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mainichi.jp

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Sankei.com
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Only 7% of the grid is buried apparently- Tokyo faces $6.8 billion bill
 
I don't think anyone expects the entire system to go underground, but parts of it would be nice.

The article about Tokyo quotes a cost of approximately $5 million / kilometre. Assuming it is similar here, you could probably drop $50 million and bury a good chunk of the downtown core.
 
innsertnamehere said:
I don't think anyone expects the entire system to go underground, but parts of it would be nice.

The article about Tokyo quotes a cost of approximately $5 million / kilometre. Assuming it is similar here, you could probably drop $50 million and bury a good chunk of the downtown core.
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I cringe thinking about the inevitable howling that would come from the inner suburbs if only Downtown was to get buried power lines :rolleyes:
 
I taught English in Tokyo and Seoul for 2 years. That's not their main road. King and Queen Street, on the other hand, IS one of Toronto's main roads.

I don't ask for all of them to be buried. Just for our main roads that run across downtown would be nice.
 
On a more positive note, such main streets as Yonge, Bloor and University are pretty much wire free. Extending this to King and Queen would certainly improve things, although the streetcar wires are likely a permanent fixture.
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www.canadianaconnection.com

University Ave. looks gloriously uncluttered here in this quite flattering photo.
 
torontologist said:
And in Toronto it's estimated at $15 billion to bury them. I pull that stat out whenever someone complains about the power lines, and that usually shuts them up.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ice-storm-fallout-can-t-power-lines-go-underground-1.2490392
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Well you have to start somewhere. Underground electrical is 100 year old technology that poor eastern European countries manage to build. It says a lot that Oslo can build in ground heating into their sidewalks throughout their downtown and we can't even get our power lines down there.

Toronto needs to get on with it and stop making excuses. That Japanese cities also have it is neither here nor there. We can do better. And can we start building our infrastructure so that it can be serviced from underground? Ripping up the sidewalk every time something breaks is a tremendous waste of money. There are better ways but we've never bothered looking into it.

Helsinki might be a good place for our planners to go. They put everything underground. Pipes/wires are serviced by crews from a network of tunnels. It's not dependent on weather and they don't have to rip up sidewalks to fix things.
 
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biospherian said:
I taught English in Tokyo and Seoul for 2 years. That's not their main road. King and Queen Street, on the other hand, IS one of Toronto's main roads.

I don't ask for all of them to be buried. Just for our main roads that run across downtown would be nice.
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Queen is buried for most of downtown. Front is too. King, for whatever reason, isn't. There's underground infrastructure in place too.
 
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