Overhead Power Lines

[Godius]

Originally Posted by Chrissib

Overhead lines in non earthquake prone areas is so 3rd world.

[èđđeůx]

I actually don't think negatively about overhead power lines. I mean in some urban settings, such as dense/narrow residential neighborhoods, they don't look that bad. It's just when they cross wider streets, boulevards and so on especially in commercial areas do they really look tacky.

[trainrover]

Having automobiles or wiring blemishing your photography is more often quite easy in and around Montreal.

[trainrover]

Franco Montreal:

muddled lamposts in a wild west setting ...

alleys also wired-up

[fieldsofdreams]

Those images remind me of my former home in Manila, but with much more wiring for telephones and lots of step-down transformers.

Here's a set of high-tension wires carrying high-voltage electricity through Santa Clara County, north of San Jose:

[Aaronj09]

Plenty of them here in the suburbs.. we're not prone to earthquakes or violent weather, so they are not brought down often like they are in the US.

[trainrover]

Oh? What locale are you drawing into this?

[bayviews]

Originally Posted by Marcanadian

Does your city have overhead power lines? Toronto is famous for them. Some people think it makes the city look really messy and gritty, while others think it adds some additional character to the streetscape.

You usually find overhead power lines in areas with streetcar routes or in areas that have a bohemian style to them.

Here's a few examples.

San Francisco, Seattle, & Vancouver, just to name a few additional North American cities, don't seem to have suffered inspite of having lots of overhead power lines "clutter".

[erka]

We don't have them. Everything underground here. Only high voltage countrywide power lines are above ground.

[trainrover]

I don't understand the compulsion to these mysterious replies.

[trainrover]

Today's :

Utility pole in middle of Quebec highway causes headaches

Construction crews paved road around pole instead of removing it months ago



Transport Quebec construction crews left a utility pole in the middle of Route 251 in the Eastern Townships when they repaved the highway a few months ago.

[trainrover]

News reported this morning this not being an isolated occurence

[endymar]

I'm not bothered by them until I need to take photos, that's when I start thinking how to avoid this shit.

[fieldsofdreams]

I found a major street in San Francisco that still has power poles... And it runs next to the Presidio National Park: Clement Street, in the Outer Richmond.

[erbse]

Actually, SanFran still has a lot of them.

I noticed some in Downtown too, just can't remember the names of the streets.

[trainrover]

Hydro Quebec often braces its precariously lopsided, leaning utility poles with an adjacent pole at the same girth and height. I've noticed these temporary remedies of theirs last a couple of years. Where else might this happen? The ones I knew of must've been straightened this past summer; I wish photographing them had occured to me earlier.

[Taller, Better]

Many photos of overhead wires in Toronto are taken along the streets with streetcars (King St, Queen St, Spadina, Dundas St, College St, etc..). Toronto did not rip up its streetcar system in the '50's like almost every other city in North America (and every city in Canada) did. San Francisco is the only other city in Canada or the USA that I can think of that did not jump on the bandwagon for more buses, and Toronto kept far more of its system than San Francisco did. Many European cities also removed streetcars about the same time. I think the logic has been that they have to have the utility poles for the streetcar wires anyway, so it is not a priority to bury all the other wires. Many of the major streets in Toronto without streetcars (like Yonge, Bay, Church St, etc...) buried their wires ages ago. I could show endless photos of those wire-free streets but I am not going to bother to. Toronto has to make more effort to speed up burying overhead wires on many other non-streetcar streets though, as I realise they upset people; especially people coming from cities with buses instead of streetcars who are unused to the sight of wires and automatically associate them with the "third world".
Had we ripped them up, then no doubt burying the wires on those streets would have been more important. Personally, they don't bother me one bit and I can never figure out why people get so uptight about them; they provide an interesting visual pattern. Torontonians love their streetcars, so don't bother asking them to give them up for more buses to get rid of their wires; perhaps we consider buses to be more of an eyesore! Do we wish we had ripped out our streetcar systems 60 years ago like the rest and had diesel-fume spewing buses on those routes instead? No!
Here are the streetcar wires outside the Wheatsheaf Tavern (1849), which is our second oldest pub in Toronto. This is an intersection of both north-south and east-west streetcar tracks. The wires are just fine by me!

[trainrover]

Here's our banana republic's skill with one of its major utilities - each one of the pair of poles is braced by its own post - same too with the next pole behind - none of the posts is sunk into the ground:

[Talbot]

Houston has tons of them, and I think they are such an eyesore. I hope to see more areas that have their lines going underground soon.

[bayviews]

Originally Posted by Taller, Better

Many photos of overhead wires in Toronto are taken along the streets with streetcars (King St, Queen St, Spadina, Dundas St, College St, etc..). Toronto did not rip up its streetcar system in the '50's like almost every other city in North America (and every city in Canada) did. San Francisco is the only other city in Canada or the USA that I can think of that did not jump on the bandwagon for more buses, and Toronto kept far more of its system than San Francisco did.

However, San Francisco has far more overhead wires than Toronto.