Toronto resident says councillor, city let manholes rattle for months
· Toronto Sun
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From his apartment, Craig Smith keeps hearing the noise as the loose manhole cover rattles under traffic.
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Every vehicle that drives by on Bloor St.: thunk-thunk. It’s one noise for every wheel that runs over this manhole cover, down the street from Christie Pits.
It may not seem like one of the city’s more annoying sounds, at least not at first. It’s a bit like a train making its way down the track.
But it’s been like this for about six months, and Smith has had it. There’s almost always a car driving on Bloor, which means there’s almost always that manhole noise.
“Oh, it never stops – and first thing in the morning and then afternoon rush hour, from like 3 to 7, it’s crazy. It’s along, I guess it would be two blocks of Bloor. It’s never-ending,” he told the Toronto Sun .
“I would never have done – like, calling journalists over a loose manhole cover and calling 311 once a week, but it’s maddening. It’s driving me nuts, I have to be honest.”
There are two important points of relief, the most significant being that the noise doesn’t quite reach Smith’s bedroom.
The second came this week after the Sun began asking City Hall and Toronto Hydro about the noise. Hydro said in an email it had sent out crews for “temporary repairs” and the noise had stopped.
“Temporary” was the operative word. By Friday evening, Smith said, the cover was clanging as loud as ever.
‘Not their responsibility’
Smith said he and some neighbours have complained since the spring but were told there would be a “moratorium” on the necessary road work due to World Cup. He’s since escalated the issue with 311, and while he emphasized that the staff on that city service are always polite and professional, the calls never pay off.
“It’s gone from road maintenance to Hydro back to road maintenance to community safety,” he said, “everyone opening work orders and then closing work orders and saying it’s not their responsibility. Parallel to this, we’ve been trying to deal with Councillor (Dianne) Saxe’s office.”
The way he describes his experience with Saxe’s office, it sounds almost as irritating as the rattling manholes.
Smith shared with the Sun more than a dozen emails between him and Saxe’s office since mid-May. He’s been unable to meet with Saxe herself, who in a political oddity isn’t seeking re-election in his University-Rosedale ward but in Toronto-Danforth.
“It seems at this stage that she has no interest in the ward whatsoever,” Smith said.
Saxe’s predecessor, Mike Layton, is returning to politics. His re-entry is widely seen as what prompted Saxe, a staunch environmentalist, to try her luck in a ward without an incumbent .
Layton “would’ve answered this email the next day,” Smith said, “and he would’ve come down and taken a look at it and said, okay, here are the people in the city that I need to talk to.
“I don’t know much about Dianne Saxe, but the more I look into it – videos of her, like, falling asleep in City Council meetings and focusing on policy issues that seem completely contrary to her stated priorities and agenda, which are all about road maintenance and public safety and livable cities and stuff like this – it’s extremely frustrating.”
A spokesman for Saxe told the Sun in a written statement that her office had been “diligently pursuing” the manhole matter for months, and largely confirmed Smith’s timeline and his jurisdictional struggles. The spokesman also shared copies of emails from Saxe’s staff to Hydro and 311 officials.
“We understand and share their frustration, as this person should not have had to wait this long for a simple repair to take place,” he said of Smith.
“Furthermore, it’s frustrating when a councillor’s office follows up with the city multiple times and has to ensure that it’s the proper department handling the request. We want our constituents to feel the city is reactive to their needs.”
‘I would go crazy’
Ingrid Buday, founder of the advocacy group No More Noise Toronto, said while the manhole rattle isn’t much compared to a jackhammer, it’s a percussive “impact noise.”
“I would go crazy,” she told the Sun .
That thumping happens tens of thousands of times a day, and “each one of these is an assault on our sensory systems,” Buday said. “Even if you think you’re not listening to it, you actually are.”
City Hall said in an email that its most recent two-way traffic estimate for that part of Bloor, which dates to 2019, is more than 18,000 vehicles per day. That means any individual manhole cover might rattle some 20,000 times.
The city said while the covers are part of the street, they’re Hydro infrastructure and inspections and repairs are the utility’s responsibility. (Toronto Hydro is wholly owned by the City of Toronto.)
It’s unclear how many noisy covers there are on Bloor. Smith said he knows of four, but Hydro would only say they made repairs at “several locations” between Ossington Ave. and Shaw St.
It’s also unclear when permanent repairs will happen – Hydro only told the Sun they are “being scheduled.”
According to one of Smith’s emails from Saxe’s office, Hydro said in mid-September that a fix might be two months away.
No matter what, this issue will be rattling around in Smith’s head when election day comes Oct. 26. He said he wants voters on the Danforth to know about his experience with Saxe.
“The fact that she’s just gonna drop into another riding,” he said, “I don’t know, I find it pretty unpalatable.”