Damaged utility pole still not cleared up
Cleaning up the debris from a vehicular accident shouldn’t take a week, never mind several months.
Car accidents are messy business, and not just because of the blood that is shed or the glass and crushed auto parts strewn around the street.
Ancillary damage from an out-ofcontrol vehicle often extends to stuff along the edge of the road, such as transit shelters, utility poles and signalling equipment for traffic lights.
The poles seem to take the worst beating, mainly because there are so many of them so close to the curb, where they can’t help but get in the way.
That looks to be the case for a pole that has been lying in the middle of Ellesmere Rd., just west of McCowan Rd., since early last spring, where it only adds to the street trash.
A reader told us he’s been driving by the rusting metal pole for many months and can’t believe it wasn’t picked up and taken away long before now.
We went there and found a pole that was obviously snapped off by a collision, on a raised concrete median that runs west from the intersection. The base of the pole still has wires sticking out of it, which suggests it supported street lights or a traffic signal.
The pole wasn’t replaced, which has us wondering if there is less light at the busy intersection after nightfall and whether it’s a safety concern. Status: Toronto Hydro is responsible for the vast majority of utility poles on city streets, so we asked it why this one hasn’t been replaced and why it wasn’t removed months ago. But Hydro says it isn’t their responsibility. It had a street light on it, but “because we have added sufficient lighting along the sides of the road, it’s no longer needed.
“The street light in the median was something that city of Toronto transportation installed. That specific street light was never assumed by Toronto Hydro when the responsibility of street lighting went from the city of Toronto to Toronto Hydro.” We checked a Google Street View image from April 2015 that shows two street lights on it. A Hydro spokesperson added that it has asked the city to get rid of the old pole. 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 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.