Tearing up road can’t be stopped
JACK LAKEY When a newly resurfaced street is dug up, people wonder why the utility work below ground wasn’t done before the fresh asphalt went down.
It may look like the two jobs happened in isolation, with no communication beforehand, but the digging is almost certainly done to access utility pipes or wires beneath the road for emergency repairs.
No amount of advance planning can change it. Federal law provides utilities unfettered access to the space below the road, while the city must allow them to cut into the pavement in an emergency.
Most people don’t know that, and think the city is too unorganized to engage in forward planning to ensure utility projects under the street are done prior to road work on the surface.
It’s a big problem for transportation services officials, given their efforts to coordinate utility projects with road rebuilding — sometimes as far as five years in advance — to minimize pavement degradation and traffic disruption.
Readers of this column — including many city officials — know that utility cuts top our list of aggravations, due to the damage to our roads and long-term cost to taxpayers.
That’s why we were summoned to a meeting with Steve Buckley, Toronto’s general manager of transportation services, and Jeff Climans, director of Major Capital Infrastructure Coordination, to explain the choreography that goes into projects.
It drives them around the bend that people confuse digging for emergency repairs with infrastructure work under the road, and don’t know about the advance planning done by the city.
“If we plan to rebuild a road, we try to bundle the construction that needs to be done underneath it ahead of time,” said Climans. “It’s cost-effective and minimiz- es the impact on traffic.
“We know that doesn’t help drivers, and the traffic problems it cause are an inconvenience, but it allows us to manage it more efficiently.”
He gave us a flow chart showing all private and public utilities that have access to the space under the road, and even those with strategic needs that could influence road work, everyone from the TTC to Enbridge and Rogers.
A recent memo from Climans to utility contractors shows the city imposed a “coordinated work zone” to reduce the impact on traffic from ongoing work at Lake Shore Blvd. and Leslie St.
But it’s frustrating for city officials when the public has no idea of the work they put into trying to reduce the impact on traffic and road surfaces, said Climans.
Maybe so, but that doesn’t explain the city’s indifference to the carelessness of utilities in maintaining temporary utility cuts, so that they don’t sink and turn into craters that can damage vehicles. More about that on Monday. 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 416-8694823. To read our blog, go to thestar.blogs.com/thefixer. Report problems and follow us on Twitter @TOStarFixer.