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Roads: Gardiner Expressway catch-all, incl. Hybrid Design (2015-onwards)

Andy_in_Toronto said:
When construction will only start in a couple of years it is unlikely that the city will be able to finance it. A major downturn is coming after all those years of cheap money. At the end the story will be the same as in Montréal. At the moment the tear down their express highway after decades of discussions!
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Apparently in the 2017 – 2026 Capital Budget, the City has only allocated $14M with $863M of debt for Gardiner East, which is not enough anyways. I guess we'll see if this project will happen in the next couple of years.
 
They're probably waiting a bit as there is too much going on right now. DRL and Yonge North subway under construction. Many condos everywhere. Even if the Gardiner was removed tomorrow, it would take so much time for development to get going.

Basically there is too much going on elsewhere and Gardiner is not a high priority.
 
darth_freeman said:
They're probably waiting a bit as there is too much going on right now. DRL and Yonge North subway under construction. Many condos everywhere. Even if the Gardiner was removed tomorrow, it would take so much time for development to get going.

Basically there is too much going on elsewhere and Gardiner is not a high priority.
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pstogios said:
Did we all miss this?
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DRL & Yonge North as well as the Scarborough Subway lines are all in Design stages no shovels have hit the ground as of yet.
 
44 North said:
Any large project in this city south of approx. Dundas is a challenge - be it rock squeeze, old infill/landfill, or both in this instance. The Fung and City Roads plans seemed legit and not too extreme.

As for the hypothetical of going under the Don, naturally DVP would be (temporarily) truncated at Richmond/Adelaide. There's a deep bedrock chasm in the area to begin with so by default it'd be a mucky, high-insurance process. But with DVP's ROW opened-up between Lake Shore and Eastern that affords certain opportunities not normally available. Say, staging construction and temporary diversion of the river. Not unlike York Mills station construction, but on a much larger scale. Not necessarily in this order:

-tunnel east of the river with a planned flume above
-once complete divert river in a new temporary bend overtop this structure
-tunnel sections west of and below (now diverted) river
-once subgrade DVP on/offramp complete remove diversion dike and put river back
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I don't think any of the recent tunneling scenarios foresee going under the Don (and it wouldn't really make any sense to given you have to go pretty deep and come back out from it - and that meant a huge grade change) - and I am not sure if the tunnels proposed go deep enough to bedrock, so rock squeeze probably isn't any issue.

As to the Hybrid project - well, there is no real rush, other than keeping that stretch of the Gardiner repaired and afloat in the meantime.

AoD
 
The reconstruction of this elevated expressway is not only a hideous project but it is also insanely expensive and irresponsible.

Why they don't invest huge amount of money that easily in public transport?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1068268922535784448

https://twitter.com/x/status/1068291559567908865

In Montreal they didn't build a tunnel to replace the hideous elevated expressway, they simply turned it down and transformed it into a beautiful urban boulevard.



Chief of the project: "This area used to be an industrial area now it has become really part of downtown, with a lot of housing units and a lot of jobs so an elevated highway doesn't fit downtown anymore."


Before:

bonaventure.jpg


image.jpg


After:

DSC_2337.jpg


projet-bonaventure-01.jpg


14c194cf-2704-4fbf-8322-5ffa4d862bc0.jpg
 
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DTC said:
In Montreal they didn't build a tunnel to replace the hideous elevated expressway, they simply turned it down and transformed it into a beautiful urban boulevard.
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Surely the demolition of the Bonaventure expressway is more comparable to the demolition in Toronto of the Gardiner from the Don River to Leslie Street than the Gardiner to DVP connection.

The Montreal equivalent to removing the Gardiner would be more like removing the Ville Marie from Decarie to Atwater, Or the 15 from the Turcot interchange to the bridge to L'Ile de Soeurs. I can't imagine Montreal doing either!

At the same time, the current urban boulevard (Notre Dame) that the Ville Marie turns into from near Papineau downtown to the 25, is slowly looking more and more like an expressway over the years - which is going in the opposite direction!
 
nfitz said:
Surely the demolition of the Bonaventure expressway is more comparable to the demolition in Toronto of the Gardiner from the Don River to Leslie Street than the Gardiner to DVP connection.
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I'm not so sure about that.

