Infrastructure — The Highbury Solution
The Problem
Three major infrastructure failures in London in six months. Highbury Avenue between Fuller and Kilally in December, a cast iron pipe from 1949. Highbury and Huron in April. Wellington and Central this June. Every one of them a surprise. Every one shut down a busy intersection for days. London still uses a “wait until it breaks” approach to roads and water mains. It’s the most expensive way to handle infrastructure. Emergency repairs cost far more than planned ones. We are paying a premium to wait for things to break. That has to change.
The Solution: Smarter Tools for City Staff
Above ground. Cities like Markham put AI-powered cameras on regular City vehicles. As city staff drive their normal routes, the cameras automatically flag potholes, faded street lines, cracks, and damaged signs. Markham’s pilot improved pothole reporting by 200 to 400 percent. Below ground. A two-step approach. First, predictive software ranks every pipe in the network by how likely it is to fail. Kitchener and Syracuse already use this. Then ground-penetrating radar confirms the actual condition of the highest-risk pipes before we dig. France has used vehicle-mounted radar for road and pipe inspection for decades. Software tells us where to look. Radar tells us what’s there. We stop guessing.
Isn’t London already doing this?
London meets the minimum provincial requirement. Nothing more. Kitchener and Syracuse have gone further. We can too.
Good Jobs. In London. Done In-House.
The radar work gets done by London staff, not outside contractors. We train and hire locally. That means skilled, good-paying jobs that stay here. The knowledge stays with the City.
What This Means for Londoners
Fewer surprise road closures. Fewer weeks-long detours. Fewer basements flooded by a main you didn’t know was failing. City staff get better tools to deliver more effective service. A planned repair costs a fraction of an emergency repair. The savings on overtime, flooded basements, and detoured traffic pay for the program itself.
My Proposal
- •Start a road-scanning pilot. Put AI cameras on a small group of City vehicles and buses to scan roads during their normal routes.
- •Roll out predictive software for our water mains, using the same models Kitchener and Syracuse have already proven.
- •Add ground-penetrating radar surveys on the highest-risk streets before we dig. Train and hire London staff to do the work.
- •Fund it with senior level government grants, not tax hikes. Ottawa and Queen’s Park already put money on the table for this kind of work. We go after it.
The Highbury Solution is simple. Catch the problem before it becomes an expensive emergency.