Dufferin Street: Eliminating the jog

[Hydrogen]

The trouble is that all of this will not doubt be followed by calls to expand the Gardiner.

 

[DENTROBATE54]

Chuck, those billions would be far, far, far better spent on (1) burying the Gardiner, (2) burying the rail corridor, and (3) building more subway lines.

Seriously? It'd be far too expensive to bury either the highway or railway corridors not to mention cause rabid transit chaos through the downtown for years to come. It's better to gradually phase them out of view by building over them, such that they're buried, but not in a destructive manner. New park space, condo and retail area could emerge and create better accessibility to the lakefront for pedestrains.

 

[Lone Primate]

I honestly think it was a mistake not to finish the Spadina Expressway around 1970. The really ironic thing is that most of the buildings that would have had to be razed to do it, were. About 90% of them. Almost all of them were between the 401 and Eglinton. South of it, there were only a couple of dozen homes left, and they'd been purchased. The bridge at Bathurst was built. So much of the groundwork was already done. Now, we have a highway that simply dumps people on a dead end at Eglinton and forces them to meander slowly through surface streets to their destinations, resented by residents who compound the problem by whining up speed bumps. People who need to get back and forth between the central regions in the north and the south are forced miles out of their way to the fringes first, to the 427 or DVP. This is all that pretending the realities of urban life could be wished away 40 years ago has gotten us.

It's a real pity that neither Jane Jacobs nor those credible well-wishers in her thrall ever grasped the simple truth that Toronto is not New York... in so many ways, good and bad. That no city but New York is New York. New York's problems are its own. Its solutions are its own. Toronto had, and has, its own unique set of challenges. What might not work in one place may be advisable elsewhere. We didn't have the racial issues that were rotting central Manhattan. We didn't have the issues of space and confinement that are problems for New York and figure into its congestion. We didn't have a figure like Robert Moses running rampant for decades, needing to reined in. But Jane Jacobs never got that. One city was every city was "the" city to her... they were all just ersatz New York in her eyes. And because of that, sometimes at least, she was wrong. This city really shot some of its toes off when it shelved the Spadina at Eglinton, and she helped load the gun.

Can anybody here, without looking it up, name the street that vanished under the Allen at Eglinton? I doubt it. Nobody today misses it. Nobody today would miss the few remaining houses now, had they been removed in 1970. I can imagine people would miss the ravine, inasmuch as it exists now, but even that would have passed with a generation. I have a friend whose grandparents' farm on Brown's Line is now under the 427. Even he doesn't lose sleep over it; it bowed to necessity. He's as happy as anyone to use the 427 to make his flights on time. And despite the way the word "gridlock" is tossed around in some quarters like a cheap salad, it really does help get people around faster. I haven't met many people who'd rather wander along Lakeshore, up Kipling, and along Dixon to catch their 7:15 flight instead of the Gardiner, 427, and 409. Who's kidding who here? Other than Jane Jacobs, I mean.

 

[Lone Primate]

Like I said before, my support for new road projects is slim to nil. However, either the Spadina Expressway or a Black Creek extension to the Gardiner are both logical candidates for eliminating some of those god awful missing links in the GTA's highway network. Building new highways to sprawl land is one thing, completing the highway network is a whole other ballgame.

Well, this is short-sighted. What was the 401 55 years ago? It wasn't in the heart of the city like it is now. When my mother came through town on it in 1960, it was out in the countryside. When she eventually moved to southern Ontario years later, she was amazed at the change. Today's "highways to sprawl" will be the corridors that move people around inside increasingly high-density development when we're all dead or in the home. But if we don't build them now when they're not disrupting anything, then we curse our posterity to smog and slow crawls along surface streets that will preclude their being built then. Build highways, build subways, build rail links, build streetcar lines where it makes sense. All of these are solutions to one question or another. We don't do the future any favours if we get dogmatic and declare it's okay to think some ideas, but not okay to think others.

