Nitpick: "are actually purple" makes it sound like they came out of the factory purple, but they're actually changing from white to purple over time as the phosphor coating fails.

Just to be clear, these are about 1-3 years old. So yes they probably weren't purple on the day they were installed, but this is a defect and not normal aging. https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/136nz3b/til_...

They'll be near-UV LEDs with a phosphor to produce white, high efficiency, low cost, but garbage long term.

It happened in NC, too: https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2024/10/duke-universit...

Florida too. https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2023/08/28/need-to-r...

The city employee who bought them is probably a massive Ravens fan...

i mean who wouldn't be the way they're playing

Might be so that they don't interfere with a certain species of wildlife. We have deep blue ones near me that aren't visible by a protected bat species.

Not true, they're just defective and degraded quickly, resulting in the odd color.