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A FEW SHORT years ago, the city-clearly under pressure from the Illiterate Lobby-replaced all the "walk" signs in New York with pictograms. It seemed a frivolous and pointless waste of millions when so many other things needed attention.

And now, with the MTA announcing that they're going to fuck us up the ass again (and again, and again, and again) and with underfunded, overcrowded public schools in a state of collapse, what's City Hall doing?

Replacing the streetlights.

Not the bulbs, but the streetlights themselves. The whole damn pole. They had a contest for a new design, see, and they chose a sleek, futuristic-looking model that uses LEDs instead of high-pressure sodium bulbs. Over the next few years, they'll pop up all over the city, replacing those boring old "Cobra Head" and "Shepherd's Crook" poles.

Everyone involved says the new bulbs use less energy-the same reasoning put forth during the walk-sign swap. And yes, that's a good thing. But for all the lighthearted human-interest stories the unveiling of the new streetlamps spawned, we couldn't help but notice that nobody seemed to be saying how much it will cost the city to replace thousands of streetlights-or even what city agency is behind the plan.

It strikes us that, however much it's going to cost, however many millions of dollars will be dedicated to this and not, say, garbage collection-that money might be better spent on something a little more useful. At least for the time being.