those who haven’t realized it, this year’s “Endless Wonder” light-up actually starts at 3pm, instead of 6:30pm, and shoppers have been questioning the move as a waste of money and electricity.

Spanning 2.88km from Tanglin Mall to Plaza Singapura, the lights are switched on daily from 3pm until midnight (except for Fridays and Saturdays, when they remain on for even longer till 2am). This is in contrast to other light-ups for festivities like Chinese New Year and Deepavali, which usually start around 7pm.

Orchard Road Business Association (Orba) executive director Steven Goh told The Straits Times that the decision was made to start the Christmas light-up earlier to “maximise the design advantage of this year’s decorations”. Apparently, you get a “different visual experience” during the day as compared to at night, thanks to lightweight materials like nylon, aluminium, and plastic used in the decorations.

LED lights are also used in the decor, and this helps to decrease power consumption to 10 percent of a conventional lighting system. But it’s hard to believe that power consumption will decrease, considering that the lights are switched on for about three hours longer than usual.

If you recall, the retail scene in Orchard Road has hit somewhat of a slump in recent years, so Orba admitted that another reason for the afternoon light-up is to attract visitors to start shopping earlier in the day.

But it seems like this move has gotten flak from netizens for the unnecessary drainage of money and electricity.

Guess you can never win ’em all.



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