 

[unimaginative2]

Lone Primate, don't you think Toronto has done extremely well since stopping Spadina? What, if anything, do you think would actually be better or more successful about the city had it been built, other than a few minutes time savings and a much prettier expressway network on maps? Toronto is one of the fastest growing and most economically successful cities in North America. It also has one of the most thriving downtowns in North America, and yet it's the only city (Vancouver excepted) that didn't rip apart the city for highways.

 

[adma]

Well, I do agree that we've learned to "live with" the highways that were built, for better or worse. But you got to face it: the paradigm's shifted so much, that to simply go back to the future w/highways is as untenable as doing so w/feminism, multiculturalism, affirmative action, etc--even if society and city-building seemed to "work better" then.

Maybe it's best to look at it this way: who'd you have on your side on behalf of the Spadina, or a Lansdowne/Jameson jog elimination, etc? Well, there's the James Alcock/CAA axis; maybe Terence Corcoran and a few Toronto Sun types, or some John Derringer-type radio doofuses...a pretty motley bunch, by and all. With friends like that, you don't need enemies. Essentially, you've conceded to the Jacobites...

 

[CDL.TO]

I can quit any time I want! Once we build this highway then things will be fine! It's the last bottleneck we need to solve, I swear!

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

we don't need new highways. at most, the ones that exist could have some work done to their interchanges to make them safer and more efficient. the allen should be erased from history.

 

[Spoonman]

Can anybody here, without looking it up, name the street that vanished under the Allen at Eglinton? I doubt it. Nobody today misses it. Nobody today would miss the few remaining houses now, had they been removed in 1970. I can imagine people would miss the ravine, inasmuch as it exists now, but even that would have passed with a generation.

It's important to remember that an expressway doesn't simply wipe out whatever buildings previously existed in its alignment. Constructs such as highways, hydro corridors, railways, etc. extend a much greater zone of influence into their adjacent vicinities than the physical space that they occupy. The simplest observation of this phenomenon is that adjacent buildings, by necessity, must face away from a limited-access highway. This barrier effect cascades into causing far greater ramifications that can effectively disrupt the cohesiveness of a neighbourhood and potentially bring about its demise.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

any thing new about the jog?

 

[nfitz]

Full-scale construction of the Spadina expressway clearly will never happen.

However, even though I'm quite in favour of not adding any more highways in Toronto - I'm not sure that a simple 2-lane tunnel in each direction from Eglinton simply to merge into Bathurst wouldn't be inappropriate. The bottleneck from the expressway stopping dead at Eglinton are significant, and if you could distribute a chunk of the traffic onto a north-south artery with minimal disturbance (by following the existing subway tunnel the relatively short distance to Bathurst) then surely this would be an improvement that wouldn't be totally horrific - and might actually benefit the community in the Eglinton/Bathurst area by eliminating some of the gridlock (and pollution) on their streets

 

[Lone Primate]

This barrier effect cascades into causing far greater ramifications that can effectively disrupt the cohesiveness of a neighbourhood and potentially bring about its demise.

Where in Toronto have you seen this happen? I'm not aware of any neighbourhoods brought low by proximity to a superhighway. The two that are typically of most concern, Jane-Finch and Moss Park, are neither one of them divided by an expressway. Meanwhile, there are some pretty affluent people living on the bounds of the Don Valley Parkway; not the least of them, the folks in Rosedale.

This is what I mean. This kind of thinking comes out of books. It's supposition imagined by big names that then gets accepted and preached as gospel. It's not history; it's dogma. Lifting one's head, looking around, and seeing what's actually out there seems of little value. Empiricism is dead, or least gravely wounded these days.

Highways can be well-planned, and highways can be poorly planned, just like anything else. They are not, in and of themselves, necessarily evil or evilly unnecessary. They have a purpose and a utility, and what is required is judicious planning and a careful examination of pros and cons.

 

[Lone Primate]

Full-scale construction of the Spadina expressway clearly will never happen.

You're right; that moment has passed. It really can't be done now. But it's interesting that there may be other possibilities. I really do wish there were some more sensible way of distributing the traffic coming off the Allen to Eglinton and Bathurst, but it's hard to imagine. Whatever it is would seem even MORE disruptive than building the remainder of the highway south.

