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As I was watching The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo, I asked myself: Why does Sweden look so attractive? And I suddenly realized: all their electric wires are underground. Halifax, on the other hand, still has a long way to go. Above-ground electrical wires really look awful and I don’t see any working progress to get rid of the poles and the wires. Though the waterfront and some of downtown has been cleaned up, most of the the downtown still has a forest of crooked wooden poles and a messy tangle of wires obstructing your view whichever way you look. I read somewhere that there is a multi-million dollar project to redo the Cogswell overpasses, which I admit are ugly in extreme. But if we really want Halifax to shine, to move into the 21st century, then put that money into burying the electrical infrastructure. I remember growing up in Hogtown, which is what we called Toronto when the wires were above ground. That was 50 years ago! How is it that Halifax is doing nothing about this? What is the delay? Anyone visiting Halifax is struck by this blemish. You don’t see the amazing architectural heritage, everything is obscured, obliterated by this eyesore. When I look out my window, I see black lines carving up my view. Halifax could be the jewel of the north-east instead of being a quaint backwater. Cogswell can wait: a bit of repaving and landscaping will do for now. Bury the wires now! Let’s make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. —New to Halifax: C & S
This article appears in Feb 11-17, 2016.
Oh goody! Another know-it-all CFA…
Yes, Let’s. You do realize that Halifax sits atop a large turd of granite and the labor involved in burying those unsightly power lines would have you writing outraged letters about noisy construction work and disrupted transit until 2116. I mean, you did think of that, didn’t you?
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Read that twice OB.
Once you realize that H^LIF^X has no soil beyond the 18-24″ that the trees are able to live in, you’ll understand that undergrounding electrical services is way more expensive than driving a pole in the road.
Not to mention the pain in the ass repair work involved in a line break. Plus the required duct bank of concrete these lines need to rest in…. when within public property.
It’s a hard thing to realize, as an after thought to the existing infrastructure already within the right-of-way, to now start undergrounding the electrical. There are a few areas within the downtown area that are under the undergrounding mandate, but as for any new construction it seems the norm to string the primary and underground the secondary (the home service). This still leaves the poles in the blvd but without the overhead service crossing to the home.
It’s easy to get caught up in your frustration and just throw out a thoughtless comment like you have here….. You could have answered your own question, if you had just given it a little thought before you decided when to stop thinking beyond your own little petty grievance.
I guess maybe you’ll just keep being frustrated with the world around you, ignorant to how it works and why.
And as to your ignorance to the Cogswell. There’s nothing to be done about that. And if you think a ‘bit of repaving and landscaping’ will fix it up….. you are a DUMB ASS!!! You have no idea what state of disrepair this overpass is in. NONE! the report is available to read, if you bothered to look into it. And if you can’t, I’ll give you some friendly Halifax advice. Stay the F*ck away from that area. There’s a really good reason this bridge is slated for demolition and not repair.
I understand you’re New to Halifax: C & S….. do you really think you should bitch about the town you’re living in when you haven’t the slightest clue to what’s really going on and why?
Do us all a favour and just enjoy your time here while you are here and then move the fuck on.
They experimented with underground services on Cowie Hill. I vaguely remember it not turning out well in the long run.
And who would pay for this project even if it was possible?! Do you know where you’re living, bitcher? In one of the poorest provinces in Canada! This hillbilly backwater can’t afford shit, let alone what you’re proposing!
I’ve got no crystal ball but it seems likely that alternative energy supply and delivery over the next few decades, along with technology like the Tesla Powerwall home battery, might change the Halifax landscape in other ways. Houses used to have coal chutes, those are gone. I think elevated power lines will likely remain in the picture, as other posters correctly state: digging in this city is all money pit no gold mine. It would be interesting to consider how more PV installs on roofs and walls of various buildings and houses feeding on/off the power grid according to their own supply and demand, might work in terms of transmission lines. It’s not my area of expertise at all, but I see a future more like patchwork than of wholesale integration into some complete rebuild of the grid.
I call bullshit on the ‘too difficult to dig’ premise. We already have water pipes, sewage pipes, and recently natural gas pipes. Don’t tell me that NS Power can’t spend some of it’s guaranteed profits on improving the infrastructure that was handed to them on a platter.
Also, if the planners would get off their arses and finally establish a traffic and utility corridor around the city and harbor, we would finally have a green belt for bicycle/walking trails, as well as a location for future systems like rapid transit.
Sorry, Bud, you can’t force the fucking idiots in this province to do anything new. The ‘old boy’s club’ here aren’t interested in anything besides filling their and their buddies pockets, and since most of the likely have NSP stock in their portfolio, there would be no point in forcing them to change anything.
Oops, what I meant to say is… Whatever Jacob Boons opinion is, that’s my opinion too.
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Hahahhaha!
That’s the first thing I noticed about Stockholm. Well, that and all the beautiful people.
Once you saw the price per meter of installing underground services in Halifax, you might change your mind.
It would be great to bury the wires, but the writer implies that our overhead electrical cables make Halifax look like some dirty backwater, like Toronto of 50 years ago.
Well, the vast majority of Toronto’s wires are still above ground, just as they were half a century in the past. The only buried parts are in (some) new subdivisions and right in the financial district–just like Halifax. Go past Jarvis or University Avenue (or Spadina, at the very furthest) and the Toronto sky is still filled with cables.
Just like pretty much every city in the country.
Alternative energy supply Andrew? I guess you didn’t hear DSME closed shop. I guess they couldn’t find buyers for their windmill vanes. These alternative energy companies are quick to take government money but fail in showing results.
The gas company has been laying pipe all over the city for years now. It makes me wonder why a second pipe (with capacity for phone, electrical, cable and internet cabling) couldn’t have been laid at the same time….. oh yeah, that would require foresight ….and cooperation.
It’s about 10x as much money to bury them than have them above ground.
That being said, I’m all for burying the wires in the downtown area.
It’s not as difficult from a logistics standpoint as some here may claim, but there’s a publicly-traded company called Emera who’d sooner let the wires fall in order to blackmail customers into paying more for electricity. For the price it would cost Emera to bury their wires, it would probably be more cost-effective, and more of a fuck-you to Emera, for everyone in the province to set themselves up with a solar panel array on their roofs and sell the excess power back to Emera.
Kudos to the new LTWWB artist! A vast improvement over the Grade 7 scribblings that we had to endure before. Especially the poo. I hated that smug and smelly little poo.
I like Pooh Bear…🐻