Double trouble on Eastern Ave. sidewalk
One sidewalk obstacle is bad enough, but two within a short distance adds up to double trouble.
We usually give city departments credit for being more responsible than private utility contractors when it comes to ensuring that public movement isn’t compromised by their work.
But the city is just as capable of screwing up as a corner-cutting contractor, if the duelling disasters on a sidewalk on the south side of Eastern Ave. are any indication.
We’ve been reporting on various problems with utility poles lately, which prompted Kevin McCurley to email us a photo of a pole that’s smack dab in the middle of the sidewalk on Eastern, west of Coxwell Ave. It shows a pole in the middle of a section of sidewalk that looks as if it was poured within the last year. It’s as dumb a location for a pole as the ones in the Queens Quay bike lane, which we wrote about last week.
We went there and saw that all the other utility poles on the south side of Eastern are positioned along the south edge of the sidewalk, which makes the one in the middle stick out like a sore thumb.
There’s just enough room for a wheelchair or motorized scooter to squeeze past it, but it has us wonder- ing what Toronto Hydro, which is responsible for utility poles, was thinking when they put it there.
But the pole is a trifling inconvenience, compared to the yawning chasm we found in the same sidewalk, about 100 metres east of the pole, where a huge sinkhole has developed.
Alarge section of sidewalk has been patched with asphalt, following an excavation that has something to do with two utility covers for some sort of water infrastructure in the grass next to it.
The entire patch has collapsed after a washout beneath the sidewalk, likely caused by a water leak, leaving a hole so big that anyone in a wheelchair or motorized scooter would be stopped in their tracks. Status: We’ve sent a note to Toronto Water, asking if it can arrange to have the sinkhole properly filled until it can be permanently repaired. And we’ve asked Toronto Hydro about the wisdom behind the pole placement. It’ll take some explaining. 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, call us at 416-869-4823 or email jlakey@thestar.ca. To read our blog, go to thestar.com/news/the_fixer. Report problems and follow us on Twitter @TOStarFixer.