Roads: Gardiner Expressway

[DSC]

There was a public meeting last night on the reconfiguration of the Bay/Yonge/ Gardiner off-ramps. Any idea what they are going to propose? See: http://www.toronto.ca/civic-engagement/2009/york-bay-yonge-interchange-september.htm

 

[saiho]

I agree, there are many world cities that seem to cope with it.

Here is a pic of an elevated expressway that makes the Gardiner Expy. look tame.

leave it to the Chinese to make something more tank than everyone else.

 

[reaperexpress]

leave it to the Chinese to make something more tank than everyone else.

Actually the Gardiner has more lanes than this. The highway isn't "tank", the stuff around it is. I also like how the colour of the sky matches the pavement.

 

[Haljackey]

Actually the Gardiner has more lanes than this. The highway isn't "tank", the stuff around it is. I also like how the colour of the sky matches the pavement.

That's China for ya!

Seriously though, if the Gardiner is to exist in the future, it has to be moved underground. No one wants a 10-12 lane road replacement, it would just cut off the waterfront even more! You would actually have to cross over the road via walkways rather than simply having the Gardiner pass over you.

A solution similar to the Boston Big Dig needs to be made for the Gardiner in my opinion. Yep, it would sure cost a ton of money, but it would create a ton of jobs and permanently fix the problem once and for all!
-While they're at it, they could also install a couple rail lines underground, perhaps one of them being high speed rail. One can only dream...

 

[saiho]

Actually the Gardiner has more lanes than this. The highway isn't "tank", the stuff around it is. I also like how the colour of the sky matches the pavement.

and yet it has a 4/5 level stack on it (in all of Canada there is only has one) plus at Bay or Yonge the Gardiner shrinks down to 2 lanes per direction until about spadina where it goes back to 3 lanes per direction.
anyways on the irrelevant side...
Haljackey... that sounds familiar did you make the Greater Tarrener Region (i think that is how it is spelled) for Simcity 4 or something

 

[Haljackey]

and yet it has a 4/5 level stack on it (in all of Canada there is only has one) plus at Bay or Yonge the Gardiner shrinks down to 2 lanes per direction until about spadina where it goes back to 3 lanes per direction.
anyways on the irrelevant side...
Haljackey... that sounds familiar did you make the Greater Tarrener Region (i think that is how it is spelled) for Simcity 4 or something

The 400/407 interchange is the only 4 level stack in Canada.

And yes that's me. It was called the "greater terran region". I used a lot of underground highways, subways and high speed rail in it. Too bad they're hard to implement in reality.

 

[reaperexpress]

That's China for ya!

A solution similar to the Boston Big Dig needs to be made for the Gardiner in my opinion. Yep, it would sure cost a ton of money, but it would create a ton of jobs and permanently fix the problem once and for all!

Building a super high capacity Gardiner might solve the congestion on the highway, but where will all those cars go when they get off? The downtown core doesn't have room for all of them.
For the cost of the Big dig ($14.6 billion US in 2006), we could build the DRL from Finch and Don Mills to Pearson via Union and still have enough money left over to build an Eglinton subway line from Pearson to Malvern.

 

[Haljackey]

Building a super high capacity Gardiner might solve the congestion on the highway, but where will all those cars go when they get off? The downtown core doesn't have room for all of them.
For the cost of the Big dig ($14.6 billion US in 2006), we could build the DRL from Finch and Don Mills to Pearson via Union and still have enough money left over to build an Eglinton subway line from Pearson to Malvern.

Well it doesn't need to be a "super high capacity" highway, just a 3x3 or 4x4 underground route.

Also, moving the Gardiner underground isn't as massive of a project as it was moving I-93 underground in Boston. They also ran into a lot of problems which is what cost them. By learning from their errors the cost could be reduced significantly. I'm sure the room for cars issue for downtown would be dealt with in the future if this went through.

I'm all for going for transit first though. Priorities, priorities. However funding for this might come from road budgets which could not go towards transit.

I can't really stand by my arguments because I simply do not know enough about the project, but I believe that moving it underground would be the best long-term solution.

