Hobokenpix: Wire Overload?
23
October
10/23/2009:
[Continuing the ORIGINAL Hoboken411 "Photo of the Day" series...]
Hoboken Photo of the Day – 10/23/2009
Have you ever taken notice to some of the street poles in Hoboken? They’re grossly overload with all sorts of cable, phone, FiOS, and power wires. Some may see the “industrial beauty” in such hornets nests, but others may feel it’s just too much – and destined for future failure.
What would it take to convert the entire city to a more aesthetically pleasing (and overall more reliable) underground wiring system?
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October 23rd 2009 - 17:15:22 |
Hopi: “The land shall be criss-crossed by a giant spider’s web”
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October 23rd 2009 - 17:25:40 |
Not so much future failure but a current one. In my research last winter I found that Hoboken had the highest rate of electrical transformer failure in PSE&G’s entire service area, by far. There were a couple reasons but the main one is that toward the end of the Russo administration the City made a commitment to move all the wiring under ground and asked PSE&G to delay the mandated upgrades and transformer replacements until then . . . the City even had grant funds made available to pay for the entire project.
This is just one example of the overall infrastructure challenges.
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October 23rd 2009 - 19:08:32 |
This is something that bugs me too – even from an aesthetic standpoint. I’ll walk around with a camera and see a good shot. Then I’ll notice the wires…everywhere.
I then think of this famous shot…
dmbworldseriesreplay.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/nyc_blizzard1888.jpg
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October 23rd 2009 - 19:16:52 |
That pretty much looks like what’s going on behind my computer desk.
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October 23rd 2009 - 19:22:38 |
Good Shot, Hans. It was the Blizzard of 1888, and the havoc it wrought on that tangle of wires citywide, that forced NYC to force the owners of those wires to put them underground. That’s what Hoboken will have to do – pass the ordinances that force Verizon, PSE&G, and Cablevision to put it underground, and then force them to coordinate with each other and the city on planning how to do so while only mildly disrupting the lives of every last person in Hoboken.
On the plus side, it might force all involved to upgrade their respective systems to state of the art. PSE&G might develop a smart grid that more efficiently handles loads, and Verizon and Cablevision might do something bright like build-in redundancy to each other’s systems so they never go down…never go down…nevveeerrrrr
In response to HansBrix who said:
I then think of this famous shot…
dmbworldseriesreplay.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/nyc_blizzard1888.jpg
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October 23rd 2009 - 19:57:33 |
There are pros and cons to both above and below ground installations. A real big one is cost,it can run into millions a lot of millions. Every building will have to have a new service, a single family 200 amp service, above ground, can be in the area of $2000 and thats for the drop and the panel nothing else and it goes up $$ from there. It will take years, the streets will be a mess for years, hobokens notorious water problems, and I haven’t touched on the tech. problems. An easy way out might be to run the wires behind the houses, it is still costly and only semiugly. And if you think those wires are ugly you should see cities in eastern europe.
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October 23rd 2009 - 20:18:58 |
I have often wondered the same thing. I thought Hoboken was a very wealthy community? Yet all these wire poles everywhere.
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October 23rd 2009 - 21:18:37 |
Wow. That’s disheartening.
In response to HHoney who said:
This is just one example of the overall infrastructure challenges.
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October 23rd 2009 - 23:38:37 |
On the bright side, it does look like a neat art project.
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October 23rd 2009 - 23:47:46 |
Looks like Bombay! Seriously, I grew up in a perfect (sarcasm) planned community, but one thing that was nice was all utility/electric/etc wires were buried underground.
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October 23rd 2009 - 23:52:43 |
Oh geez, even suggesting that Hoboken change over the wiring to underground makes me think of how long everything else takes to get done here —> FOREVER!! That sort of project would be bad for the city, too much digging and chaos in such a small space as it is.
If it’s aesthetics we’re talking about, the crazy amounts of wires are nowhere near as bad as those new and nasty streetlights… it’s like a mall parking lot out in front of our place now. Feel like we should have a couple of McMansions built on the block just to fit it with the lights too.
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October 24th 2009 - 00:15:30 |
Agreed! We still have some wooden sewers from the Civil War era in use and we’re going to pull off retrofitting subterranean electrical in flood zone? And with what $ ?
In response to escaped68 who said:
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October 24th 2009 - 11:44:51 |
Its true we have wooden sewers???
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October 24th 2009 - 12:32:32 |
If you google hoboken wooden sewers, you’ll see that the north hudson sewerage authority started taking bids to replace our wooden wonders. Bids were, according to the pdf, due at the end of August. I’d be curious to know what the outcome was/is.
Wooden sewers: no wonder this city smells like it is rotting!
In response to tdolby42 who said:
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October 24th 2009 - 12:34:00 |
Not all the wooden sewers would be replaced under this bid. Wonder how many miles of them we still have?
In response to Litteredboken who said:
Wooden sewers: no wonder this city smells like it is rotting!
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October 24th 2009 - 21:04:19 |
Let’s not elect wooden heads in the future. LOL
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October 24th 2009 - 21:28:52 |
Upon a closer look the sloppy wiring is for cable tv. I’ll grant that the phone wires could be neater but the real culprits for the mess are the cable techs
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October 25th 2009 - 00:39:34 |
Bingo. Sloppy cable installs on the overhead lines, on the fronts of buildings and inside of residences! They just don’t seem to care what it looks like, and won’t start to care unless we make them.
In response to escaped68 who said:
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