Have you noticed the growing proliferation of utility boxes on our sidewalks? Our engineers call them street furniture, but they are truly obstructions that they don’t dare put on the roadways. Utility functions that used to be down a personhole are more and more often mounted on posts. Those little yellow boxes that used to hold traffic signal controls are now big gray cabinets 6′ high and 3-9 feet wide. And they are always put in the primest locations, at corners, in front of commercial storefronts, etc. I had the opportunity to look inside several utility boxes this summer. The giant gray ones along Preston and West Wellie are mostly empty space. It’s nice to know our city is planning for a wired future. The Rogers and Bell boxes are usually much smaller (private business cost centres??) than the city boxes, but are often in bad shape. You’ve seen some of these on earlier blog posts.

The box above is in Toronto. It is an improvement, methinks.