A puddle today, a skating rink soon.

That’s a reasonable assumption about a small pond that forms after a rainfall on one of the most heavily travelled sidewalks in the city, along the east side of Yonge St., just north of Bloor St.

Except for a dispiriting dearth of sunshine, the weather hasn’t been too bad lately; not much snow, and not enough frigidity to make it stick.

How much longer will our luck hold? The 14-day forecast shows moderate temperatures, but once we get to January, it’ll surely change for the worse.

This here’s Canada, bud. In January, in Canada, it’s almost always cold.


So when a puddle that covers a wide swath of sidewalk won’t go away, you can bet it’ll be smooth, slippery and treacherous once it freezes.

Anna Poradzisz emailed to say the sidewalk on the east side of Yonge, south of Asquith Ave., was left with “kind of a low asphalt embankment, which must be a remnant of some underground repairs.

“It looks perfect and doesn’t create any tripping hazard. But the problem starts when it rains. A difference in levels between the sidewalk and the asphalt creates something like a shallow wading pool.

“An otherwise broad sidewalk becomes very hard to navigate, as it is reduced to a narrow strip. It experiences very heavy foot traffic,” forcing customers of a Starbucks and a Tim Horton’s in front of it “to jump through water to get in.”

We went there and watched the usual throngs of people on Yonge veer to the outer edge of the sidewalk to go around the puddle, or wade through it, if they had the right footwear or didn’t mind a soaker.

The raised ridge of asphalt, a patch above a long, narrow utility cut, appears to be preventing the water from draining toward the curb.

It’s one more reason why we loathe and despise utility cuts, and the corner-cutting that so often happens by the contractors responsible for them.


STATUS: Tom Kalogiannis, who is in charge of road operations in the downtown core, sent us a note saying his staff is investigating the puddle and trying to figure out which utility is responsible for the asphalt patch that appears to be creating the problem.

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What’s broken in your neighbourhood? Wherever you are in Greater Toronto, we want to know. Email jlakey@thestar.ca or follow @TOStarFixer on Twitter