brings back memories of this, childish but funny

Couldn’t there be 2 or 3 crews simultaneously doing the demo, and another one starting the replacement at the same time? Seems like the current situation is a pretty skeleton crew.

Ok fair enough, I didn't mean to stir up a hornet's nest! My point was that projects used to somehow just get done in a not unreasonable amount of time, admittedly with lax safety standards which were the norm in their day. We seem to have swung from one extreme to another where the most...

William Van Horne built the 4,700km long Canadian Pacific railway in 4 years, and it was delivered 5 years early!

pretty typical that they don't appear to have taken the opportunity to bury the random wires, and replace those ramshackle light posts

right, we've only had 50 years to get things in order. London in the 70's was a pretty grim place and they've managed to vastly improve things in the ensuing time. I went to Bilbao recently, a former industrial city, way smaller and less significant than Toronto and it's public realm blows...

I would say it's because of the many many bizarre rules, stop before proceeding through intersection, stop at every switch, stop because switch has to be manually changed. stop when passing some little sign hanging from the wires. Then there's the million detours currently in place which add...

Interesting article in the New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/06/can-turning-office-towers-into-apartments-save-downtowns

I believe this is the next section west of that, only 800 metres, but somehow going to take 4 years.

I would've expected them to build the new concrete barriers before paving, I guess they'll be doing on top of the asphalt?

there's a treaty in place for Canada and the US to share water that's diverted from going over the falls https://www.niagarafallsinfo.com/niagara-falls-history/niagara-falls-municipal-history/boundary-waters-treaty/niagara-river-water-diversion-treaty/

. Edit: turns out theres's a UT thread with tons of amazing photos! https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/70s-era-cn-tower-photos-wanted-inside-construction-antenna-signing-opening-day.18892/page-4

they were delivered by flatbed truck, I got held up by one for 15 minutes going west on Lakeshore while it backed into a driveway. As you might expect in Toronto, this was during rush hour instead of at an off peak time like, say, the middle of the night.

that looks like a 3rd Gen Honda Accord (1986 - 1989) so probably around 1988/89 if it's indeed in the 80s

why on earth didn't they bury the hydro wires when redoing the streetscape, they look terrible. is there a plan to remove them?

hopefully on his way to upgrade his phone!

At least the commercial spaces are all occupied with generally useful businesses. Compare this to the retail stretching along the south side of queen, west of woodbine where most of the units for 3 or 4 blocks are vacant and have been for years.

I think a major factor which is rarely mentioned is how absurdly slow the typical streetcar seems to go, even with no traffic they never seem to go over 20km/h. Then there's the stop and crawl through intersections and a really long dwell time at each stop even to let 1 person on. I remember...

there were dug up areas that aren't part of the concrete walkways, you can see one to the right of the walkway in my pic. Contractors weren't Toronto Hydro

well, they managed to go about 5 months before digging up the pristine street, already a couple of asphalt patches also