It is not always necessary to light public spaces. There may be reasons to omit this, or light only very sparsely. This decision is a policy assessment. The decision is closely connected to issues like traffic safety, sustainability, degree of darkness, etc. In 2011 the new Directive for public lighting will be published. A part of this, the chapter on policy decisions, has already been disclosed. This covers making decisions on whether or not to light, or implementing alternative measures such as passive marking, orientation lighting or lighting that can be dimmed. The chapter indicates how the decision-making process may be conducted when urban or rural roads are concerned. Among other issues bike and pedestrians paths are discussed, both inside and outside built-up areas. According to the directive social safety benefits by no means always from lighting on bike paths. If social safety is to be increased by way of lighting, a certain degree of surveillance should be possible. That means that there should be enough people present on a bike or pedestrian path to allow for this. In an urban setting this is not always the case, and only rarely on rural roads, according to the Directive. In that case, applying public lighting only provides a false sense of security. An argument is made in favour of providing lighting at times when sufficient use is made of a route, if necessary with lights that can be dimmed or are available on demand. In addition traffic safety may benefit from markings and orientation lighting.