Familiar pale green utility boxes like this occupy many city boulevards. This one belongs to Rogers. Note the clever use of all-canadian duct tape to hold the box together.

Inside the box appear to car-like batteries. Lead? Acid? Looks perfectly safe to me.

The box in question is on the left, in the snow. The sidewalk squeezes between the post and the box because … the city widened the road in the early 1980s but declined to relocate the utility pole. The sidewalk used to run unobstructed on the right side of the pole. The resultant squeeze play pinches the pedestrian walking space, frustrates sidewalk snowplows, and bangs up the Rogers box. Oh, what we do for cablevision.