 

[Lone Primate]

Maybe it's best to look at it this way: who'd you have on your side on behalf of the Spadina, or a Lansdowne/Jameson jog elimination, etc?...Essentially, you've conceded to the Jacobites...

Well, I was being facetious when I championed the Spadina as a real project for the future. That ship sailed when Bill Davis dropped the ball. That's my own opinion.

But you seem to be saying here that no one in this city is capable of hard, critical analysis. That's all about knee-jerk reaction and fealty to "The Cause". Well, that's sad. It's not going to serve the the city well. What we need is people who can be reasonable, all around. When the Gardiner was being built, people generally recognized there was a need for it. But when the plans doomed Fort York, reasonable people also said, no, that's not acceptable. Find another way. And so one was, over Fred Gardiner's blustering. It ended up costing more, but in the end, the city was triply-served: the Gardiner was built, the Fort was saved, and the people rediscovered the Fort and its value to them. Are you saying the people of Toronto today are incapable of that kind of thing? That would be sad.

I don't doubt there'd be people who'd object to tearing down three or four buildings in Parkdale to alleviate the problems at Lansdowne/Queen/Jameson. But I'd like to think that most people could look at it, see there's a problem, measure the cost, and (perhaps regretfully) accept that it's one worth paying to solve the problem, and that people would adjust to the change rather than hurl themselves on the rocks of despair. Again, that's my take on it. There are other opinions, but I think this is a valid one.

I can quit any time I want! Once we build this highway then things will be fine! It's the last bottleneck we need to solve, I swear!

Yeah, but you could say that about anyone's projects, hopes, or the ongoing institutions they value. Take out "highway" and put in "half-way house" and see who stands up and salutes. Just because you don't happen to agree doesn't make the idea wicked, or foolish. The implication such things can only be accomplished by lies is damning of the integrity of a given project's champions, and an insult to the analytical abilities of those who could be convinced, yea or nay, on the matter.

Lone Primate, don't you think Toronto has done extremely well since stopping Spadina?

I actually responded to this one yesterday, but it seems the post has vanished. Oh, well.

Sure I do. Toronto's done fine. That's not to say it couldn't have done better. By that, I neither mean to suggest that it necessarily would have been better with the Spadina than I accept your tacit implication that it did better as a result of its being shelved. We simply don't know. I happen to feel that it would have made the movement of people, labour, commerce, and material in and out of the core along a north-south axis, difficult today, easier and that the results would have been beneficial.

But to ask this question is a bit like asking a man of his wife, "if you love her, why would you want her to quit smoking?" To love something or someone is not the same as considering them perfect or above improvement in some aspect. Toronto's great. But there are ways in which I think it would be better. I wish we'd finished the Spadina. I wish there were a subway line on Queen Street. I wish the Bloor line, today, ran clear from Oakville Place to the Durham Centre Mall. I wish we'd never allowed all those vista-hogging condos south of the Gardiner to have been built, and that we'd reclaimed our lake shore like Chicago. We didn't. Toronto's not that kind of town. It's often parochial and stingy, and it's full of people so jealous of their own privileges and envious of those of their neighbours that it's a wonder they city's eyes aren't permanently crossed, staring covetously at one another. There are ways Toronto could be better. But I can still love it.

 

[Conrad Black]

However, even though I'm quite in favour of not adding any more highways in Toronto - I'm not sure that a simple 2-lane tunnel in each direction from Eglinton simply to merge into Bathurst wouldn't be inappropriate. The bottleneck from the expressway stopping dead at Eglinton are significant, and if you could distribute a chunk of the traffic onto a north-south artery with minimal disturbance (by following the existing subway tunnel the relatively short distance to Bathurst) then surely this would be an improvement that wouldn't be totally horrific - and might actually benefit the community in the Eglinton/Bathurst area by eliminating some of the gridlock (and pollution) on their streets

Wouldn't that just move the bottleneck to Bathurst and St Clair? How would that help?

How about another solution. Just get rid of the Allen. The bottleneck at Eglinton would quickly be history.