 

[fanoftoronto]

I would love to see an underground Gardiner built as well but since the Gardiner is City owned, it is highly unlikely that the city will be able to fund it without tolls and no one in City Hall wants to discuss tolls!! It would be a huge project though, I think larger than the Big Dig in Boston which (if my memory serves me right) is 3-4 kilometres long versus the nearly 10 kilometres of the Gardiner Expressway!

 

[saiho]

Building a super high capacity Gardiner might solve the congestion on the highway, but where will all those cars go when they get off? The downtown core doesn't have room for all of them.
For the cost of the Big dig ($14.6 billion US in 2006), we could build the DRL from Finch and Don Mills to Pearson via Union and still have enough money left over to build an Eglinton subway line from Pearson to Malvern.

or.... we can be like china and do both and throw in a HSR in the mix too... but sadly we are not.

 

[reaperexpress]

I would love to see an underground Gardiner built as well but since the Gardiner is City owned, it is highly unlikely that the city will be able to fund it without tolls and no one in City Hall wants to discuss tolls!! It would be a huge project though, I think larger than the Big Dig in Boston which (if my memory serves me right) is 3-4 kilometres long versus the nearly 10 kilometres of the Gardiner Expressway!

It would be ridiculous to put the entire thing underground. I think people are just talking about a kilometer or two downtown.

And I think that if we fully built the DRL from Finch/Don Mills to the airport, we wouldn't even need the downtown portion of the Gardiner (or the DVP for that matter).

 

[saiho]

I would love to see an underground Gardiner built as well but since the Gardiner is City owned, it is highly unlikely that the city will be able to fund it without tolls and no one in City Hall wants to discuss tolls!! It would be a huge project though, I think larger than the Big Dig in Boston which (if my memory serves me right) is 3-4 kilometres long versus the nearly 10 kilometres of the Gardiner Expressway!

like what Haljackey said the big dig ran into huge problems with things like subway lines and ramps from the cross harbor tunnel being in the way also tunneling under a rail yard without disturbing it. these things severely inflated the cost.

 

[Haljackey]

It would be ridiculous to put the entire thing underground. I think people are just talking about a kilometer or two downtown.

And I think that if we fully built the DRL from Finch/Don Mills to the airport, we wouldn't even need the downtown portion of the Gardiner (or the DVP for that matter).

Exactly, only the downtown portion needs to be put underground.

However even adding a DRL from Finch/Don Mills to the airport won't simply make the need for the Gardiner/DVP vanish. What about tourists and those coming to downtown Toronto from out of town? (I live in London)

-What about those who simply refuse to take transit despite any improvements and those commuting from areas that have little/no transit connection to the downtown?

There will always be a need for Gardiner/DVP because there are no other freeways in the city, which is unique compared with every other major city in North America. They might be able to get rid of a few freeways, but Toronto has no choice.

 

[fanoftoronto]

My bad on the length, guess I wasn't thinking straight

still it should be longer than 1-2 kilometres right, the elevated section has to be longer than that maybe 4 or 5. Or we could stop at Yonge street, and build Jarvis to the DVP like the original plan....big Lakeshore blvd.
But the Gardiner and DVP are still needed even if the DRL and Eglinton are built. Maybe next year Toronto will have a surplus of $20 billion and we can bury the Gardiner, build the DRL and the Eglinton subways and everyone can be happy!!

 

[reaperexpress]

However even adding a DRL from Finch/Don Mills to the airport won't simply make the need for the Gardiner/DVP vanish. What about tourists and those coming to downtown Toronto from out of town? (I live in London)

-What about those who simply refuse to take transit despite any improvements and those commuting from areas that have little/no transit connection to the downtown?

There will always be a need for Gardiner/DVP because there are no other freeways in the city, which is unique compared with every other major city in North America. They might be able to get rid of a few freeways, but Toronto has no choice.

I assume that you mean there are no other highways in the downtown, because there are also the 401,427,400 and Allen Road (which hardly counts).

There wouldn't be any point in removing the DVP or the Gardiner west of downtown. I just meant that they wouldn't be crucial anymore. It would be fine if we just removed the Gardiner downtown. Car drivers could still get downtown using the Gardiner, it would just dump them onto Lakeshore at, say, Dufferin. Lakeshore would not be that much busier than now, because more people would be taking the subway to compensate for the extra people coming off the highway.

To get from London to Downtown Toronto, there's a VIA train.