Could rail have substituted Toronto's Urban Highways?

[salsa]

Not expanding transit after cancelling all of those expressway plans was one of the worst decisions this city made last century.

Don't forget to include the provincial government in your condemnation.

 

[W. K. Lis]

When the city created this landfill, it was for parkland.

Then they extended Lake Shore Blvd., but built the Sunnyside Amusement Park for the public to enjoy.

That was all lost, when the automobile became all important and the parkland (and houses) were turned over for the Gardiner Expressway.

 

[MisterF]

I was using Paris as an example of how it actually destroyed neighbourhoods. Napolean wanted to be able to suppress his people so he razed whole neighbourhoods to create these roads (so he can bring the army against his own citizens) and then gave the land beside them to his cronies for their mansions. So not something I would want to emulate.

Actually it can be a good comparison for the revised Lake Shore road. We are spending millions/billions to create a nice street just so that a developer can build a few condo's on the lake. Same can be said with the Unilever lands.

Historically if you look at Toronto we may be able to say the same thing about the old Ward.

I know about the history, but the end result is vastly different from a freeway. Regardless of the neighbourhoods that were destroyed, those grand boulevards are people places now, which can't be said about urban freeways. And again regardless of the history, we can still take lessons in the physical design of those boulevards and how they differ from University Avenue for example. And apply those lessons to grand boulevards we're trying to create on Highway 7 or Hurontario.

 

[WislaHD]

Someone factcheck me, but I think we could absolutely replace the entire Gardiner with a boulevard if we heavily upgraded the Lakeshore GO corridor.

 

[Juan_Lennon416]

Someone factcheck me, but I think we could absolutely replace the entire Gardiner with a boulevard if we heavily upgraded the Lakeshore GO corridor.

That's not going to happen!

 

[crs1026]

That's assuming that every driver is headed for somewhere accessible by the GO network. These days, my only use for the Gardiner is to go across downtown and up the Don Valley to the 401.

- Paul