Simcoe St. Underpass & Extension

[Long Island Mike]

Simcoe Street Underpass...impressive!

Drum: Good pics of the Simcoe Street underpass here - It looks like an interesting project built under active railway tracks above. LI MIKE

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

From CBC News:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/lower-simcoe-flooding-1.4083502

AoD

 

[TOareaFan]

was closed southbound tonight.....I diverted onto Front street around 7 o'clock.....no idea how long it had been closed.

 

[dowlingm]

Certainly puts a certain light on some other subground issues in that light, like the Bay streetcar tunnel, the proposal to join Cooper and Church, and to put underground rail tunnels at Union.

 

[TOareaFan]

https://twitter.com/blogTO/status/857020073848053762

 

[Edward Skira]

Turned into a swimming pool on Monday.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Apparently, the high lake levels in Lake Ontario is the cause. See link.

 

[drum118]

What do expect when this area used to be underwater in the first place before backfilling took place. It started after the RR came to town.

 

[W. K. Lis]

From link:

High Lake Ontario water levels cause lakefront parking lot flood: The Fixer

The highest water since the mid-1980s is flooding the Lake Ontario shoreline, particularly at Rouge Beach Park.

 

[TOareaFan]

What do expect when this area used to be underwater in the first place before backfilling took place. It started after the RR came to town.

That is true....but it is surprising (to me at least) that the flooding issue is showing up on the newest road to be poked under the tracks and the one that was designed/built with all the latest advances in engineering. If this was showing up on a piece of 50 year old road infrastructure I would be far less surprised than I am with the issues showing up here.

 

[ADRM]

In evidence of how big a problem this actually is, The US Army Corps of Engineers, The Canadian Hydrographic Service, and the St. Lawrence Seaway Authority have agreed to hold back the water in Lake Ontario to avoid further exacerbating the flooding, which is being seen all the way from here to Montreal.

 

[KevinT]

That is true....but it is surprising (to me at least) that the flooding issue is showing up on the newest road to be poked under the tracks and the one that was designed/built with all the latest advances in engineering. If this was showing up on a piece of 50 year old road infrastructure I would be far less surprised than I am with the issues showing up here.

From the CBC article linked earlier:

The underpass had been designed to withstand the five-year average water levels of Lake Ontario in 2006. But Di Gironimo said the water levels have been consistently higher than that ever since.

Water management specialist Jenn Drake told CBC Toronto much of the city's stormwater infrastructure is designed to handle average conditions rather than the extremes — because the latter is much more expensive to build and maintain.

Would that there were always enough money to do things the way that they should be done, rather than as a compromise. :-(

 

[goreckm]

Would that there were always enough money to do things the way that they should be done, rather than as a compromise. :-(

Building something in this day and age, to average water conditions, especially with the knowledge that global warming will impact water levels. This is pretty much malfeasance. Can we prosecute the people that made this decision for having to waste public money again to fix these issues? I hope the new land around distillery was designed with some more long-term thinking in mind.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

The issue for Lake Ontario with respect to climate change tend to be about lake warning and declining lake levels - it's not the same as sea-level changes due to ice-melt.

AoD

 

[Kitsune]

A part of the boardwalk in the beaches had its underside partially carved out due to those high water levels ... and also the beach around the the Leuty lifeguard station is also having emergency repairs done as the water and waves where getting too close to it..