At today's Board of Supervisors meeting, the Supes unanimously approved a proposal by the foundation that brought us The Bay Lights to install another light-based art project, this one up Market Street from the Embarcadero. As we showed you earlier this year, the project is called LightRail, and the idea is to have strings of LEDs on either side of Market that will display strips of different colored lights that indicate where BART trains are below ground.

Different colors will indicate different train lines, livening up Market both day and night with swooshes of light overhead. It also just might help you run to a train if you can see the light approaching from above ground.

It's a very cool looking project by artists George Zisiadis and Stefano Corazza, who are collaborating on it, and the first couple hurdles with regard to the city have now been passed — the project was approved by the Land Use Committee yesterday, and today by the full board, in a motion sponsored by Supervisor Scott Wiener. One thing that needed to be approved is the drilling small holes into the tops of historic light poles from Embarcadero to Van Ness. The power sources for the LEDs will, the backers say, be able to be contained in existing utility boxes along the street.

As Ben Davis, director of Illuminate the Arts, says, LightRail will "reflect above our head what's happening beneath our feet in the transit system, both celebrating the urban environment but really more beautifully using light and energy and movement to seamlessly connect community up and down the length of Market."

Davis and his foundation will now need to go out seeking funding for the project, and it's unclear what the installation timeline will be.

Illuminate the Arts is still in the process of raising money to keep The Bay Lights on for another 12 years, but as of now that installation is set to disappear in March. Learn more about donating here.

Lightrail - Making mass transit more magical from michelebaggio on Vimeo.