Love the clean and classy look of Montreal's new highrises.

That could pass as Bay Street south of Bloor in Toronto.

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I get the utility poles complaint, but the pavement quality thing strikes me as just... odd. I've been to lots of cities in North America, and biked in many of them. Toronto's pavement quality is about average. Places like Chicago and San Francisco tend to take better care of the tourist areas, but then let stuff fall apart to a greater degree in other inner neighbourhoods. Outside of Manhattan, NYC tends to be pretty bad too.

Toronto's real culprit is utility cuts, and the lackluster repair of them by the utility companies. This appears to be a big problem in parts of Melbourne as well, interestingly enough!

I don't know why the city doesn't hold the utility companies responsible. They should not be allowed to cut section out of a sidewalk and just replace it with asphalt.

The overhead wires never bothered me either. And the spiderweb effect of streetcar junctions like Queen and Spadina look pretty cool IMO. One specific example of shoddy work that really irks me is the newish little plaza fronting the RioCan building at Yonge and Eglinton. The way the tiles at the edge meet the sidewalk is pathetic. Anyone who has been there probably knows what I'm talking about. Utility spray markings can also be excessive but that's certainly not unique to Toronto.

Might be a thing of the past. I've noticed more care taken to reconstructing the concrete roadbed under the asphalt.

Toronto along with most of Canada deals with much harsher climates that deteriorate road surfaces very quickly than Melbourne. Check out any city's road surfaces in spring time. Toronto has also being lackadaisical throwing money at resurfacing old and tired concrete road beds that may last one or two seasons before cracking. They resurfaced a street I once lived on. Within 3 years there was more sticky (bitumen) crack filler than asphalt .

Even Canadian cities with milder climates can have beaten up sidewalks and streets.

https://www.google.com/maps/@49.2811...7i13312!8i6656

https://www.google.com/maps/@49.2783...7i13312!8i6656

https://www.google.com/maps/@49.2804...7i13312!8i6656

It's almost impossible for any large city to maintain perfect sidewalks across the board.

I was actually wondering about this biking home yesterday and had a similar observation - I noticed a lot fewer fresh utility cuts on sidewalks on Dundas and parts of Queen in the west end that I take. Didn't want to make a definitive comment on it though.

The City of Toronto asks utility companies to fix the sidewalk temporarily (hence the asphalt) and then it does the permanent job itself (and charges it to the utility companies).

Makes sense.

[IMG]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/768/2...8c9b8c0b_k.jpgSunset on King by Lori Whelan, on Flickr[/IMG]

Looking North on Yonge:

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/wmUDzdD.png[/IMG]

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/l3Z3bBR.png[/IMG]
Pix by me today.

The difference being, although those roads look rough and are quite patched up, they are fine and pretty smooth to drive on, and haven't really started to fall apart. In any other city in Canada, because of the pitting of the asphalt the whole thing would be crumpling and falling apart, were as in Vancouver the can get away with a bit of tar for the few cracks they get. Seriously, if you look at an old road in Vancouver, they are always pitted like crazy but are structurally fine for the most part.

https://instagram.fymy1-2.fna.fbcdn....48324864_n.jpg
https://www.instagram.com/p/BZ13Ywan...by=williamtopa

Why are the middle lanes so wide?

It's a weird part of town where I ride often. It's just not wide enough for the city to paint an extra set of lines. Regular users run two lanes within that space but there is always bozos that ride right in the middle...

At the bottom of the pic, you can see them running two lanes, the rest are a bunch of timid fucks. This stretch of is-it-1-or-2-lanes? runs from Guy to University.

Motorcycles in that space are great, it's always 2 lanes :)

Looks like a perfect candidate for better bike lanes and some greenery.

Wider sidewalks + greenery.

What I've started to see are the contractors for the utility companies doing the permanent repairs almost immediately. They spend more time on compacting as well as strengthen the bond between existing and new with rebar that has been partially inset into the existing concrete slabs.

Saint-Jacques street, Old Montreal

https://instagram.fymy1-2.fna.fbcdn....70124288_n.jpg
https://www.instagram.com/p/BaWsLNqF...agged=montreal