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

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dunkalunk said:
In terms of how the First Gulf proposed Gardiner could actually work with the road network, I envision the following;
Click to expand...

Why not keep the Gardiner to the north of the railway. Either tie in a bit west of Cherry Street, or continue over top of the railway even farther.

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AlvinofDiaspar said:
Actually it isn't that different from the West 8 competition scheme:

http://www.gardinereast.ca/document/replace-west-8-dtah-cecil-balmond-agu-booklet
Click to expand...

Wow, I didn't realize just how similar these two proposals were. The main differences between the two is two is that mine keeps Lake Shore Boulevard intact as a through street, keeps the Don Roadway ramps, and puts the DVP on an elevated structure instead of crossing at-grade in the floodplain.

I also really like their version of the streetcar network; having the Lakeshore East LRT on Villers St instead of Commissioners.
 
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Am I missing something?

After all this, all they intend to do is build ANOTHER elevated monstrosity to replace the CURRENT monstrosity except it's going to be a few meters north? To make matter worse they want to keep Lakeshore so that the pavement footprint will actually be bigger than it is now.

Interesting how transit was mentioned only as a side line and mass/rapid transit was not considered a necessity before any improvements go thru............so much for Toronto's supposed "transit first" policy.

Also, how does Toronto propose to pay for any of this? I know the common idea should be that the rest of Ontario should pick up 100% of the cost {aka Queen's Park} but it is a municple roadway and god knows no other city in the province gets money for their roads. Hell, Toronto got away nearly scot free when it came to Harris's downloading of roads to the municipalities. London, for example, was given an entire expressway downloaded onto it. Ontario Highway 126 became London's Weinge Expressway with all the costs associated with it.

Tear it down, make Lakeshore a maximum 6 lane blvd and call it a day.

Talk about a city that talks out of both sides of it's mouth. When they need transit they demand Ontario taxpayers pay 100% of the cost but when their own funds are at stake they demand keeping the roadways. This is pretty pathetic but, unfortunately, not surprising report from a city that talks transit but does not have even a single block in a city of 2.7 million that is cut off from vehicles.

I always knew Toronto was a car first city but I had no idea how much they would be willing to sacrifice their Waterfront, transit funds, and liveability to maintain their auto dependent prime directive.
 
I agree, but with one important caveat: Transit routes into downtown are overloaded. Until the DRL is built and GO electrification happens, I vote we keep the Gardiner, but only until then.
 
ssiguy2 said:
Am I missing something?

After all this, all they intend to do is build ANOTHER elevated monstrosity to replace the CURRENT monstrosity except it's going to be a few meters north? To make matter worse they want to keep Lakeshore so that the pavement footprint will actually be bigger than it is now.

Interesting how transit was mentioned only as a side line and mass/rapid transit was not considered a necessity before any improvements go thru............so much for Toronto's supposed "transit first" policy.

Also, how does Toronto propose to pay for any of this? I know the common idea should be that the rest of Ontario should pick up 100% of the cost {aka Queen's Park} but it is a municple roadway and god knows no other city in the province gets money for their roads. Hell, Toronto got away nearly scot free when it came to Harris's downloading of roads to the municipalities. London, for example, was given an entire expressway downloaded onto it. Ontario Highway 126 became London's Weinge Expressway with all the costs associated with it.

Tear it down, make Lakeshore a maximum 6 lane blvd and call it a day.

Talk about a city that talks out of both sides of it's mouth. When they need transit they demand Ontario taxpayers pay 100% of the cost but when their own funds are at stake they demand keeping the roadways. This is pretty pathetic but, unfortunately, not surprising report from a city that talks transit but does not have even a single block in a city of 2.7 million that is cut off from vehicles.

I always knew Toronto was a car first city but I had no idea how much they would be willing to sacrifice their Waterfront, transit funds, and liveability to maintain their auto dependent prime directive.
Click to expand...

I think your whole argument is misguided ..... In fact the way the conversation has been framed in the media is misleading, We are not really having a conversation as to whether or not we tear down the Gardiner, but rather we want to tear down a a few Kilometres of it...regardless of what happens to it we will have a highway running through the downtown and thus highway traffic that needs to connect through to the DVP and from the DVP to the other 90% of the Gardiner.
i
From a transit perspective alone how does it make sense to take away a portion of a highway that it is the link between two highways (DVP and Gardiner) to replace it with an at grade road when all the reports show nothing can change without the transit being in place. It would be like saying lets remove 2 km of the 401.

If we were having a conversation about tearing down the entire gardiner expressway it would be a much different discussion.

Further, I think the really story is that this is yet another consequence of Toronto not building transit over the last few decades at the pace required to allow us to make big and bold moves such as taking down this section of highway. The reality is we haven't done our homework as a City.
 
1overcosc said:
I agree, but with one important caveat: Transit routes into downtown are overloaded. Until the DRL is built and GO electrification happens, I vote we keep the Gardiner, but only until then.
Click to expand...
It won't last that long. So do we pay to rehab it in the meantime?
 
nfitz said:
It won't last that long. So do we pay to rehab it in the meantime?
Click to expand...

