The Ugly Canada Thread

[SignalHillHiker]

In St. John's, everywhere has poles and the poles have poles.

But, seriously... Water Street has them buried, some early suburbs have them burried, everywhere else has crooked wooden poles.

[vid]

They're in back alleys in the south end of my city, side streets in the north end (but underground along major streets with a few exceptions), and underground in almost any area built after the 1960s.

In situations where power lines are along a major street, they bury them if they can whenever they rebuild the street and the utilities under it. When we do roadwork here, every single city department gets involved and every single utility along that street gets upgraded so that they don't have to do anything to it again for decades. Putting lines underground reduces incidences of lines breaking off or poles falling over. Not too long ago, a bus drove into a power line in the north downtown and knocked out power to the whole area. That would never happen in the south downtown, where the power lines are either underground or in alleys, and therefore shielded from errant buses by the corners of buildings.

Having utilities in alleys also gives the city a reason to plow them, which is convenient for people who use them to access garages.

[WhipperSnapper]

It was a consideration for the major reconstruction I've read about here in Toronto. The costs just proved too much for most of them.

I've seen a number of older vaults around town have their roofs reconstructed. I wonder if maintenance is more costly for underground systems as well. That value of a new concrete suspended slab much be worth a few wooden poles.

[Mister F]

Actually I meant outside Canada. As for neighbourhoods like Leslieville, even with the TTC power still in the air it looks much more tidy than the streets with regular power lines in the air. Same with the trolley buses in Vancouver; the transit-related wires are typically quite minimal.

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

They are absolutely everywhere throughout North America, Asia and, Australia. As I said, only tourist/CBDs tend to have them buried. The old timey ones ... the ones that I wouldn't mind to have a section preserved are quickly being replaced by other overhead infrastructure or removed as redundant lines in Toronto.

I haven't been to Australia so I can't really comment on that, but it's not only tourist areas and CBDs where they're buried. There are plenty of regular joe kind of neighbourhoods in a city like Chicago for example where the power lines are underground.

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

With a few exceptions (Ossington is the only one I can think of offhand), wooden poles & overhead power supply is absent from major streets without streetcars - Church, Bay, Front, Danforth, etc. Even streets like Spadina and St. Clair only have them along the central streetcar ROWs.

I don't think people realize that these poles & wires primarily exist to serve streetcars, not for general hydro - though in many cases the power lines will piggyback on the overhead infrastructure that needs to exist regardless.

Wrong on both counts. Lots of main streets without streetcars have overhead power lines - Ossington, all the streets in Kensington Market, Parliament, Avenue Road, Pape, etc. And on streets with streetcars but no overhead general hydro lines, the amount of overhead wires is significantly less.

The overhead lines on streets like Queen West and College are mostly regular power and aren't there for streetcars. This monstrosity has almost no streetcar wires on it; it's almost exclusively for general hydro. Seriously, that thing rivals Clockzilla in sheer ugliness. And there are hundreds of them.

[GeneralLea]

Originally Posted by Mister F

Actually I meant outside Canada. As for neighbourhoods like Leslieville, even with the TTC power still in the air it looks much more tidy than the streets with regular power lines in the air. Same with the trolley buses in Vancouver; the transit-related wires are typically quite minimal.


I haven't been to Australia so I can't really comment on that, but it's not only tourist areas and CBDs where they're buried. There are plenty of regular joe kind of neighbourhoods in a city like Chicago for example where the power lines are underground.


Wrong on both counts. Lots of main streets without streetcars have overhead power lines - Ossington, all the streets in Kensington Market, Parliament, Avenue Road, Pape, etc. And on streets with streetcars but no overhead general hydro lines, the amount of overhead wires is significantly less.

The overhead lines on streets like Queen West and College are mostly regular power and aren't there for streetcars. This monstrosity has almost no streetcar wires on it; it's almost exclusively for general hydro. Seriously, that thing rivals Clockzilla in sheer ugliness. And there are hundreds of them.

