The End Of The Road: Saying Goodbye To Freeways

[Mapleson]

CNU president John Norquist stars in this video from Streetfilms about the problem of inner-city highways and the steps some cities are taking to get rid of theirs. "If you look at the real estate anywhere near a freeway, almost always its degraded," says Norquist. "You'll get surface parking lots, or buildings that have high-vacancy rates. No walking. Because it's really hard to design a freeway that would look good in a city."

Vancouver doesn't have traffic issues?! He obviously hasn't been to BC, because there are at least 3 major highways that connect the city.

Roads aren't meant to look pretty, they are meant to get you from place A to place C, while spending as little time as possible in place B.

 

[EnviroTO]

Roads aren't meant to look pretty, they are meant to get you from place A to place C, while spending as little time as possible in place B.

Yes, but a well designed city means you don't need to make B less desirable to the benefit of people in place A and C. You have people stay in A because it has the bulk of what you need, and on the occasions they need to go to B or C they take transit, and if only if they are going far away, to Z perhaps, would they need to drive because transit doesn't go there.

 

[accura407]

"Because it's really hard to design a freeway that would look good in a city."

I Totally disagree on that point. If anybody here travels outside of Toronto, then you KNOW for a fact that there are many cities that build excellent
freeway thoroughfares that look VERY good...

And i think in Toronto, we have very good Suburban Freeways comparing to the ones in the United States, or worse...Quebec! We tend to use much much much less concrete pillars for our freeways and much more berms/hills for our approaches. The Best example of a well landscaped and beautiful freeway in Toronto is the 407 as it has a 4-level stack with highway 400 and yet it looks far more pleasant than the stacks they have in USA...it actually looks very nice!

[407 - large area, nice landscaping and aesthetics]

[I-35 Houston - smaller area, all concrete, no green]

In terms of Urban Freeways, the GTA is virtually a total fail (partly because the urban freeways are built by the city of toronto...which copies the ugly designs of USA) but the biggest project to look forward to in Ontario is the Windsor-Essex Parkway under construction to connect 401 to the new Detroit River Crossing...that will show if MTO can truly build an urban freeway to the same aesthetic standards as their suburban ones...lets keep our fingers crossed...

If anyone wants an example of a beautiful/aesthetically pleasing urban freeway (which is adjacent to an up and coming dense, gentrifying neighbourhood), look no further than Central Expressway {US-75}
[All Images taken from texasfreeway.com]

The last 2 images are of the service roads that are parallel to the freeway. Notice how you cannot even see a freeway from ground level? The
landscaping and design features ensure that pedestrians do not even notice that a freeway is running below in a trench...

 

[W. K. Lis]

A photo from 1939 of the Queen Elizabeth Way where it started at the Humber River.

Cloverleaf interchange construction at QEW & Hwy 27, facing east towards Toronto (1940)

Shows that over time, the highways expand taking over the grass with concrete.

 

[M II A II R II K]

But there's more of a need to remove intrusive highways downtown like the Gardiner. At least the DVP is in an already existing valley.

 

[nfitz]

But there's more of a need to remove intrusive highways downtown like the Gardiner. At least the DVP is in an already existing valley.

I'd sooner we remove the intrusive railway corridor. Walking under the Gardiner is easy.

Though if we do get rid of the Gardiner, by far the worst piece is from Kingsway to Jameson ... that really cuts off access to the lake. Perhaps we can close this piece first!

 

[dunkalunk]

I'd sooner we remove the intrusive railway corridor. Walking under the Gardiner is easy.

Though if we do get rid of the Gardiner, by far the worst piece is from Kingsway to Jameson ... that really cuts off access to the lake. Perhaps we can close this piece first!

How?

 

[SlickFranky]

How?

I'd be equally interested to hear a cost-effective way to make this happen. Are we talking about running along the lake bottom here, or what? My sarcasm-senses are tingling, but that's not generally nfitz's style...

 

[nfitz]

I'd be equally interested to hear a cost-effective way to make this happen.

I'd simply tender it for demolition - and sell the land to pay for the cost.