Spending any money on keeping the Gardiner standing is money thrown down the drain. Tear it down, and if there's a DRL when you do so, great; if not, then at least some of the car-driving public might start to get behind any proposal which will relieve their commutes.
 
ssiguy2 said:
Tear it down, make Lakeshore a maximum 6 lane blvd and call it a day.
Click to expand...

Currently, the DVP carries about 125,000 vehicles into Downtown Toronto, 60% of which are bound for the Gardiner Expressway (source). Tearing down the entirety of the eastern portion and diverting all downtown-bound traffic to the sub-optimal Richmond-Adelaide/Eastern ramps and the Don Roadway is not feasible, particularly if there's any hope for meaingful development along the Keating Channel.

I do agree that tearing down the eastern portion from Jarvis to the Portlands is probably the most economic option and will cause less disruption than the "Replace" or "Maintain" options. However, dedicated ramps to LSB will need to exist and somethingwill need to be done to augment this portion of LSB to handle the traffic previously carried by the Gardiner. Even with road pricing, parking levies, and streetcar ROW expansion, you'd still need to widen LSB to at least 8 lanes, and dedicated ramps to LSB west of the Don will still be required.
 
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Most of the traffic that merges onto the Gardiner from the DVP is still downtown bound but will take the further western exists.
Ditching the Gardiner from Church to the DVP and using Lakeshore would only add a minute or two to someone's commute but would make a world of difference to the Waterfront. An even better idea would be to ditch the current Lakeshore as well or at least in it's current configuration.

Instead of one hard to cross 6 or 8 lane road it should be 2 one way roads of 3 or 4 lanes each a block apart with standard development in between. It wouldn't create a barrier like a very wide road can and would be more pedestrian friendly.

As far as road tolls, Toronto thru the decades has made it very clear that it is not an option. Toronto keeps deferring to Queen's Park to introduce road tolls in order not to have to take the political heat but that is a fallacy and cop out. Toronto could have been tolling the DVP and Gardiner for decades now and it would still be a local prerogative as the roads are municipal so no clearance from Queen's Park was necessary. Using those funds thru the years could have built Toronto a massive subway network but again that would require political will and trying to reign in the city's prime directive of keeping Toronto as car friendly as humanely possible.

Now as other cities around the globe dismantle their downtown freeways in order to rejuvenate their cores by recognizing the folly of the 1960s planning system, Toronto actually wants to make the situation worse by spending money it doesn't have to replace an ugly elevated highway with another one and increasing the pavement footprint to boot.

This is just too bizzare for words.

When a citizenry supports tearing down ugly structures to just replace with another, demands transit but outright refuses to pay for any of it, an airport 'express" line that few will take using diesel trains, a city that demands money from the federal government for transit and then refuses to use it, tears down a functioning transit line to replace it with subway tunneled so as not to block the view of Walmarts and gas stations, and continually states a transit first policy but the idea of closing off even one single block to vehicles is considered lunacy then it's very small wonder that they voted in the mayor they did.

When you have policy makers, politicians, and citizens with those kind of views then it is obvious that Torontonians knew exactly what they were getting when they voted in Rob Ford................they got the mayor they so richly deserved.
 
ssiguy2 said:
As far as road tolls, Toronto thru the decades has made it very clear that it is not an option. Toronto keeps deferring to Queen's Park to introduce road tolls in order not to have to take the political heat but that is a fallacy and cop out. Toronto could have been tolling the DVP and Gardiner for decades now and it would still be a local prerogative as the roads are municipal so no clearance from Queen's Park was necessary. Using those funds thru the years could have built Toronto a massive subway network but again that would require political will and trying to reign in the city's prime directive of keeping Toronto as car friendly as humanely possible.
Click to expand...

It's my hope that this will change. There are mayoral candidates who are bringing road pricing to the table as a serious way to generate revenue and fight congestion. However, as soon as the idea of tolling a currently "free" resource gets proposed, a populist mindset takes over and the voting public would withdraw support from those candidates. Chow, Tory, and Ford know this too well and for them it's a non-starter.
 
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Funny how Miller wasn't willing to put his money where his industrial size mouth was on the tolling issue as well. I guess for every Toronto mayor and council it is always just so much easier for them to wait to have it introduced by Queen's Park making them take the heat and if they don't then the money won't come in which means Toronto scream {to no one that cares} that Queen's Park is anti-Toronto.

I just hope that Queen's park will say to Toronto what it would say to every other city in the province..............it's your road, you pay for it. Even the idea of bringing up the idea within ear shot of Queen's Park is offensive but god knows they won't be uploading any of the Ontario highways for non-Torontonians anytime soon.
 
Err, didn't the province already said that for the past 30 years? No one other than Hudak wanted to wrest control the Gardiner from the city - and the latter certainly didn't want to do so because they wanted to tear it down - it's the the opposite.

AoD
 
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