St. Thomas sidewalk makes waves on social media

A new sidewalk in St. Thomas caught the eye of city staff after it made waves on London-area social media.

A photo of what appears to be a wavy walkway on Holland Street was first posted to Facebook on Wednesday night and later shared by Global News Radio 980 CFPL’s brother station FM96.

City manager of capital projects Patrick Anckaert says he and city staff caught wind of the widely shared photo on Thursday.

Anckaert confirmed that the sidewalk is part of a retrofit added to Holland Street.

“If we’re building a new subdivision or a new road, sidewalks are generally pretty easy,” Anckaert said.

“When you get into these situations where it’s a retrofit on an existing street, it can be a little more tricky sometimes.”

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Anckaert says he’ll be looking into the peculiar promenade, adding that it’s left him with a lot of questions.

“Looking at the picture, I can say that there are a lot of driveways and private sidewalks … that needed to be matched into fairly close proximity together. The ground in general there was kind of high in between.”

Anckaert added that a levelling fix for the rollercoaster-esque sidewalk likely won’t arrive anytime soon.

“Possibly later this year. If not, then it would be sort of a spring thing. I don’t really know what infrastructure is there and who owns it,” he said.

While it may not look like your everyday sidewalk, the capital works manager assures residents that it poses no risk.

“It’s perfectly safe the way it is, but that being said, we do want to sort of review things with the contractor and see if we want to make any changes to it,” he added.