Where are your city’s power lines?

[cam477]

Where are your city’s power lines?

When people visit St. John’s they sometimes comment on our power lines – which are almost exclusively above ground. Even main downtown streets like Duckworth Street have power poles jutting up through the sidewalk. I’d love it if we would bury the power lines – at least in the old historic parts of the city. I believe our tourism adds have gotten flack for photoshoping them out in the ads. I won’t post any pictures as I assume SHH will do a much better job.

What about your city? Are your power lines underground? Are there areas you wish they were buried? Or do you like the look of them above ground lines?

[feepa]

Most of downtown Edmonton power is in conduits underground.

St John's might have a harder time doing this per soil conditions (just a guess, never been there)

[Boris2k7]

In Calgary, like Edmonton, most local power utilities are in buried power conduits. There are still cases of above-grade power lines in older communities (eg. Parkdale, Montgomery, Bowness), and also transmission lines that run above grade (there's a rather prominent one that parallels a long stretch of Blackfoot Trail, for instance).

[1overcosc]

In Kingston they're mostly buried in the core, above surface elsewhere. Ditto in Ottawa.

In individual residential neighbourhoods, newer ones have buried power, older ones have power lines. A general rule of thumb is that if the area is new enough to not have door to door mail delivery, its new enough to have buried power lines.

[Trevor3]

Ours are mostly above ground except in one neighbourhood and along the beach. Newfoundland Power doesn't like burying lines because of the cost, it's much cheaper to go above ground apparently. There was a greenspace downtown near the mall which had buried lines but they were replaced with above ground for reasons I don't really buy. Apparently the mall required an amount of power which didn't make buried lines practical, but yet major cities can bury lines to supply office towers... go figure.

NL Power then tried to replace buried lines with above ground going along the beach and around the golf course, but the town at this point realized they full of sh*t and had the buried lines put back.

[TownGuy]

Cobourg is a mix of above and below. All newer (say 80s-present) developments are below ground, everything else is above. Downtown power lines are above ground but behind buildings so you can't really see them.

[1ajs]

its mixed downtown mostly underground and is above ground outside downtown till u get to the newer burbs

[WhipperSnapper]

50 percent above grade and 50 percent buried. Electrcity is probably 75 percent buried in the downtown area. Street lighting and signals much less. TTC power lines are above ground on most routes.

[Architype]

Vancouver's power lines in older neighbourhoods are mostly not buried, but are less noticeable because they run in the back alleys. You rarely see any on the streets.

https://www.google.ca/maps/@49.28134...eU-tNn2DwQ!2e0

[SignalHillHiker]

As Cam hinted, our power lines are everywhere:





And our poles are in even more interesting locations:



And even though our electrical grid is centre stage in any street view of our fair city, the performance sucks. We're expected to have rolling blackouts until 2017, extensive ones if it ever gets as cold as it did last winter (as cold as -18C).

#DevelopingWorldProblems

[losername]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

50 percent above grade and 50 percent buried. Electrcity is probably 75 percent buried in the downtown area. Street lighting and signals much less. TTC power lines are above ground on most routes.

None of the ttc power lines are buried , unless you can tell me that there is a new streetcar line with underground power?

[lake of the nations]

In Sherbrooke, not only are buried lines quite rare (even in new developments), but we're stuck with this huge power line in the worst location imaginable.


https://www.google.ca/maps/@45.40879...42WA!2e0?hl=fr

[MTLskyline]

In Montreal, power lines are buried downtown, but it varies everywhere else.

[MolsonExport]

buried in the newer parts, unburied and posted in the older bits.

[Acajack]

Isn't the demarcation in Montreal mostly between the pre-merger Montreal and the municipalities that merged with it 10-15 years ago?

I seem to recall that Jean Drapeau hated overhead power lines and had them buried all over the city proper when he was mayor. And so you'd have everything buried in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve (part of the city proper) and then when you crossed over into Anjou or St-Léonard you'd have overhead lines again.

I've heard this many times but will stand corrected if I am off-base.

[SkydivePilot]

Alleyways and underground.

[Taeolas]

Fredericton is pretty much completely above ground. Some new suburbs may have buried lines, but the rest, including the downtown core, is all above ground.

With the power issues from Arthur this summer, I think the city will look into burying more often when (re)development allows it; but there isn't a push to tuck them underground yet.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

And even though our electrical grid is centre stage in any street view of our fair city, the performance sucks. We're expected to have rolling blackouts until 2017, extensive ones if it ever gets as cold as it did last winter (as cold as -18C).

#DevelopingWorldProblems

i had no idea there were areas of canada where power generation was an issue. rolling blackouts were one of the most irritating parts of living in kosovo... but that was kosovo, a tiny post-war region with a per capita gdp of like $5,000.

[SignalHillHiker]

Yeah, it was strange. Even my housemate from Kazakhstan was shocked, as were his relatives back home. "That doesn't even happen here!?"

People seem to have convinced themselves last winter's misery was all a result of the failure of the Holyrood Generating Station, and a storm that knocked out power. That's certainly true, for the worst of it - but they've forgotten the rolling blackouts started well before either of those problems. Those things simply knocked out power. But we were being asked long before that to tolerate having the power turned off for approximately one hour at a time, each neighbourhood in rotation. We just couldn't meet the demand generated by the cold temperatures. It's never stayed so cold for so long as last winter. In an average winter, we only spend 11.3 consecutive days below freezing. Last winter, we either did or nearly broke the record of 28.

The province is taking emergency measures now and installing a second generator at Holyrood, which powers St. John's. It's a stop gap measure until the Lower Churchill is supplying the island with electricity.

They let it get this bad, I think, while distracted by trying to win Churchill Falls. They put all their eggs into winning that basket and we've not done so yet - now, with the population explosion on the northeast Avalon, we can't keep up with it all. Most of our utilities are straining right now.

And we're the lucky ones, obviously, as the capital. The town of Grand Bank literally had to shut off its municipal water supply today. There's none left for them to use.

Rex Matthews, the mayor of Grand Bank, said the situation is something he hadn't anticipated happening in the area.

"Normally, the rainfall is probably sometimes more than what we need — that's always been the case for as long as I can remember. But to go months without any precipitation in this area of the province, it's unheard of," he said.

Soon, though, it should all be well and good.

Hopefully no more of this. Here we are, last winter, walking - me wrapped up in a blanket over my winter clothes (it was below -10C) - to the Celtic Hearth, which the grapevine said still had power. It did, for a few minutes. Then we had to go to a City Hall shelter.

[Architype]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

...

It's a stop gap measure until the Lower Churchill is supplying the island with electricity.

...

... which will also be subject to power outages. I warned a newcomer to St. John's some time ago about the power outages before all that happened last winter; my observation was that it's considered normal here, but would not be considered normal anywhere else. In Vancouver I had gone for years (many years) without an outage of more than a few minutes occurring. Right now I think it's been about two years since a single outage (in my area).