To compare the luminous efficiencies of different street lightings, it is necessary to establish an appropriate photometric measuring model.In this paper, two kinds of traditional street lights and two kinds of Lighting Emitting Diode(LED) sources were selected for comparing their luminous efficiencies in the mesopic state and photopic state, then the MOVE model was used to derive the luminous efficiencies of the four kinds of lightings. Compared with the luminous efficiencies in photopic state, the luminous efficiency of the LED street lights and the Metal Halide(MH) lamps have improved significantly in the mesopic vision. However, the efficiency of the Hight Pressure Sodium(HPS) has decreased under the mesopic vision. Furthermore,when background luminance varies from 0.03 cd/m2 to 0.1 cd/m2, and then to 0.3 cd/m2,the luminous efficiency of the LED street lighting in the mesopic visual state will decrease from 131.2 lm/W to 122.7 lm/W firstly but then increase to 140.5 lm/W. It is concluded that the sensitivity of human eye changes in the different brightnesses of backgrounds. Among HPS, MH, standard LED light and modified LED light based on mesopic vision theory,the LED can offer the best solution in energy saving. Moreover,the LED lightings with more high efficiency can be obtained further by optimizing their spectra.