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Roads: Gardiner Expressway

andrewpmk said:
It sounds like the poll is using a biased question and Toronto's population (the vast majority of which is clueless about municipal politics) is falling for this.

Replacing Gardiner (4 lanes) and Lake Shore (3 lanes) with only Lake Shore (widened to 4 lanes) would be a 43% reduction in capacity, which would almost certainly cause close to 24/7 traffic jams. "Induced demand" is nonsense because only a small fraction of people would avoid the area, most people will keep driving but many of them will take Richmond/Adelaide, 401, etc. causing more traffic jams on those roads. Toronto traffic is bad enough and intentionally making it worse for cars, trucks and GO buses is unacceptable. Just like closing the Gardiner and DVP at the same time for the "ride for heart" causes traffic chaos and Tory needs to convince council to put an end to endlessly closing roads every single weekend most of the year causing traffic chaos.
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The problem with this argument is that there is not 7 lanes per direction of throughput required. If there were, City Staff would have said retention of the Gardiner is preferred. Instead they left it to council to decide despite the clearly expressed wish of the Mayor to retain. Ask yourself why they might do that.

Maintain (per Ford) or tweaking (per Tory) the Gardiner is not the solution to Toronto traffic, nor in fact is removing it. What is, is having the cash to build sustainable solutions for road and transit users. The tweak option gobbles that cash on one hand and on the other limits the amount of tax revenue Toronto can gain from land development because "tweaks" need for ramps.

As for GO buses, these will largely be replaced by SmartTrack - don't take my word for it, look at the restrained GO bus facility planned for 81 Bay (but which is notionally supposed to have room for Toronto Coach Terminal buses at some point). As an aside, inn my view, the City and Metrolinx should already be looking at how to operate/fund weekend service on the Stouffville line, and particularly when the DVP/Gardiner is closed for maintenance or events as it was this weekend.
 
i find the info about tearing the gardiner down to be very confusing thus there is not much info about this and people are making uneducated decisions thats why
 
andrewpmk said:
It sounds like the poll is using a biased question and Toronto's population (the vast majority of which is clueless about municipal politics) is falling for this.

Replacing Gardiner (4 lanes) and Lake Shore (3 lanes) with only Lake Shore (widened to 4 lanes) would be a 43% reduction in capacity, which would almost certainly cause close to 24/7 traffic jams. "Induced demand" is nonsense because only a small fraction of people would avoid the area, most people will keep driving but many of them will take Richmond/Adelaide, 401, etc. causing more traffic jams on those roads. Toronto traffic is bad enough and intentionally making it worse for cars, trucks and GO buses is unacceptable. Just like closing the Gardiner and DVP at the same time for the "ride for heart" causes traffic chaos and Tory needs to convince council to put an end to endlessly closing roads every single weekend most of the year causing traffic chaos.
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Andrew, please take this in a jovial spirit, but you're bananas, man. Literally none of the things you assert in that comment are correct. Like, 0%. That's an amazing batting average.
 
Paolo said:
i find the info about tearing the gardiner down to be very confusing thus there is not much info about this and people are making uneducated decisions thats why
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Here's the project website - http://gardinereast.ca/ As you can see, there have been *four* rounds of public consultations already.

How much additional info do you think people need on this and how would you suggest it be delivered/pressed on them?
 
Picture I just posted on Twitter showing where Google thinks traffic issues are right now:
DVPdisaster.PNG

Note the green at Gardiner East, the red northbound from Gerrard. But midtowners like Carmichael Greb and Burnside (both new councillors who received Tory endorsements) are making statements favouring maintain-tweak rather than worrying about how the hell the DVP from the ramps their constituents use is gonna get moving.
 

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dowlingm said:
How much additional info do you think people need on this and how would you suggest it be delivered/pressed on them?
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Given that the final images show completely different things in different images, making it unclear what the hybrid plan actually is. Then I'd say that the quantity of additional info needed is that which is necessary until a consistent set of information is achieved.
 
dowlingm said:
Picture I just posted on Twitter showing where Google thinks traffic issues are right now:

Note the green at Gardiner East, the red northbound from Gerrard. But midtowners like Carmichael Greb and Burnside (both new councillors who received Tory endorsements) are making statements favouring maintain-tweak rather than worrying about how the hell the DVP from the ramps their constituents use is gonna get moving.
Click to expand...

That's because DVP congestion starts at the North end and expands southwards as there are other bottlenecks downtown (western Gardiner, Adelaide street, etc.). Also, it was 3:26PM and rush hour has not started yet.
 
nfitz said:
Given that the final images show completely different things in different images, making it unclear what the hybrid plan actually is. Then I'd say that the quantity of additional info needed is that which is necessary until a consistent set of information is achieved.
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I think we're missing a lot of detail on both sides... I'm not sure why it is so hard for staff to clearly present the alternatives with full detail.
 
@Armour

^^^So thanks to investments in transit, the Gardiner through this point is able to handle traffic flow. What is the problem?

This may come as a shock to some of you, but every piece of transport infrastructure does not have to be bursting at the seams at all times to be considered a success. There may be points where it is less busy, significantly so, but still plays an important part in connecting a transportation network.

That said, I wonder what support for the roadway in question would be like if the TTC used it for a BRT line into the east end.
 
dowlingm said:
LRT was not supposed to be conditional on Gardiner East. It was supposed to be conditional on Queens Quay East development. The City and WT couldn't get their funding act together plus the requirement to tunnel further from Bay drove up project cost and it got pushed back. There is some opportunism in pushing for LRT funding to come from GE savings, but what is offside about using an opportunity for the City to deal with an unfunded commitment?
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I'm not saying it is conditional on one or the other. The problem is that is was not committed to.

Because it was not committed to and will not be built before the Gardiner decision must be made, it is questionable why the city uses the traffic study assuming the LRT will continue to exist.

I'd be fine with the city stating that the traffic will increase to X minutes until the LRT is built and then decrease to 2 minutes on the condition that it receives approval.

I also have an issue with the incredible 99 year time horizon. Imagine if you had to justify LRT projects based on the same costing. Eglington LRT will cost $20 billion (over 99 years). Who would say yes to that? (I'm just pulling a number out of the hat)

All of these decisions made by the city are just a bit too convenient to result in the conclusion that someone wanted. Am I suspicious...yes I am.
 
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