The Toronto Way, Part 4: Repairs

Here’s a typical Toronto experience: Friday afternoon, you’re waiting in the lobby of some high-rise building, and one of the three elevators is working.

You inquire, casually and politely, as to when the others might be oh, I dunno, operational? And the answer is, inevitably, “not until next week.”

You inquire further: “but… two-thirds of your elevators are out of service. This poses not just a hardship for the tenants of this building but could pose a health or safety risk.”

And the answer, inevitably, is: “we can’t get anyone in to fix them.”

Roughly translated, this means: “we’re too fucking cheap to pay weekend service rates and, besides, you’re Torontonians, you’ll put up with shitloads of crap and do nothing more than grumble, so stuff it.”

And they’re right. Because that’s the Toronto way. You might think you’re living in a broken city in the former Soviet Union, but you’re not. This is Toronto. The largest city in Canada.

Here’s another example. Behold, a street corner in my nabe:

Corner of St. Nicholas & St. Mary Streets, Toronto

That “CONSTRUCTION” sign, lying face down? Has been there for over three months. Sure, there were street repairs, but those were finished — I mean, “finished” — three months ago and the crew forgot their sign. Or didn’t give a fuck.

Oh, hey, just take a look beyond the sign:

Corner of St. Nicholas & St. Mary Streets, Toronto

See those pylons, in the middle of the street? They’ve been there for three days now. Guess they “forgot” to pave over their repairs.

Speaking of paving, here’s a sampling of the paving repairs in my neighbourhood:

Charles Street West, Toronto

Looking North on Yonge Street at Charles Street, Toronto

Looking South on Yonge Street at Charles Street, Toronto

Wait four months. With Toronto’s temperature swings, those patch-jobs will be hell on your automobile suspension, not to mention a hazard for cyclists, forcing them even further into a flow of traffic which treats them with casual disregard, if not open contempt.

Of course, the most significant recent disruptions to downtown Toronto life have been more severe than the incremental deteriorations mentioned above. Front Street was closed off for days longer than would seem reasonable when ice fell from the CN Tower early last year. The entire Yonge-University subway line was out of commission for much of the day when scaffolding was knocked down by a repair crew. A marble slab falls from a tower in the financial district and several major streets are closed for days. I asked last year: if snow or wind or a preventable disease or an accident or two can bring down the largest city in Canada for days or weeks, what if something really bad happens? Where is the political will to get the city moving again, and get it moving quickly?

And, of course, it happened again this week. A piece of sign fell off a financial district tower in high winds. Four whole downtown blocks were closed off to automobiles, transit & delivery vehicles and pedestrians for many hours longer than would seem necessary, and for many hours after the winds had died down. And why is that, you ask? The platform for repairing the sign was broken. Shocker.

Look around, all you denizens of Toronto. The casual, incremental erosion of our quality of life didn’t happen by accident. It happened through laziness, ineptitude and… our passive response to laziness and ineptitude as an acceptable way of doing things.

Credit Where Credit Is Due Dept.: An email to the office of Toronto Councilor Kyle Rae regarding the overturned sign, above, resulted in prompt removal of the eyesore. Think about it: complaining works. Hear that, comrades?

File under: Hopelessly Broken City