You're comparing these wires to Clockzilla????
Alright, I'm all biased and all, but a lot of these wires have a quaint look to some, and they don't really overpower the nearby buildings and area. I don't see the ugliness in it, unless if you think it's some kind of danger for an electric fire or something, although you barely ever hear that happening in an area like this. Anyways, I think it's justified for there to be this many wires on these poles, it crosses a very large and pretty important (west/east)street in the core and supports a great number of businesses and residences in the area. You must also take into account that more electricity is lost the farther it travels, so it's gotta have more juice then what's really needed to power the immediate area it's heading to or through. I must agreewith whoever posted before, perhaps WS, on the instance that a lot of these above ground wire networks are pretty "Toronto" in respects to how Toronto grew up etc.

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

In Calgary the suburbs have Buried lines and the inner city has power poles.

The main streets of inner neighbourhoods like the Beltline and Kensington have little to no overhead power lines.

Originally Posted by GeneralLee(Toronto )

You're comparing these wires to Clockzilla????
Alright, I'm all biased and all, but a lot of these wires have a quaint look to some, and they don't really overpower the nearby buildings and area. I don't see the ugliness in it, unless if you think it's some kind of danger for an electric fire or something, although you barely ever hear that happening in an area like this. Anyways, I think it's justified for there to be this many wires on these poles, it crosses a very large and pretty important (west/east)street in the core and supports a great number of businesses and residences in the area. You must also take into account that more electricity is lost the farther it travels, so it's gotta have more juice then what's really needed to power the immediate area it's heading to or through. I must agreewith whoever posted before, perhaps WS, on the instance that a lot of these above ground wire networks are pretty "Toronto" in respects to how Toronto grew up etc.

The only reason that they look "Toronto" is because Toronto has been so bad at removing them. Nothing in your post is unique to Toronto - every city needs to move electricity. Yes, I'm comparing them to Clockzilla. They're hideous. You're entitled to your opinion of course, but most people would disagree, which is why most cities put their power lines out of sight to a much greater degree.

Holy crap, this one has limbs growing in two directions! The ones in Melbourne and Seattle that niwell linked are nowhere near as bad. What a mess.

[Martin Mtl]

Originally Posted by Mister F

Holy crap, this one has limbs growing in two directions! The ones in Melbourne and Seattle that niwell linked are nowhere near as bad. What a mess.

/\ That's an extreme exemple. Isn't there anyway for the city or Hydro to at least mitigate that chaos of wires ? How do you explain such a mess ?

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

In Calgary the suburbs have Buried lines and the inner city has power poles.

Yeah same here, it depends on the time. Newer suburbs have them buried since they were built that way from scratch, whereas the older neighbourhoods still have them since they've always been there.

[speedog]

Originally Posted by Mister F

The main streets of inner neighbourhoods like the Beltline and Kensington have little to no overhead power lines.

That's because they're all in the alleys, still overhead, just not as visible. One bonus of having overhead structure in the alleys in my community meant fiber to the home over a year ago, quite easy to string fiber on overhead structure as opposed to suburbs where everything is buried and there currently is no fiber.

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by Mister F

Actually I meant outside Canada. As for neighbourhoods like Leslieville, even with the TTC power still in the air it looks much more tidy than the streets with regular power lines in the air. Same with the trolley buses in Vancouver; the transit-related wires are typically quite minimal.


I haven't been to Australia so I can't really comment on that, but it's not only tourist areas and CBDs where they're buried. There are plenty of regular joe kind of neighbourhoods in a city like Chicago for example where the power lines are underground.


Wrong on both counts. Lots of main streets without streetcars have overhead power lines - Ossington, all the streets in Kensington Market, Parliament, Avenue Road, Pape, etc. And on streets with streetcars but no overhead general hydro lines, the amount of overhead wires is significantly less.

The overhead lines on streets like Queen West and College are mostly regular power and aren't there for streetcars. This monstrosity has almost no streetcar wires on it; it's almost exclusively for general hydro. Seriously, that thing rivals Clockzilla in sheer ugliness. And there are hundreds of them.

