One of my pet grievances is parking lots on the edge of the sidewalk. Too often motorists or the lot owner “creep” all the time onto the sidewalk.
In the streetscaping treatment of West Wellington the City employed portable planter boxes, planted with currant bushes, to keep the cars back. They didn’t do this for every parking lot. But now, a few years on, I saw these planters being installed in front of yet another used car lot. Bravo! When the lot is redeveloped for urban purposes, the planters can be redeployed.
I delighted in noticing that the lot owner was not moving his cars back during this operation, having parked them right up snug to the lot line. Looks like a game of chicken going on here.
The treatment along Preston emphasized in ground planting a lot more than did Wellington. One consequence of this is that it is easier for car lot keepers to creep into the planting beds:
Note that the curb doesn’t keep cars far enough out of the shrub beds and there is not room to install planter boxes as the curb is on the lot line. The only remedial measure is to call 3-1-1 to report the infraction, and hope bylaw shows up to ticket him.
Another favorite irritation is the uncooperative property at the corner of Breezehill and Somerset. I blogged a month ago about the sudden disappearance of a very large tree, probably on city property, which the city is remarkably uncurious about.
For years, this property has been steadily filling in the OTrain cut to expand his parking lot, merrily chopping down some largish trees in the process. (The PO denies this, saying only that he pruned a few weedy shrubs to reduce crime). Recently, a dotted yellow line appeared on his parking lot. The City is reclaiming the public right of way, with jersey barriers and a fence, that has to be installed by crane over the Somerset viaduct railing as the PO has denied the City permission to cross his lot to install it. Nonetheless, a barrier will soon appear, and all 4 of the cars shown on the left (in the pic below) will be trapped on the escarpment if not moved by then. Yeah !
Which strteet is the first photo, with the planter boxes?
The new planter boxes were being put in front of a car lot on West Wellie, near Spadina.
seems the planters are blocking more of the sidewalk than the cars. oh well.
I’m on the fence.. I like the visual separation between parkings lot and sidewalks, but those boxes do take up a lot of space and maybe west wellingtons are more civilized and won’t consider them garbage cans.
Between creeping cars and those g.d. planters, I’ll take the cars, thank you.
Spanking new fence now in place….