Pylons linger long after the job’s done

Pylons have a bad habit of wandering away from where they’re needed, until you want them to get lost.

And then they hang around long after they’ve outlived their usefulness, to join a unique category of street trash that can’t be swept up, washed down or blown away by the wind.

We’ve written before about the blight on the urban landscape that pylons have become, through overuse as a quick fix for just about every problem that can’t be resolved immediately.

If a storm drain sinks, cover it with a pylon. Tripping hazard on a sidewalk? Plunk down a pylon until somebody can come back and fix it.

When traffic needs to be diverted, lay out a row of pylons to funnel vehicles away from the lane to be closed.

It’s often the wrong thing to do. Pylons never stay in the same place for long. Traffic knocks them over, boisterous kids kick them to the curb, where they get squashed, and they can even grow legs which they use to run away.

But when their work is over and you want them to vamoose, there’s no getting rid of them.

Ann Atkinson emailed to say there was construction last fall at the southwest corner of Broadview and Danforth Aves., but when the job finished, “seven ugly, orange and black pylons” were left behind.

“I phoned 311, and the city claims that they don’t have to do anything, because the pylons belong to a contractor,” said Atkinson

“I hope we citizens don’t have to start phoning around to various contractors! These pylons are a blight all over Toronto, as you already know.”

We went there and found the pylons scattered around the corner, including two near a discarded road sign between a Pizza Pizza and a grassy area next to an on-ramp to the Don Valley Parkway.

Status: Rob Burlie, who’s in charge of road operations in that area, sent us a note saying he’d send a field investigator to take a look, figure out who the stuff belongs to and ask them to take it away. What’s broken in your neighbourhood? Wherever you are in Greater Toronto, we want to know. To contact us, go to thestar.com/yourtoronto/the_fixer or email jlakey@thestar.ca.