Whose hole is it anyway?
Homeowner says rusty cover on the walkway in front of his house is on city property
When a hole sunk into the sidewalk is right outside your front door, it helps if it has a sturdy cover on it.
And when rust has all but devoured the metal cover, it seems reasonable for the people who live there to worry about stepping on it, and wonder why it hasn’t been fixed by now.
Sooner or later, rust has its way with just about anything made of metal. After decades of exposure to rain, snow and corrosive road salt, there’s no way to resist it.
That seems to be the case with a cover over a small, curious hole in the short walkway leading to the front door of Bill Harrison’s tiny, perfect house, on Aldwych Ave.
Harrison copied us an email he sent to his city councillor, Mary Fragedakis (Ward 29 Toronto Danforth), noting that while the hole is on the walkway leading from the sidewalk to his door, the walkway is on city property, not his.
“We contacted the city and they suggested that it might belong to us, but of course (the hole) clearly is a city access (apparently no longer used) of some sort,” he said in his note to Fragedakis.
“Although it is in front of our steps, the homes on the south side of Aldwych are within12 feet of the road, so this is city property,” he said, adding that the photos he sent her show that “this is a significant tripping hazard.”
We went there and found a round metal cover above a hole about 15 centimetres in diameter that is so thoroughly rusted it looks like it could give way under the foot of a heavy dude.
But we couldn’t figure out the purpose of the hole. Harrison described the lid as a “drain cover” in his email, but it’s hard to see anything but darkness beneath the rust holes.
A possible giveaway is a water box valve just in the sidewalk near the rusty cover, which is used to turn on and off water service to the house from the larger main under the street.
But Harrison’s house is so close to the sidewalk that the walkway to his door appears to fall within the municipal road allowance, which makes it the city’s problem to fix.
Status: We’ve asked Toronto Water and transportation services if they could figure out who’s responsible for whatever is in the hole, and arrange for the cover to be replaced. What’s broken in your neighbourhood? Wherever you are in Greater Toronto, we want to know. Email jlakey@thestar.ca. Report problems and follow us on Twitter @TOStarFixer.