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Anderson lives in Riverdale. He works in the electricity industry. And he is evangelical about his 2017 Chevrolet Volt: “It’s awesome. I can beat a Lamborghini off the line because of the torque. I never have to make oil changes. I never have to go to a mechanic.” He fills the reserve tank so infrequently, he says, that he doesn’t remember which side of the car it’s on. In addition to all the money he saves, he says he enjoys buying clean surplus power from his home province, at off-peak hours, that would otherwise be sent off to the U.S. at a loss.

As one of the city’s 110,000 street parking permit-holders, however, Anderson faces an obstacle: getting the juice from the charging station he installed on his front lawn to his vehicle. It’s not an especially daunting challenge, admittedly: traversing the width of the sidewalk. But Anderson has a dead-easy solution to avoid tripping hazards — one he borrowed from Berkeley, Calif.: he would pay a contractor to cut a little trench through the sidewalk for the cable to run through, and install a sturdy grate atop it. Half a day’s work at the most, surely.

The city wants none of it — though Anderson says remarkably understanding traffic-enforcement officers did stop ticketing him after an initial blitz last year. Instead, five years after City Council supported a charging station pilot program that just never happened — whoops! — some councillors are determined again to have the city bridge this gap. In the fall, staff are set to report back on options for expanding charging stations in both public places (schools, parks, Green P lots, city rights of way) and private (“residential developments, parking lots, industrial, commercial and retail sites”).