Days will keep getting shorter as we approach the winter solstice, which means fewer and fewer hours of sunlight. That can be depressing at normal mid-North American latitudes, so imagine how bad it gets in a place like Sweden. To fight the winter doldrums, a Swedish utility is installing UV lights at bus stations.
The company installed lights at 30 Umeå bus stops last week, removing the normal bus-stop lamps and replacing them with specially designed phototherapy tubes.
Light therapy at bus stops is something that the city of Seattle should definitely look into. The worst thing about late March in the Northwest is dealing with the seasonally affected people who are going buggy because they haven't seen the sun in 90 days or so. Something like this would be a small-but-important step toward improving the public's mental health.
