Upper Darby, PA Outdoor Lighting: Light Trespass & Shielding (2026)

Section 550-33D governs parking area design Township-wide, and paragraph (8) sets the operative light-trespass rule: glare from lights shall not reflect beyond the limits of the lot upon which the lights are installed. This sits alongside paragraph (4) of the same subsection, which separately requires that surface parking areas and connecting pedestrian walkways be well-lit while all exterior lighting is designed to prevent glare onto adjacent properties, so a property owner cannot satisfy the lighting requirement with fixtures that spill glare onto a neighbor's yard or the street.

A companion general provision at Section 550-50 states the Township's broader intent to reduce impacts of glare from lighting facilities and requires that lighting plans be arranged to protect public streets and neighboring properties from unreasonable glare, but it does not itself set a numeric limit; the enforceable lot-line standard lives in the parking design section. Because this rule sits in the parking design article, it applies whenever a site plan for off-street parking is reviewed, whether for a new commercial development, an expansion, or a change of use that triggers site plan review, and violations are typically caught at the plan-review stage before a certificate of occupancy issues, or through a neighbor complaint to Licenses and Inspections after installation.