[Lammy]

> Quality LEDs are quite nice indeed

This is true but irrelevant when cost reduction is the motivating factor for switching to LED lighting, because that motivation will extend to the upfront purchase cost of the lamps and they will buy whatever is cheapest.

[BorgHunter]

It depends, obviously, but when installed by governments, "cost reduction" almost always takes into account labor to replace faulty lamps, which is especially relevant when there are thousands of the things out there. So governments (for the most part--there are exceptions) avoid the cheapest ones, correctly identifying them as a false economy. The cheap ones are most likely to be found in private parking lots, because parking lot owners are generally only responsible for a handful of lamps and it's a pretty minor part of their business, so they're not going to put much thought into it.