Marble stars pose risk to pedestrians
A stroll along the Italian Walk of Fame can be a slippery trip when the sidewalk is covered with snow.
A lot of people wouldn’t know it, but Toronto is home to the only walk of fame in the world that honours prominent Italians, with stars embedded in the sidewalk on College St., in the heart of Little Italy.
Its website says the walk was launched in 2009 to recognize “the achievements of Italians who have excelled . . . across a variety of industries including business, science, art, film, theatre, finance, medicine, literature, architecture, religion and politics.”
Inductees include crooner Dean Martin, hockey players Phil Esposito and Roberto Luongo, impresario Johnny Lombardi, developers Rudy Bratty and Fred DeGasperis and politician and former police chief Julian Fantino.
The shiny marble stars in the sidewalk on the north side of College, between Clinton and Grace Sts., can be an interesting surprise, but people might take notice of them for the wrong reason.
A reader reported on SeeClickFix that “in the winter weather, and in rain, they become extremely slippery and constitute a hazard for pedestrians.
“Given that they end up hidden under snow, people don’t even know that the footing is treacherous until it’s too late. I have almost wiped out twice, seen at least three other people wipe out and saved one older woman from falling.
“These panels should not be there (and) are ridiculously slippery.”
We went there and found a total of 25 stars along the sidewalk, covered by a thin layer of snow that made them hard to see until we dusted them off with a car snow brush.
We also tried walking across the stars before we cleaned them off and found them to be quite slippery, even though we knew they were there. Status: Road operations supervisor Ross Carnovale emailed to say the stars “are made of a marble material which for some reason this year has become very slippery. We never had issues with them before.”
They’ve been added to a list of highpriority locations to be salted right away when it snows, he added.
We also emailed the people in charge of the walk to ask if they are aware of the hazard, and if they have any ideas on how to improve the traction. What’s broken in your neighbourhood? Wherever you are in Greater Toronto, we want to know. To contact us, go to thestar.com/ thefixer or call us at 416-869-4823. To read our blog, go to thestar.blogs.com/thefixer. Report problems and follow us on Twitter @TOStarFixer.