Amare
Senior Member
It does?
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Finch West Line 6 LRT
- Thread starter W. K. Lis
- Start date
turini2
Active Member
I would guess in the same way that street trees, public art, clean sidewalks and a road not full of holes encourages investment - it makes it look like you care for a place, rather than not giving AF.
Towered
Superstar
Amazing how quickly progress can be made when one does not needlessly tunnel under a wide arterial!
Amare
Senior Member
Normally I would go on and agree, but then I look at roads like Adelaide St, Queen St, or King St downtown and tend to think developers and others really couldnt care less at to the state of how a public realm looks. There's no doubt that having an LRT encourages investment, but i'm not sure i would stretch that theory out to hydro wires.
junctionist
Senior Member
I think so. It makes the public realm look cleaner, better maintained, less utilitarian, and more attractive overall. That, in turn, attracts business investment. Quality main street businesses tend to look after the public realm and tend to encourage a stronger sense of community. In turn, the area becomes more attractive to mixed-use intensification (developer investment), as people enjoy vibrant main streets and want to live close to them.
Amare
Senior Member
We're veering off topic here, but I disagree. Sure having utility lines buried makes the public realm looks cleaner and more attractive, but it has very little on businesses being attracted to an area or not. For instance, College St between Ossington and Spadina has above ground hydro poles and it's public realm is generally pretty good despite the fact. Businesses still invest in the area and the BIA is very successful.
The only issue I have is that Toronto's current public realm design for streetscapes is sterile, and all over the place. We had a great template to start off with and improve on with Spadina but instead of following up with that, we've experimented with so many mindnuming designs which have been inferior in one way or another (ie: Finch will have one set of streetscape design, Eglinton another, Queens Quay West yet another, Queens Quay East another, and so on).
junctionist
Senior Member
Burying utility wires is just one 'tool' to get the job done of keeping commercial areas vibrant and revitalizing those that aren't. It's not a prerequisite or the key ingredient, but it helps. The Junction saw significant revitalization after the hydro wires were buried on Dundas Street West.
St. Clair West saw a revitalization with its streetscape overhaul, which included burying the overhead hydro wires along most of the route. Almost all parts of Bloor, the Danforth, and Yonge Street have buried overhead wires and vibrant retail areas, as well.
yoshirocks702
Active Member
I didn't think they were burying the whole corridor, but I could be wrong. On another wire note, no pics but the Poles for the LRT overhead wires are in place on decent chunk from Yorkgate to about tobermory on my drive last night
W. K. Lis
Superstar
They did not bury the overhead lines along Roncesvalles Avenue, because Mayor Rob Ford wanted to save money, or as he called it, "gravy". (The family's usual excuse.)
micheal_can
Senior Member
It makes sense to bury what can be buried from a weather proofing standpoint. A good windstorm or ice storm won't take down infrastructure that isn't there.
Amare
Senior Member
It comes with it's tradeoffs. Sure if you bury infrastructure you'll have less issues with wind/ice storms. But keep in mind that if you suffer from large amounts of damage due to let's say a flood, the damage will be far more extensive/expensive and the repairs/downtime will be much greater with underground electric corridors.
If one is has their power cut off for days due to a tree falling on power lines/overhead streetcar lines, that outage would easily extend for weeks at a minimum with underground electric infrastructure.
junctionist
Senior Member
Do you have a source? Underground power lines are specially designed to resist damage in flooding events. This link provides some interesting information in this regard.
Amare
Senior Member
Remember Hurricane Sandy which slammed New York? That wasnt even a hurricane when it hit New York City but it still crippled it's infrastructure, a lot of which is underground.
But in any case, we're beating on a dead horse issue; here's a read for those who want to read on the various benefits/detriments of overhead vs. underground power lines:
Why not avoid falling trees by putting lines underground?
Putting power lines underground might seem like a simple way to reduce outages, but it's also extremely costly - and could lead to longer outages.
Isn't it better to just bury power lines? That may depend on where you live | CNN
Millions of people could be in the dark for days after Hurricane Irma toppled overhead power lines. The delay raises the question of whether an underground electrical grid would have better weathered the storm -- and helped get life back to normal quicker.
Why don’t we put power lines underground?
“Put power lines underground!” is a common hurricane season rallying cry. So why don’t we do it?
www.popsci.com
Steve X
Senior Member
Most of the damage done by a hurricane is not the wind. Depending on what side of the storm hits the city, they might even avoid the deadly wind side of the storm. Storm surge and the rain is the major problem. The remnants of Ida mixed with another system caused a huge rainstorm that drowned people in basements a month ago. There was no wind there. If flooding consists and these electrical vaults are under water, how can it be even possible to repair them?Remember Hurricane Sandy which slammed New York? That wasnt even a hurricane when it hit New York City but it still crippled it's infrastructure, a lot of which is underground.
But in any case, we're beating on a dead horse issue; here's a read for those who want to read on the various benefits/detriments of overhead vs. underground power lines:
Why not avoid falling trees by putting lines underground?
Putting power lines underground might seem like a simple way to reduce outages, but it's also extremely costly - and could lead to longer outages.www.bchydro.com
Isn't it better to just bury power lines? That may depend on where you live | CNN
Millions of people could be in the dark for days after Hurricane Irma toppled overhead power lines. The delay raises the question of whether an underground electrical grid would have better weathered the storm -- and helped get life back to normal quicker.www.cnn.com
Why don’t we put power lines underground?
“Put power lines underground!” is a common hurricane season rallying cry. So why don’t we do it?
Also a larger size weaker hurricane would do more damage than a stronger but tiny hurricane. The wind field stretching more than 200km wide of tropical storm wind would do a lot more damage than a concentrated 40km wide wind field. That is not usually reported by the media as the only focus on category level. Next is the speed the storm moves. If the storm stalls, it'll just dump tons of rain while blowing high winds for more than a day while a speedy storm zooms pass the city in hours. So you can't really just say getting hit by a category 1 hurricane vs getting hit by a tropical storm makes a big difference.
crs1026
Superstar
Underground cables may imply underground substations, and they are a different story. There have been a couple of these in recent years in central Etobicoke.… with extra long outages.
- Paul