And no, I'm not being completely serious. My point - vague as it might appear - is the issue we've been sold is that we have to get rid of the Gardiner because it cuts off access to the lake. And yet by far the worst example of this is around the bay from the Humber River to the Ex. And yet no plan raised actually proposed getting rid of that bit of the Gardiner. If that section was simple houses along the edge of the lake, with parkland, we'd no more consider building an expressway there now, than we would building an expressway from Woodbine to Victoria Park south of Queen Street.

No magical answer I'm afraid ... but I don't think the status quo is it; and I'm not sure the elevated section of the Gardiner is really our biggest issue.

 

[M II A II R II K]

As with the railway and the Gardiner in certain areas they could be covered up and have new space available above it.

 

[gweed123]

I've always maintained that any construction project that involves burying the Gardiner should also involve burying the rail corridor with it. I would imagine something like a stacked tunnel would be appropriate (most likely with the highway on the bottom). That way we get both strips of land to become available for development, one with no restrictions on it at all (the one that has the tunnels underneath would naturally have some more complicated engineering involved with building on top of).

Yes, it would increase the cost of the project compared to just burying one, but we would get double the amount of land back as a result. If the difference in cost is less than double the cost of just burying one, I say go for it.

Bonus with it: You'd get electrification of the rail line, something we'd be spending money on anyway, haha.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

I think that's what they call scope creep.

AoD

 

[kEiThZ]

I think that's what they call scope creep.

AoD

Indeed. However, where there's a solid cost-benefit case, it's not a bad thing. Not all scope creep is bad. It's how you manage and respond to scope changes that determines success or failure.

The problem here is, exactly as nfitz pointed out. People keep talking about the elevated section of the Gardiner. But it's actually the whole Gardiner and the rail corridor. If you want to connect the city to the lake, you have to burry all that. In reality, people who talk about the just elevated portions are underscoping the project.

 

[gweed123]

Indeed. However, where there's a solid cost-benefit case, it's not a bad thing. Not all scope creep is bad. It's how you manage and respond to scope changes that determines success or failure.

The problem here is, exactly as nfitz pointed out. People keep talking about the elevated section of the Gardiner. But it's actually the whole Gardiner and the rail corridor. If you want to connect the city to the lake, you have to burry all that. In reality, people who talk about the just elevated portions are underscoping the project.

But the cost-benefit for the Humber Bay section is completely different than for the Jameson-DVP section. Realistically, in order to get a decent return on investment, you need to put in some pretty substantial density on the reclaimed land. This may work along the Humber Bay section, but I don't think it would be as dense as it would need to be in order to support the DVP and rail corridor being buried through that stretch. If anything, a bridge across the Humber Bay would be more economical.

The real return money from the project would be the lands between Bathurst and Jarvis, realistically. The number of condo and office units that you could pack onto those lands would be astounding.

 

[Hipster Duck]

To play devil's advocate, why do we really want to psychologically connect the waterfront to the rest of our city? It never was a part of our civic consciousness until 30 years ago and once down there, it's hard to warm up and feel an innate connection to what basically amounts to programmed space and megablock housing. This is a different kettle of fish than Boston, where the Central Artery ran through the heart of downtown and cut the historic North End off from the rest of the city.

The cost of psychologically reconnecting Toronto to a waterfront it was only told to celebrate by higher governments would be astronomical. Even in cities that were successful in reclaiming their waterfront from industry and freeways (eg. San Francisco) going down to the water's edge feels more like an act of charity than something instinctive - like going to Bloor street or Queen Street. I also have a feeling that if we would have lavished the rest of the city - the parts that people actually go to on their own initiative - with the kind of landscaping and parks treatment that we've doled out on the waterfront, we might actually have had some beautiful streetscapes in the places that Torontonians naturally gravitate to.

Finally, if we really do think that the waterfront is worth connecting to the rest of the city, could we spend that money on one big promenade, instead? Something like a "High Line" that runs above Bay street from Union Station to the Ferry Docks? It's certainly cheaper than burying a freeway.