Adelaide St. lights are on during the day, but not at night

Toronto Hydro says it leaves the lights on due to underground wiring issue

The difference in street lighting on a stretch of Adelaide St. is like night and day.

During daytime, a passel of street lights are on when they shouldn’t be, while a bunch of other lights don’t work at night, when they’re supposed to be on.

Adelaide, between Yonge and Jarvis Sts., is blessed with street lighting that looks like the oldfashioned gas lamps that illuminated streets in the 19th century, before they were overtaken by electrical lighting.

They’re an attractive alterna- tive to the boring but generally dependable lighting used on most city streets. But on Adelaide, dependable is not the correct description for the faux-gas lights. A reader named Anthony emailed to say that some of the decorative lights on Adelaide, from Church St. to Jarvis, seem to be on the blink when they should be shining brightly.

“Every winter the majority of the street lamps, especially on the north side, are unlit,” he said. “Not much of a problem in summer, but icy patches are difficult to see on winter nights.”

We went there during the day to take pictures (after dark is not the time to photograph lights that don’t work) and made an observation not mentioned by Anthony: Starting at Victoria St. and heading east to Church, many of the decorative lamps were on in mid-afternoon.

And from Church to Jarvis, almost all the lights on the south side were on, at a time of day when they’re not supposed to be.

A Google Street View image shot in March of 2018 shows many of the same lights on during the day, so it appears to be an ongoing problem for at least a year.

Among the reasons taxpayers get irritated when they see street lights on when they shouldn’t be is that it’s wasteful, even if there’s more to the story than it would seem. STATUS: That is definitely the case with the Adelaide lights. Tori Gass, a spokesperson for Toronto Hydro, sent us a note saying “we’ve discovered an underground fault at this location and have bypassed a relay system in order to get the lights back on.

“Unfortunately, this means the lights stay on during the day as well as at night. We have a plan to repair the issue in the spring when a pole can be installed and the relay can be moved above ground.”

What's broken in your neighbourhood? Wherever you are in Greater Toronto, we want to know. Email jlakey@thestar.ca or follow @TOStarFixer on Twitter

JACK LAKEY A reader complained that during winter in recent years, decorative street lights on the north side of Adelaide St. don't work at night. “Icy patches are difficult to see on winter nights.”