I remember hearing some in Elsah, IL were trying to keep their radial wave streetlights. But I noticed on eBay a lot of radial waves being sold that were removed from Elsah? The listing said they were forced to remove them by the utility co. So have they been replaced? I remember the ones in the article, looked a lot newer than the ones on eBay. They were HPS NEMAs with radial wave shades, but the ones on eBay were incandescent and some with porcelain heads..

This was the article I had seen:
Article

There were several types including the NEMA's with radials and the porcelain series. Many of the NEMA were Joslyn late 50's-early 60's with P/C sockets.

That's a shame. With incandescent NEMAs they could have just replaced the bulb with LED. 

The article said at first, the utility company complied and swapped the LED cobra head back to radials. But I guess they finally refused to keep them. I think this is just laziness on part of utility. They want everything cookie cutter one size fits all with the LEDs, and aren't interested in maintaining the old fixtures. Pemco makes the Jamestown LED radial wave top and side entry, but the cost is so much higher than the typical LED cobra, that the utility won't go for it without the place paying the difference.

Here they installed teardrop fixtures in the historic district about 10 years ago, HPS ones. But I'm not sure if the cost had to be made up or if it was just an option they offer.

I don't understand the "parts to maintain the current HPS lights is becoming scarce" and "not sure if the current lights can be converted to LED" comments, WHAT IS NEEDED TO CONVERT A RADIAL WAVE TO LED ? ALL YOU NEED IS WIRE TO BRING POWER IN TO THE FIXTURE AND A LIGHT SOCKET TO SCREW THE LED INTO !!!! I agree with GE 101R, laziness !

They did the teardrop MH here also about two years ago and recently they took those down and put the ugly duckbill platypus looking (IMO) LED's up around a 100 year old building.

Yuck! I don't mind LED, and if they just replace NEMAs or ordinary cobras with them, it doesn't bother me. But this one size fits all approach really ticks me off. It's like people don't care anymore, we just have to have LEDs, who cares whether the fixture looks like crap or is a downgrade from the old one. Really ticks me off this approach.

I mean would it really be that hard to get proper LED teardrops than just run of the mill AEL Autobahn ATB0 (what it sounds like these are, the bird looking lights)?? LOL Just pure tackiness, and I actually do like the ATB0 but there's a place for it, and that's not it.