On that stretch of the Bonaventure Expressway, the peak traffic volume was ~5000 vehicles/hour, and the through traffic continuing to the 720 ramp was around 1200 v/h

That seems very similar the traffic figures of the Gardiner to DVP stretch. (5200v/h, including 1200v/h of through traffic)
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
I don't think any of the recent tunneling scenarios foresee going under the Don (and it wouldn't really make any sense to given you have to go pretty deep and come back out from it - and that meant a huge grade change) - and I am not sure if the tunnels proposed go deep enough to bedrock, so rock squeeze probably isn't any issue.

As to the Hybrid project - well, there is no real rush, other than keeping that stretch of the Gardiner repaired and afloat in the meantime.

AoD
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I don't think any tunnel scenario looked at going under the Don, period. There was the recent tunnel concept in the 'east of Jarvis' debate that was silly since it viewed the Gardiner in isolation and made a rollercoaster of going over the Don, under Parliament, then back elevated at Jarvis. All for a minuscule 1.2km tunnel. Before that the Fung and City plans between Strachan-Spadina and Strachan-Jarvis, respectively. Both dated since they couldn't have foreseen present plans for East Harbour. Then prior to that largely go-nowhere stuff about putting a tunnel in the lake.

If a tunnel option were to be proposed in the present it should be holistic and consider the whole Gardiner. So, say Strachan-Parliament. This effectively combines the 00s-era City plan, and recent 'east of Jarvis' tunnel concept. Doing this I think going under the Don could be brought into consideration - as a scope expansion from Parliament a bit further east to DVP/Eastern. At least it appears within reason. Doubt it'd pass any 100yr flood scenario, but at least the curve from DVP would be less abrupt than the current Hybrid plan.
 
Meanwhile...

Seattle’s Viadoom: The ‘Carmageddon’ That Wasn’t

See link.

"Viadoom hasn’t been that doomy.”

Those were the words of Seattle Times writer David Gutman yesterday, midway through the closure of Highway 99 that many feared would paralyze the city in traffic gridlock. About 90,000 vehicles per day traveled the Alaskan Way Viaduct until it was closed on Jan. 11.

“The cars just disappeared,” he wrote. “Where did they all go?”

A spokesperson for the traffic data company Inrix told Gutman they “disappeared.”

Some people are walking and biking, preliminary city data shows. And some additional people took the bus and train. And a lot of people appear to be telecommuting.

As a result, traffic speeds haven’t been effected much by what everyone predicted would be gridlock.

Viadoom is looking more and more like another much-hyped “Carmageddon” that wasn’t. Time after time, cities anticipate crushing outcomes from the closures of key freeways — but the actual outcome is muted. We saw it with the closure of Los Angeles’s 405 freeway in 2011. And we saw it in more recently with the same highway in Seattle closed for two weeks of maintenance in 2016.

It doesn’t hurt that in this case and others, local leaders have gone to almost extreme lengths to warn people of a potential traffic problem. That surely helped encourage people to try greener alternatives, and/or adjust their schedules.

But in the case of Seattle though, this lesson is particularly ironic. Viadoom (Viadud?) happens in the context of the city preparing to open a $3-billion underground replacement for the viaduct, officially Highway 99.

Fifteen years ago, local activists led by Cary Moon championed a plan to just tear down the aging highway and convert it to a waterfront street with beefed-up transit alternatives. But they were dismissed by power brokers like former Mayor Greg Nickels, who insisted the city couldn’t live without this highway connection.

Now a real-time experiment confirms that the city can live without it once again.
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Some people are walking and biking, preliminary city data shows. And some additional people took the bus and train. And a lot of people appear to be telecommuting.
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Most people are taking the fourteen-lane freeway that's half a mile away from the one that was torn down. We don't have one of those.
 
amnesiajune said:
Most people are taking the fourteen-lane freeway that's half a mile away from the one that was torn down. We don't have one of those.
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However, we do have the 2 legs of YUS travelling downtown, as well as an extensive and expanding commuter rail network centred on Union. So, you know, folk’ll have options if their beloved Gardiner East segment ever goes the way of just about every other downtown elevated expressway on the planet. Just kidding! This is Toronto, a living museum of the best of 1950’s suburbanism.
 
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