3/28/2023 0 Comments Bulevard of broken roads![]() January, 2006: The Ontario Court of Appeal refuses to hear an appeal from a St. November, 2005: The divisional court panel removes itself from the case owing to a perception of bias on the part of one member, Justice Ted Matlow. Year end? Early 2010? It's academic when you've lost the lucrative summer-patio season, for who wants to savour peppery salmon in view of a construction site? "It's been very challenging and sometimes depressing," Washington says, and then adds, touchingly, "but I can also see a spark of hope." "We inquired how long construction would take," he says, "and they mentioned that they were way behind schedule and couldn't give me a date when the streetcar would reopen." Its uni-named co-proprietor, Washington, knew about the potential for pain, having talked to TTC officials. When we talk to folks on Eglinton, we have to say, 'This is messy, you're going to live with some pain for a few years.' But a lot is forgiven when the project is done."Īt the recently opened Room Service restaurant, an upscale Caribbean spot just west of Oakwood serving Scotch bonnet grilled salmon, there's still room for optimism. "We have to remind them why we're doing this, what our goals are. "Once you tell people the story, their anxieties go down," Mr. Watermains, gas pipes and hydro lines all got upgraded, the cables of unsightly hydro poles buried. Mihevc singles out communications: People didn't understand that the project grew from being a straightforward TTC reconstruction into a complex urban renewal project. In assessing where things went off the rails, as it were, Mr. As we commiserate, a good Samaritan lifts an older woman's walker from the pit onto what's left of the road, and then hauls up the woman as well. ![]() Following her gaze past a new light standard installed in such a way as to squeeze out her patio, you behold a dispiriting panorama: a bombsite-like hole where part of the road used to be. "It's downtown Beirut out there," says Lisa Guluzian of World Class Bakers as she offers me a delicate chocolate-chip cookie. This is industrial blight taken to a bold new level, an Ed Burtynsky photograph waiting to happen. Clair, there's a perennial eyesore, a storage site for construction debris that resembles a garbage dump with its hodgepodge of manhole covers, orange-coloured mesh, splicing chambers, abandoned wood flats, discarded pizza boxes and unused decorative bricks. Clair/Oakwood intersection is closed for three weeks. Every time I leave my house, I witness the broken pavement churned up by buses diverted onto our quiet streets when the St. Nguyen closes his propped-open door, which discourages business but preserves his own well-being. "They're supposed to be finished by now." I'd tell him not to hold his breath, but at this very moment a tank truck pumps out the nauseating contents of a porta-potty - proof, at least, that someone worked here once. "Look, nobody's working," says Henry Nguyen, the manager of Danny's Vacuums, as he contemplates the street. ![]() With small ones, technically you can compel them, but if we tried, we would have forced them into bankruptcy." You can force them to work evenings and weekends. "With large contractors," says Adam Giambrone, "you have more options. But it turns out that the contractors hired by the TTC were too small-scaled to adjust to the project's changing demands. We were warned to expect 24-hour-a-day construction activity, a painful yet understandable pace. Clair, Show You Care," is a desolate trench where the tracks should be. ![]() Beyond barricades decorated with signs proclaiming "Shop on St. Broad-beamed trucks brush against dying curbside trees cyclists squeezed off the road scatter pedestrians from pitted sidewalks. Clair just west of Oakwood, where the road narrows to one skinny lane each way to hasten construction - only, nothing is happening. Apart from numerous other delays, the real time-waster since then has been the squabbles between utility companies and the Toronto Transit Commission over who has first dibs on tearing up our roads, and driving us nuts.ĭaily life in my neighbourhood, halfway between Yonge and Keele, has become hugely discouraging as a hopelessly drawn-out process takes its toll. But then the judicial panel that nixed the project removed itself from the case, owing to a perception of bias, and we started over. A year later, opponents launched a lawsuit that derailed construction. Track reconstruction was scheduled for 2004 - a two-to-three-year process, so they said. Let's see, how long have we been the lab rats for Transit City's mad scientists? The talk began in 2002. ![]()
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