Roads: Keep the Gardiner, fix it, or get rid of it? (2005-2014)

[adma]

The problem w/the Gardiner is that it's too much the heavy-handed 50s/60s highway engineering stereotype to merit High Line-like gentrified rehab. And in practice, the pro-highway libertrollians who have the CAA by the fishhook have probably left a permanent taint on any future gentrification/reconsideration potential.

So it's not just the highway; it's the pasty scary characters in its defense these days...
www.gettorontomoving.ca/

 

[Mike in TO]

^ Gotta love those crazy offshore freeway plans.... That is some whacky stuff - do they even take themselves seriously with proposals like that?

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Impressive - relocating TIA to the Leslie Street Spit. Who would have thought!

AoD

 

[Transportfan]

As I posted earlier, burying the Gardiner would be much cheaper the 'Big Dig' as it could be easily be built cut-and-cover.

 

[hamilton905]

Agreed! It's a shame the discussion still persists.

 

[wyliepoon]

Gotta love those crazy offshore freeway plans...

Here's one that became reality... Hong Kong's Island Eastern Corridor. It's built much more recently than the Gardiner, in the 1980s.

 

[GregWTravels]

So I was in Boston this weekend, and got to experience the "big dig" results first hand. I both walked along the area where the elevated highway used to be, and got a drive along the new section of the elevated highway by the hockey arena (TD BankNorth Garden - seriously?) and through the tunnel.

The tunnel is nice and wide, unlike tunnels in New York or the Detroit-Windsor tunnel, which always makes me feel like my car is going to scrape along the side of the tunnel. Similar to, but much pretty than, the buried sections of highway in Montreal.

The cable stay bridge is a lot less dramatic in real life - perhaps it looks better and night when lit up, I only saw it during the day.

Apparently there has been quite a fight about what to do with the now exposed sections where the elevated highway used to be. My friend said (but I haven't confirmed) that they are going to turn it into a long, thin park.

I have a couple of pictures, of the cable stay bridge and one of the entrances. I'll take a look and see if they turned out, and post them if they did.

Greg

 

[thenay]

If they remove the gardiner then lakeshore blvd below it will have to stay and be widened. If anyone here has been to Chicago, they shud do what they have there.

The BP Pedestrian bridge looks amazing and the way it connects the city and such areas. It costed $15 Million US to build one, but if they built a few going over lakeshore blvd I think it would work out.

 

[EnviroTO]

I think we should take it down. If we keep it more people will drive downtown rather than find alternatives and it will really overcrowd other streets like Lake Shore and King.

 

[Transportfan]

Quote: "I agree that the Gardiner is the barrier to the waterfront. Having said that, just removing the Gardiner won't automatically extend downtown."

Downtown doesn't need to be extended--it's already there.

 

[3Dementia]

Newbie, "cut and cover" was an affordable (and opportunistic) option pre-Cityplace. It was a no-brainer.

Exactly where the hell do you cut and cover now? Nothing's left.

Or do you mean "suck and cover" (Toronto Harbour)?

 

[Ed007Toronto]

Especially if Concord Adex built the tunnels as part of the foundations for their buildings in return for density bonuses.

 

[3Dementia]

That's waaaaaay too forward thinking.... though I'd settle for something more than a rope bridge to Front Street which is all the city has going. Maybe the new owner?

 

[adma]

"Suck and cover"? Better ask Dan Savage about that one...;-)

 

[Ed007Toronto]

New York plan that buries rail lines and the West Side Highway. All that empty City Place land could have accomplished this for us.