Roads Poll: What would be your ideal Gardiner Tear Down?

[kEiThZ]

The Gardiner should be torn down and NOT replaced, but only when the costs to maintain it become unmanageable, possibly in 10-15 years. In the mean time, let's make it obsolete by upgrading transit (GO and local), building the Front St. extension, improving traffic flow on one way streets, and reworking Lakeshore Blvd. To spend money on tunneling, trenching, or rebuilding the Gardiner would be a colossal waste.

West Street in NYC would be a great example to follow. It may be 10 lanes wide with fast moving traffic, but it's well landscaped with a wide median, has great walking trails along the river, and signaling is flawless - by grouping traffic into pulses that almost never have to stop, a pedestrian either sees heavy traffic or no traffic at all when it's time to cross.

I know people like to believe that Toronto could survive without the Gardiner. It can't. Even if there was all day regional express service from GO.

Also, who says tunnelling, burying, etc. has to be paid for by the taxpayer? Bury the whole thing and toll it. Let the motorists pay for it.

 

[Automation Gallery]

I know people like to believe that Toronto could survive without the Gardiner. It can't. Even if there was all day regional express service from GO.

Also, who says tunnelling, burying, etc. has to be paid for by the taxpayer? Bury the whole thing and toll it. Let the motorists pay for it.

Right-on that i agree, and surprised we have gone this long without any mention...very smart way of making money to build pay and maintain it. At first motorists will bitch and complain but after a couple years it will be long forgotten as the registers ring in the cash.

 

[GraphicMatt]

Let's just talk about the section between the DVP and Jarvis Street for a second. Built at a time when there was to be a Scarborough expressway, it's a massive piece of infrastructure that is the least-used section of the highway.

We should absolutely look at our options for this stretch, yes? Ranging from complete removal (replaced with something at grade) to a realignment that moves it away from the water. We'd be stupid not to consider this, given the potential for redevelopment, etc.

 

[dunkalunk]

I know people like to believe that Toronto could survive without the Gardiner. It can't. Even if there was all day regional express service from GO.

Also, who says tunnelling, burying, etc. has to be paid for by the taxpayer? Bury the whole thing and toll it. Let the motorists pay for it.

I'd say that at least in the interim, increasing parking rates would be a better income generator than highway tolling, not that we shouldn't do both. Highway tolling mostly effects peak usage, while increasing parking rates is better at controlling discretionary car trips and the decision to own a car (or two). Toronto definitely does have some wiggle room when compared with other North American cities (In Particular, Calgary). See Here.

The thing with road tolling is, is that people expect an increase in the level of service to justify the tolling. You could widen the highway, or improve its safety and throughput, but then you would end up with traffic flooding onto Downtown Streets with nowhere to go. Improving the traffic flow on the highway would also be counterintuitive to expanding transit. I could be misjudging the way people think though.

I think people could survive without the Gardiner, but it'll take massive transit improvement, $2/barrel oil, and a chunk of it to fall onto LSB for them to realize it.

 

[TKTKTK]

Crude oil went from $83 a barrel in October to $105 in March ($107 on April 1st so far.) Only millionaires, like the Ford brothers, will continue to use the Gardiner in any form in the coming years.

Might as well tear the Gardiner down and put all the money saved from not supporting expressways in transit improvements instead.

lol, April Fools! Gas is more expensive in Europe than it is here, by far — and yet...they still have cars and drive The future's going to look a lot like now, not identical — but not the crazy car-free future that people dream about.

 

[TKTKTK]

Let's just talk about the section between the DVP and Jarvis Street for a second. Built at a time when there was to be a Scarborough expressway, it's a massive piece of infrastructure that is the least-used section of the highway.

We should absolutely look at our options for this stretch, yes? Ranging from complete removal (replaced with something at grade) to a realignment that moves it away from the water. We'd be stupid not to consider this, given the potential for redevelopment, etc.

It might be the least used stretch of that highway, but it still sees an awful lot of traffic. Most cars aren't getting off at Richmond or Lake Shore, they continue around the flyramps onto the Gardiner. I can understand simplifying this transition a bit — and there IS excess capacity — but I can't see getting rid of it entirely and creating an illogical break in our highways. It makes far more sense to have this traffic skirt residential areas than descend from the heavens and plow right through it.

It also seems like the wrong project to get really fussed about. The city needs a hundred things before it needs to get rid of the Gardiner.

 

[GraphicMatt]

With the amount of waterfront development taking place or set to take place, it's an important thing to consider -- whether the Gardiner stays or goes (or changes) in this eastern stretch vastly changes plans.

