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Roads: Gardiner Expressway

salsa said:
It's for auto collisions, for which there were 239 of them over a five year span. I initially thought that number included auto-pedestrian collision, but my source wasn't very clear on that so I didn't know. However I recall at the public meeting that they said pedestrian volumes are low at the moment, but that will increase substantially as the area develops and thus the safely issues will be even more problematic in the future. I wish that the intersection would be rejigged, however no changes are planned under the hybrid proposal.
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It's very odd that they're just going to leave it. The cynic in me thinks that it's because staff want to make the Hybrid option as unappealing as possible.

Funnily enough I did witness a fender bender as I was standing waiting for the light to change, as two cars tried to merge onto the WB Gardiner ramp at the same time.
 
jcam said:
I don't get the “use existing DVP ramps†that the option description uses. The problems with this are twofold. First of all, the ramps are probably twice as high in the air as they would need to be for this project, because they currently go up to get over the westbound onramp from Lakeshore, which will be torn down. Second, half of the existing piers are now shown to be in the new basin (according to their graphics). You cannot simply dig out around existing foundations and allow them to suddenly be immersed in water. There may be details I’m missing, but you’d need to completely rebuild the bottoms.

And if you rebuild the bottoms, you're essentially starting from scratch, at which point the price gap to realigning it and going over the railway is closing....
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Did the original Hybrid solution have the ramps going above the railway bridge and landing on the DVP south of Eastern Ave? I could not tell from the graphics. I am not sure if they had a needlessly tight curve just to go under the railway bridge.

It has been shown that maybe the ramp could fit above the railway and before Eastern.
 
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Photo attaching skills are minimal, but our friend Skyjacked took some pix of the east Gardiner, empty-ish,
At all times of the day. Send to your Councillor!
 

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BurlOak said:
Did the original Hybrid solution have the ramps going above the railway bridge and landing on the DVP south of Eastern Ave? I could not tell from the graphics. I am not sure if they had a needlessly tight curve just to go under the railway bridge.

It has been shown that maybe the ramp could fit above the railway and before Eastern.
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Yes, the original hybrid alignment was a tight curve then under the railway, but no, the MS Paint line on Streetview 'proof' missed a couple things, as it went through Metrolinx territory and a proposed water treatment plant.
 
I guess the follow up question is, if you're going to put something under an elevated highway, isn't a water treatment plant a pretty good choice?
 
CDL.TO said:
I guess the follow up question is, if you're going to put something under an elevated highway, isn't a water treatment plant a pretty good choice?
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Also, an important thing about water treatment plants is you typically want them at the bottom of all your drainage lines - in Toronto and really the GTA that's anywhere along the waterfront
 
CDL.TO said:
I guess the follow up question is, if you're going to put something under an elevated highway, isn't a water treatment plant a pretty good choice?
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From Matt Elliott's article on the Metro News website:

"Q: Hybrid sounds fancy. What does it mean?

It’s a nonsensical name. The hybrid option entered the debate last year when developer First Gulf proposed that council not make an immediate decision and instead consider a new option that would realign the expressway connection to the DVP, keeping things closer to the rail corridor.

It was supposed to look like this:

Screen Shot 2015-05-12 at 9.37.05 AM

But whoops! It turns out that building a true hybrid Gardiner was deemed problematic, at least according to the expertise of so-called “engineers.” They found that the hybrid as envisioned would require a ramp design speed of just 50 km/h, so drivers would need to slow down substantially to safely make the curve.

They also found that building closer to the rail corridor doesn’t fit with Metrolinx’s transit plans for the area, nor a plan to build a water treatment plant nearby."

From Waterfront Toronto:

http://www.waterfrontoronto.ca/explore_projects2/west_don_lands/stormwater_treatment

480 Lake Shore is across from the Cherry Bridge. My guess is, for the rejected 'closer to the rail tracks' plan, you'd need to sink supports right in amongst the shaft and pipes they've already built for this project. FWIW, it's a stormwater treatment plant, not sewage, it seems.
 
DarnDirtyApe said:
It's very odd that they're just going to leave it. The cynic in me thinks that it's because staff want to make the Hybrid option as unappealing as possible.

Funnily enough I did witness a fender bender as I was standing waiting for the light to change, as two cars tried to merge onto the WB Gardiner ramp at the same time.
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DDA -- given the fact that your route from Lake Shore onto the Gardiner westbound will be demolished in either case, why does the 'remove' option continue to bug you so? Either you're going to be following Lake Shore (six lanes) to a ramp at Cherry, or following Lake Shore (eight lanes) to a ramp at Jarvis, right? Doesn't that basically get you to the same on-ramp experience?

Because there's no scenario, if they want to open up the Unilever site, that doesn't contemplate the destruction of the current ramp from Gardiner East to Carlaw.
 
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DarnDirtyApe said:
The proposed street map implied that Gardiner-bound traffic would branch off Lakeshore just west of the river. I'm also concerned that the volume of Gardiner-DVP through traffic will overwhelm the area if the "Remove" option goes through.

http://urbantoronto.ca/forum/showthread.php/3069-Roads-Gardiner-Expressway?p=991576#post991576
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I understand your second point, although I don't agree with it. But I think that for current Carlaw ramp users, the impact of either option will be about the same, as Lake Shore will take the same route. Maybe not.
 
CDL.TO said:
Why is there a proposed water treatment plant in such a high-value location?
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Although water treatment facilities can be entirely underground (as we have buried 100ft deep storm water treatment silos dotting the waterfront, and under Sherbourne Common). I don't think this is a "water treatment plant" in the conventional sense. I believe it's mostly an area to catch sediment - presumably for easy removal/dredging, and so it doesn't fill in the harbour, channel, or new river mouth.
 
Marcus Gee on Tory's advocacy of the hybrid solution:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...-part-of-gardiner-expressway/article24430139/

While I don't agree with him, I will say it's refreshing to have a Mayor who actually weighs the evidence and comes to a conclusion. I expect the debate at Council will be 90% interesting and persuasive, and 10% Mammo/DMW.

When does Tory put a fork in DMW if he continues to be a sly prick? End of the summer?
 
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