29 Replies to “Today In Canadian Infastructure”

  1. Funding the maintenance and repair of infrastructure isn’t nearly as politically sexy as “investing” in some Net Zero nonsense. Just ask PG&E. No, just ask PG&E ratepayers who are now paying TRIPLE the rates for what should have been repaired decades ago.

  2. Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is a betting pool opportunity.

    I have $20 on Toronto.

      1. Fredericton. The only thing that get regular maintenance in this city are the rainbow crosswalks.

    1. Ha Ha …. good one Nick.
      On a separate point …. WTF is with “valves” that take one or two hours to close. That alone is a job number one to get the extra cost ACME 1 minute valve!!

      I STILL LIKE THE ONE GUY HERE IN CALGARY WHO SAID THE PIPELINE FAILED BECAUSE OF SHOCK WAVES FROM THE CARS HITTING THE MASSIVE POTHOLES ABOVE IT!!

      1. A yes… Montreal-style Potholes. I remember them well. Some of them disguised as sinkholes big enough to swallow a tractor-trailor (of course I’m hyperboling here!).

        Montreal seasons: Winter, Potholes, Construction, and Winter!

      2. Probably due to the volume and the pressures involved I suspect. Turning them back on will be a much more tedious ordeal.
        The biggest I’ve worked on is a 48 inch main . They had to tap it live. The tapping machine was something to see.
        I can’t wait to the see the hole that 7 foot main left once the water is pumped down.

    2. The reason SK’s infrastructure is so old, is because Quebec has been siphoning off funds from the west via Transfer payments. My above comment was meant as a lament rather than scorn.

      1. Siphoning for sure, but there’s also only 1.1 million people in the province. And cities like Saskatoon — Little Toronto on the Prairies — have other priorities, like $6 million a year for the art gallery in those stacked sea cans by the river.

  4. Winnipeg for the win on this sweepstakes… and they’ve got just the new NDP gov’t to deal with it too!
    Sure, like most folks I wish for Toronto, but my non-jabbed brain is going with WPG, best of all if it happens in January when the Mother Earth is actually too cold to do anything about it.

    Yes, I’m well aware of the “people in glass Calgarian houses shouldn’t throw stones” … why do you ask?

    1. Apparently, Water Main breaks are bilingual. Are the traffic signs in both languages?

    2. The water mains outside a major hospital in January has happened before, so you might win the sweepstakes.

    1. Arty
      Well they now have another method of getting rid of their sewage, and save the St Lawrence.

  7. “…installed back in 1985”

    Okay, which connected construction company skimmed off the cost difference between a 100 year pipe and a 35 year pipe? Is it the same one that built the bridges?

    2. My thought exactly. Given the fiascoes of the Turcotte interchange, the “Big Owe”, Metropolitan Expressway and the Charbonneau Commission into the awarding of public contracts, I’m hardly surprised. I wonder which contractor made out like a bandit on this one.

  8. That is impressive, spectacular, even!

    I suppose there are better ways than that to attract tourists, though.

    If the politicians had a lick of sense to complement their charcoal black hearts, they’d be out at the site cutting a ribbon for “Our NEW Urban Waterpark”**

    **(Whaddya mean fix it? This is pure gold!”)

  9. The article doesn’t mention if any Pride parades were affected, or if the victims of the break were mainly minorities. Global is off its pace on this one, obviously some reporters need more diversity training and to read the mission statement again.

  10. I expect the body of Jimmy Hoffa to come out of this water main break.

  11. Could have been worse:
    The Great Boston Molasses Disaster of 1919

    A large storage tank filled with 2.3 million U.S. gallons (8,700 cubic meters)[4] of molasses, weighing approximately[b] 13,000 short tons (12,000 metric tons), burst, and the resultant wave of molasses rushed through the streets at an estimated 35 miles per hour (56 kilometers per hour), killing 21 people and injuring 150

  12. Gondak could solve this in a century or so. Let’s send her there …. It’s only fair , right ?

  13. The moral of the story.. Large cities are richer than everywhere else.. And they are falling apart.. Look no further than the burnt out middle America for our future.. Then they want to build millions of new homes to suck on this like vampires..

  15. Calgary mayor, council and bureaucracy breathe sigh of relief.

    They can mingle with and hide amongst the other idiots.

    Safety in numbers.

    Pretty soon incompetence will be standard procedure under Canadian plumbing codes.

  16. Built in 1985 – am willing to bet it is the same PCCP pipe that was in vogue at that time. Such pipes had been being constructed since about the 1950s but – beginning around 1970 – the specs were changed as some bright spark felt the original design was seriously overbuilt and a less expensive pipe would still maintain its integrity for 100 years. So for some twenty plus years the revised PCCP pipes were constructed and installed. Unfortunately, the pipes from that era have been found to be prone to premature failure, and this has been known for a fair few years (google the literature on same). However, this issue does not seem to have come to the attention of those municipalities who installed these pipes back in the day, or at least not to the extent of causing the water departments of said municipalities to undertake serious inspections of said pipes as well as making contingency plans should the pipes have to be shut down for maintenance.

  17. Does Canada Get Its Pipes From Its Submarine Vendor?
    It is unfortunate there are no pipeline operators in Canada to offer assistance. And if there were, why, they would be constantly occupied moving heinous fossil fuels around North America; so consulting with them would be expressly forbidden.

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