You can never have enough of them
In a meeting with some engineers today, there was discussion related to bringing electrical services into a new building that is being constructed at our acute care site. Just out of curiosity, I asked why there seemed to be so many wires on the poles around the site. Don’t worry, I was told, most of them don’t work. How come, I wondered – aloud. When the electric, cable or telephone companies need to pull new cable, they just do it. They don’t bother taking down the old cables. Some of those cables have been up for 30 years and have not been operable for 10 of those years. That’s strange I thought. How do they know which cables work and which don’t? They don’t always. Sometimes they guess or most times they can see by how the cable looks to know if its connected to anything. Wouldn’t it be easier and neater to take the old unused cables down during replacements? It would, I was told.
Over the years, I have done a few entries on the wiring of Bangkok. The first entry was in June 2007. That post talked about crazy guys who clear limbs from power lines. Then in October 2009, I wrote about how guys put up cable by doing this weird tug of war thing. Finally, in July 2013, I again checked how new cable is actually laid on the poles.
I had not intended to do any more wiring posts but today’s meeting got me thinking. The other thing that got my attention about Bangkok wiring was a passage in a book I am reading called “Bangkok Days” by Lawrence Osborne. In it he writes the following:
“Have you noticed that every street has these masses of tangled cables? It’s because the telephone company never replaces or takes down cables that have ceased functioning. They simply add new ones, ad nauseam. Eventually the cables will take over the city. I think of them as a life-form, possibly predatory.”
So between the talk with the engineers and the passage just read, I decided to take a quick walk at lunch with a view to checking out my local neighbourhood hydro poles. I didn’t need to walk far to see what was going on. The pictures above will attest to the number of wires on these poles. It’s astounding. And most of them don’t even work. The whole city is filled with these un-functioning cables. So why don’t they take them down, one might ask again. You will need to be patient, as a rational answer is not going be forthcoming anytime soon. And as you wait, more wires will be added until Mr. Osborne’s prophecy comes true.
As J Allard, a guy who worked at Microsoft for many years, once said:
“Having wires strewn across your couch and across the floor is a big deal to a lot of people.”
The cable guys in Bangkok definitely believe this and have taken this philosophy city-wide.
I think that these wires should be seen as commodities and valuable to be resold as scrap or a new building material and all the excess wire would disappear in no time. Designers and graphic artists spend all their time and energy designing buildings and signage and there efforts are obscured by these writhing pointless coils going nowhere.
Phew, got that off my chest…
Your idea is an interesting one. However if the wire could be sold scrap, then there would probably be no electricity or Internet service in Bangkok, as thieves would probably strip the poles bare of all the wires, not just the working ones. I am sure that there is a market for all this old cable, much of which is copper. But maybe the effort of figuring out what works and what doesn’t is not worth the effort. You are absolutely right to make the point that all the work designers, architects, graphics people go to make nice facades and signs is often for not because of the cable craziness in front of almost every building in the city. Maybe designers have to start incorporating the cables into their designs.
A different form of street art?
I don’t think so. There probably has to be some intention behind the work for it to be considered a piece of art. I think the only intention here is to string more wires.