Toronto still has a lot of overhead wiring because of decisions made to put overhead wires along main streets until the 1960s or whenever. It is possible these Chicago neighbourhoods never had overhead wiring. Some cities made the decision to hide overhead wiring in public alleys. The fact that Toronto has more overhead wiring than "City A" along its public streets is not a failure to present day Toronto's Hydro but the decisions of Torontonians that have long since turned to dust. Do you have $40 billion dollars lying around? IIRC, That was the estimated cost 10 years ago. I can imagine it has grown since.

Toronto Hydro's budget currently prioritizes total replacement of failing underground grids that were installed outside of conduits and relocating overhead hydro corridors in private backyards to new underground systems in the public roadway of nondescript subdivisions. Both of these are the results of new tech at the time that didn't live up to expectation and developers/planners that came up with the design to have the wires out of sight. Both have come back to haunt present day Hydro and come at a cost to beautifying downtown streets. I don't disgree with their priorities either.


Things are never that simple.

[O-tacular]

I think that shooting in Quebec definitely qualifies for this thread. Seems as though Trump's win is affecting us in many peripheral ways...

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Originally Posted by O-tacular

I think that shooting in Quebec definitely qualifies for this thread. Seems as though Trump's win is affecting us in many peripheral ways...

He also followed Le Pen, so it isn't just Trump. The rise of white nationalism in Europe is also having an impact on people here.

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by speedog

That's because they're all in the alleys, still overhead, just not as visible. One bonus of having overhead structure in the alleys in my community meant fiber to the home over a year ago, quite easy to string fiber on overhead structure as opposed to suburbs where everything is buried and there currently is no fiber.

The key thing, at least as far as aesthetics go, is that they're hidden.

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

Toronto still has a lot of overhead wiring because of decisions made to put overhead wires along main streets until the 1960s or whenever. It is possible these Chicago neighbourhoods never had overhead wiring. Some cities made the decision to hide overhead wiring in public alleys. The fact that Toronto has more overhead wiring than "City A" along its public streets is not a failure to present day Toronto's Hydro but the decisions of Torontonians that have long since turned to dust. Do you have $40 billion dollars lying around? IIRC, That was the estimated cost 10 years ago. I can imagine it has grown since.

It's not only "city A", it's city, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc. I love Toronto but I can admit that it's not particularly good at this sort of thing. It's not just decisions made decades ago, it's decisions that are still being made. Like when they rebuilt Roncesvalles a few years ago it was the perfect chance to do something about the hydro wires, which are almost as bad as on Queen or College. But they kept them up in the air. Ottawa has made the same decision about some of its street rebuilds recently. I think it's an Ontario thing.

By the way, what does that $40 billion refer to? Burying the lines on every street in the city? Just the main streets? Just some specific high priority streets? Does it estimate the cost of burying wires while the street is already being torn up or doing that work on its own? That number doesn't mean much without some context.

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by Mister F

The key thing, at least as far as aesthetics go, is that they're hidden.


It's not only "city A", it's city, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc. I love Toronto but I can admit that it's not particularly good at this sort of thing. It's not just decisions made decades ago, it's decisions that are still being made. Like when they rebuilt Roncesvalles a few years ago it was the perfect chance to do something about the hydro wires, which are almost as bad as on Queen or College. But they kept them up in the air. Ottawa has made the same decision about some of its street rebuilds recently. I think it's an Ontario thing.

By the way, what does that $40 billion refer to? Burying the lines on every street in the city? Just the main streets? Just some specific high priority streets? Does it estimate the cost of burying wires while the street is already being torn up or doing that work on its own? That number doesn't mean much without some context.

No, I don't think you're quite getting it. Montreal has torn down more history than any other city but you wouldn't know it because they had so much to begin with. Toronto just happened to build a lot of overhead wiring along main street opposed to underground or hidden in alleys. There are few cities that would follow through on burying the equivalent to a Roncesvalles after the fact. It was among the options during the rebuild. It just wasn't in the budget. IIRC, it would have nearly doubled it.

