Abstract
This article deals with the cost involved with public lighting. An inquiry was held amongst a large number of municipalities in the Netherlands to find out which cost- aspects were attributed to public lighting. It proved to be very difficult to find a common denominator that could be used to compare the cost of public lighting in the various municipalities. For this purpose two useful characteristic quantities were found, viz the yearly cost per megalumenhour as derived from the yearly cost of total light production for public lighting and the yearly cost per kilometer of lit road with a luminous flux of 100, 000 lm as derived from the yearly cost per kilometer of lit road with the associated amount of light (lm /km) as quality- index.