Here's a satellite image of the stretch in question -- it's the widest part of the downtown Gardiner:

 

[TKTKTK]

With the amount of waterfront development taking place or set to take place, it's an important thing to consider -- whether the Gardiner stays or goes (or changes) in this eastern stretch vastly changes plans.

It hasn't seemed to matter that much so far — as that whole parcel of land is going ahead and being developed. But I've never understood the wisdom of blighting existing neighbourhoods so we can have a clean slate for one that doesn't exist yet — when the more logical course of action would be to plan those new neighbourhoods around a piece of infrastructure that is older than most of us on this forum.

You could probably condense two flyramps down to one larger one — but surely those millions of dollars could be better used on a new streetcar line, or some transit improvement? Any improvement scenario I come up with is quickly chased away by thoughts of us picking paint colours while the house rots around us.

Here's a satellite image of the stretch in question -- it's the widest part of the downtown Gardiner:

And not to nitpick, but it's not the widest part It's the tallest part. Widest part is either right by the Roundhouse, or at the point where the West-bound Lake Shore rises up to join the Gardiner for a bit (you know, depending on how you want to define the Gardiner). Maybe that thicket of ramps by Yonge...?

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

Once again, you guys are all looking at the wrong section of the Gardiner to bury, the elevated one, when the area where it really cuts off the city from the waterfront is south of Parkdale, Sunnyside, where it's at grade. If anything, the part that should be tunneled is from the Humber to Dufferin.

Bridge over the Humber bay (from around Park Lawn to Marylinn Park) and into a tunnel through the central section. Rebuild Lakeshore into a grand avenue with in median LRT.

 

[dunkalunk]

I applaud your sense of imagination, but unless Toronto becomes Dubai rich, its never going to happen, especially when there is an already existing parallel route.

 

[Filip]

Bridge over the Humber bay (from around Park Lawn to Marylinn Park) and into a tunnel through the central section. Rebuild Lakeshore into a grand avenue with in median LRT.

Lots and lots of condos in the way there.

 

[rbt]

I applaud your sense of imagination, but unless Toronto becomes Dubai rich, its never going to happen, especially when there is an already existing parallel route.

Toronto is Dubai rich. Richer in fact by about 30% if you go with 2008 GDP numbers.

Big difference in 1) wealth distribution and 2) mindset toward savings. Emirates royalty, the owners of most of Dubai, believe pretty strongly in spending their entire income and only have so many ways to spend $2B increments locally. Ontario money tends to get reinvested. Our companies keep larger "rainy day" funds and tend to be market traded instead of individually owned/controlled.

Our banks, for example, have stashed away tens of billions in the last 4 years. If bank owners were a handful of individuals who demanded large dividend payments and spent those dividends within the borders of Toronto on visible infrastructure; we would have some pretty wacky things being built right now. Eglinton Subway would be a single years "excess revenue" expenditure.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

I applaud your sense of imagination, but unless Toronto becomes Dubai rich, its never going to happen, especially when there is an already existing parallel route.

Unique problems require imaginative solutions. Just imagine a grand Lakeshore blvd snaking along the shore from the Humber bay into the downtown core. For all the talk of the regenerative powers of LRT this plan would bring parkdale back to promenence in the city.

Yes it's expensive but so was adding the lower deck to the Bloor viaduct.

It's a real shame WaterfronTO didn't start on this plan (at least the tunnel) before all the issues came up from Boston's big dig. The problems from that project have made people wary of taking on a similar project here.

 

[TOareaFan]

Our banks, for example, have stashed away tens of billions in the last 4 years. If bank owners were a handful of individuals who demanded large dividend payments and spent those dividends within the borders of Toronto on visible infrastructure; we would have some pretty wacky things being built right now. Eglinton Subway would be a single years "excess revenue" expenditure.

You do understand that, while our banks came through the fiscal/credit crises in pretty good shape, the resistance to increasing dividends (which I presume is the stashing away that you refer to) was necessary to build their Tier I capital levels to the new benchmarks required by international banking rules and regulations. Tier I capital level requirements increase in 2012 under Basel III. Now that those levels have been reached, all of the big 5 are talking about some level of dividend increase.

 

[dunkalunk]

But is the Humber bay section of the waterfront really a problem? There is already a plan to revitalize Lakeshore West. Even if you were to move the Gardiner out to a bridge in the bay, you would still have pedestrian access issues caused by the rail corridor.

Also, how is a person supposed to cross a grand boulevard in one phase? This is barely doable on University Ave now.