40 billion would be to bury everything. This was many, many years ago. That estimate would have ballooned however, a lot of buildings have also been connected to the expanding underground grid since.

There's has been a lot of progress done but, much of it appears as only half complete. Maybe that's why you aren't seeing it. Like many crown corps, Toronto Hydro has a massive backlog and they aren't receiving the financial support to take care of it. Their concern is keeping the power on and not beautifying the streets.

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

No, I don't think you're quite getting it. Montreal has torn down more history than any other city but you wouldn't know it because they had so much to begin with. Toronto just happened to build a lot of overhead wiring along main street opposed to underground or hidden in alleys. There are few cities that would follow through on burying the equivalent to a Roncesvalles after the fact. It was among the options during the rebuild. It just wasn't in the budget. IIRC, it would have nearly doubled it.

40 billion would be to bury everything. This was many, many years ago. That estimate would have ballooned however, a lot of buildings have also been connected to the expanding underground grid since.

There's has been a lot of progress done but, much of it appears as only half complete. Maybe that's why you aren't seeing it. Like many crown corps, Toronto Hydro has a massive backlog and they aren't receiving the financial support to take care of it. Their concern is keeping the power on and not beautifying the streets.

No, I'm getting it just fine. If you think that few cities in the world would have buried the overhead on a street like Roncy then I think you need to see more of the world.

Nobody is suggesting that every power line on every street in the city should be buried. Just the urban main streets like Roncy and Dundas would make a world of difference, and that's a tiny fraction of the total power lines in the city. So $40 billion is a pretty meaningless and inflated number in that context.

Why is it that so many other cities can do it but in Toronto it's an impossible task?

[niwell]

The example of Chicago was given above - outside of the Loop / River North most of their lines aren't actually buried. They are in the laneways. I'd imagine cities that had the option did this when they ripped out streetcar lines. Before this they were probably on main streets sharing streetcar infrastructure.

https://goo.gl/maps/UG4GXZhVrK52

I remember reading someones post on Urbantoronto about this and one of the main issues today is getting all property owners on board with underground hookups. It was cited as one of the reasons they didn't put stuff underground when Dundas W was reconstructed (and cost issues).

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by Mister F

No, I'm getting it just fine. If you think that few cities in the world would have buried the overhead on a street like Roncy then I think you need to see more of the world.

Nobody is suggesting that every power line on every street in the city should be buried. Just the urban main streets like Roncy and Dundas would make a world of difference, and that's a tiny fraction of the total power lines in the city. So $40 billion is a pretty meaningless and inflated number in that context.

Why is it that so many other cities can do it but in Toronto it's an impossible task?

No, you're really not getting it. Buried is not specific. Walking into a neighbourhood and seeing no wires or hidden away in lanes doesn't tell the whole story. I've been around. I totally disagree that so many cities will have spent the money to have buried perfect serviceable overhead infrastructure on a main street so far outside the core. It just costs that much. I guess I'll have to find the rebuild options for Roncesvalles since you chose to ignore that part of my post.

Toronto wasn't designed with through laneways on most street.

**edit. The city has removed the options from there website. Don't believe me the costs would have added tens of millions to the reconstruction project. Don't believe tens of millions in additional costs is a lot of money to the city's budget.

It'll get done when it's no longer serviceable. I read a report not too long ago about half the wooden poles in the city receiving a poor to failing grade upon inspection. The substation that services most of downtown has been obsolete for 20 years. There's a little bit more important things on the agenda.

[O-tacular]

Fuck, more of the powerline debate! There is so much uglier shit to discuss than that!

[WhipperSnapper]

I'm ready to move on. There certainly won't be consensus on that subject. Back to Trump; some truly ugly buildings; some 1960s and 1970s architecture.

I'm so sick of Trump. We have our own disaster of a spoil brat in power.

[O-tacular]

I think this unwieldy beast belongs on here for its douchey name alone! Then of course there's the actual look of it which is part Cenobyte maze, part monolith and part boring architects alliance balconies.