Hebrew article: Here
I can't provide a Google translated version of the article so here is a manual translation with the help of Google translate:

Start of manual english translated article in Yediot Haifa:

A Haifa start-up company installing an experimental LED streetlighting in Haifa city streets
Doron Solomon (18/05/2012)
A Haifa start-up company "Bright-LED" from Hi-Center began a pilot installation of street lighting in Haifa streets ♦ The new lighting is expected to save 50% of electricity consumption

A Haifa start-up company "Bright-LED" began installing experimental LED lighting fixtures at number of streets throughout the city. If the experiment succeeds, the company will install additional fixtures in dozens of other streets in the city. The experiment is part of the company's shared work with Haifa municipality, intending to reduce municipal electricity consumption.
The company, established in 2009, develops solutions for LED type street lighting. Such lighting solves the problem of heat dissipation and improves energy efficiency and savings in power consumption. The company started out in the Hi-Center urban greenhouse, and money for its creation, reached through the municipal budgets by Hi-Center greenhouse and the primary scientist and from the investment fund of the Israeli Electric Company, which contributed 2 million NIS to the project.
The first lighting fixtures were installed this week in the Carmel Center, and the company promising instant results at the electricity savings. According to company representatives, the power costs of any municipality in which these entities will be installed will go down by 50%, ie, a savings of millions of NIS. The new light engine will allow better heat dissipation and long lamp life of ten years or more. In addition, the company ensures better control at every lamp in the city and the option of shutting down computerized from an urban control center.
Attorney Eli Coles, Deputy Chairman of Haifa Economic Corporation and Chairman of the Board Hi-Center, said that "The company will continue its activities in Haifa and hopes to expand both the frame installations of street lighting systems in Haifa, which will enable significant energy savings , and the total number of workers from the human capital found in the city. "
Hi-Center CEO Yael Mittelman said that in 2012 the greenhouse will invest with 9 new projects as a sequel to the existing 14 projects.

End of manual english translated article in Yediot Haifa.

They states that LED streetlighting will save 50% energy over HPS lighting, where in fact, the wattage willn't be changed (Or by 10% plus/minus) but the light output will be reduced dramatically and the lanterns willn't last long.

LED can save 50% power and even more by being white light with better visibility. But to save any power, the lights have to actually be of lower power

Now for lower power, there is MH which is about the same efficiency as LED

If the LED fixtures will prove reliable it will be good. But what may possibly happen is, that the testing period of this experiment will be too short to actually see when the LED start failing. They may prove good fixtures or they may find themselfes racing to replace failed fixtures in couple years

Another issue is that while white light/night vision is good for most locations, some spots in Haifa do require day vision - and i wonder if they will replace HPS in those locations

Ash: LED have no place in street and outdoor lighting (Except color changing floodlights for colorwashing).
Haifa wants to apply this project only on their roads.
LEDs in general use have an average of 50lm/w max, and can reach higher than 70lm/w only in laboratory conditions (Or in refrigerators and freezers).
MH lamps are much more efficient than LEDs in lanterns and lamps, having 70-80lm/w in case of high quality pulse start MH lamps (Usually compact MH lamps) which degrades significantly in lumens only around the end of their rated life (Except Na-Sc probe start MH lamps, which tends to degrade in lumen fast to reach mercury lamps efficiency only after 100 hours of use, as most of the US made probe start MH does). CMH lamps can reach as high as 90-115lm/w.

Good quality LEDs are higher than 50Lm/W. Its expected that a product for the professional market will be better than for the home market. Good quality MH is not 70 Lm/W but often over 90 Lm/W. The best LED can perhaps even match it, but....

Maybe not

And any lamp have output deprecation over time. With MH, the deprecation is time to replace some lamps - which is cheap thing to do. With LED, would they replace entire fixtures ? Would they put in overkill fixtures in the 1st place to overcome it ?

Another issue is that for many applications LEDs have way higher optical efficiency as they give direct light. This give them advantage in pretty much all indoors fixtures. HID fixtures however have excellent optical efficiency anyway so LED does not have optical advantage over good HID fixture

@Ash:
LEDD's gain from the fact, than they already emit all the light in only one halfplane, so you may redirect all the light into virtually any pattern you want. Discharges emit light in all direction, what mean you do not have much control over about 50% of the light output, the rest is radiation of an omnidirectional light source. It then depend on the fixture/illuminated area relations, how homogenous would be the illumination level.
With theregular streetlight spacing of 4x their height and the desire to evenly illuminate the straight stripe of the road, you loose ~30% of the light by over illuminating the area below the fixture (without refractory optics) or as the light spill outside the target stripe (with the refractor).

With in street lighting service it mean, than with LED's you may reshape the pattern of all of the emitted light into get exactly even road illumination, so when designing this for the same illumination level as the minimum obtained with the HID, you would save ~30% of required lumens.
With HPS it still does not mean any energy input savings, as HPS have way higher efficacy than LED's, what easily cover up the nonideal light distribution.
But compare to MH's, LED's are on par (CMH - these HID's barely cover the 30% by their higher efficacy) or are better (QMH have the same efficacy as the LED's, but loose on the light distribution).

But LED's offer another advantage: For lot of smaller places the HID's are way too intense and their lower output versions loose the efficacy, while LED's keep their efficacy at any desired output level, so become winner for light packages of 3000lm and mainly below, where all HID's have either low efficacy or short life or are very difficult to drive.

The problem with present LED's inn streetlights is with their ballast: Most people have the feeling, then "high tech" light source require "high tech" ballast, so most makers equip their LED lanterns by very sensitive electronic ballasts, while with reasonable configuration the LED's could be driven with the same efficiency with robust magnetic choke:
E.g. 56x"1W" array driven at 40W with 90% efficiency is in the "high tech" form attainable only by nonisolated buck topology (so LED chips have to be isolated as any mains live conductor), where the overvoltage cause the damage of the switching component, what then pass unregulated mains to the LED's, immediately blowing them out.
While the same 90% could be reached by series F18T8 choke with 4-diode rectifier bridge (and a current sense shunt resistor + SCR as a crowbar type protection to lead the overcurrent from overvoltage event saturated coil away from the sensitive LED's), yielding setup easily immune against even 6kV/200us overvoltage (the expected level on the house input, so the same should be expected on each fixture) - with electronic attainable only using additional 3-stage protection system installed on each pole...

I have already seen two LED lanterns in a street near the highway that passes western Haifa.
Medved: Ash said me that he don't agree with you about the part of the optical performance of LED lanterns vs HID lanterns.
He said me that the optical performance of HID lantern is very high and not what you think.