Adam Vaughan Learns A Lesson In Solidarity

City's solution: Planter, but no plant
March 23, 2007
John Spears
CITY HALL BUREAU

The City of Toronto can install a planter box on a street with some alacrity, Councillor Adam Vaughan has discovered.

But when it comes to putting plants in the planter? Not so much.

Vaughan's lesson in how the city really works started at the corner of McCaul St. and Queen St. W., where southbound streetcars turn east onto Queen. As the streetcars trundle around the curve, their rear ends swing into the right-hand lane, sometimes smacking into an unfortunate car waiting to make a right turn.

Transportation planners came up with a solution – a concrete planter box to block cars from straying into the danger zone.

But putting plants in the planter wasn't part of the deal, Vaughan discovered in a transportation employee's email.

"We will fill (the box) with soil," the message said. "It is our policy that the boxes are to be planted and maintained by area residents/businesses."

"Should maintenance of the planter box cease, we will arrange to fill it with asphalt."

Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina) was stunned.

"They're putting a planter there, I assumed it came with a tree," he said in an interview. "Why else would they put a planter there?"

It demonstrates how city departments seem incapable of talking to each other, let alone co-ordinating their actions, he said. Stephen Benjamin, transportation supervisor for Vaughan's area, noted the city seldom plants trees in boxes any more, because they die when the roots outgrow the box. In any case, there's no money for tree planting unless there's full road reconstruction.

Councillor Joe Pantalone, the city's tree advocate until the position was eliminated with the city's reorganization, said in the past 15 years Toronto has adopted a culture "of rough-and-ready making do, rather than achieving excellence." But he said the planter box probably wasn't the right answer.

"Putting a tree in a box isn't doing anything for the urban forest; it will die," said Pantalone (Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina). He said Vaughan should have called together all the affected departments – the TTC, road engineers, and the beautiful city secretariat – to hammer out a redesign of the intersection. But it's hard work, he said.

"If someone's looking for a quick and easy solution, it's not there."