Harsh winter weather doesn’t only make for a treacherous commute — it also exposes Toronto’s infrastructure gaps and how cracks in service delivery affect students, seniors, commuters and public-housing residents, city officials say.With the city’s infrastructure deficit sitting at about $30-plus billion, councillors like Brad Bradford — an urban planner by trade — says closing the divide is a daunting task exacerbated by the harsh weather like Monday’s, when the mercury bottomed out at -22 C before sunrise.“That’s very visible, whether it’s delays on transit or challenges with our housing and shelter system, you feel it more acutely in the winter,” the first-term councillor said Monday, adding that costs can escalate easily when planning for improvements on top of maintaining services.Getting the work done before the money runs out is a priority for Toronto Community Housing Corp.TCHC is spending the first part of a $800-million allocation to close a $2.4-billion infrastructure hole across a system — with a plethora of challenges such as antiquated heating systems — that has a tendency to experience breakdowns during taxing winter days, says Graham Leah, vice-president of asset management. “If that (investment) doesn’t keep up then we risk sliding back,” Leah said. “Extreme cold weather is the largest test on the building systems … Historically it’s been much worse,” he added. There has been a steady decline in malfunctions in the past two years, Leah said. Before 2017, the system was barely making a dent with about $50-100 million in annual capital repairs.“We had a huge capital-repair backlog,” he said. “Weather like this would crush us. Thousands of units would be calling us about no heat and hot water.”He said $250 million was pumped into upgrades in 2018, affecting 58,000 housing units. Another $300 million is to b ...
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