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Roads: Gardiner Expressway

All three options are a joke. All these tradeoffs of development land or additional money, for a couple minutes of driving convenience.

Y'all can go on and debate these 3 new hybrid options, I'm still bitter that our city council of the 20th century ignored the wisdom of tearing it down.
 
There's also this bit:
When a Hybrid alternative solution was originally developed and investigated in response to PWIC’s 2014 direction, a key operational desire for the alternative was the maintenance of a safe expressway link between the DVP and the Gardiner, and the minimization of any travel time loss. A new ramp connection with a low design speed, while investigated, was not proposed by the Gardiner East EA project team at that time due chiefly to road safety concerns associated with the linking of two high-speed expressways with a directional ramp at a much lower design speed. ... Following discussions with the Ontario Ministry of Transportation and City engineering staff, the Gardiner East EA project team determined that maintaining a higher speed connection between the Gardiner and DVP would be necessary for safety reasons in accordance with the direction from PWIC.
Click to expand...
Oookay? And yet now they're proposing a ramp with a much lower design speed. So if it was necessary for safety reasons before, what happened? Council just had to say the magic words and now everything's fine?
 
smably said:
There's also this bit:
Oookay? And yet now they're proposing a ramp with a much lower design speed. So if it was necessary for safety reasons before, what happened? Council just had to say the magic words and now everything's fine?
Click to expand...

It's always about what you're willing to live with - they are going to be looking into safety issues further, but really, what's so shocking and new about slowing down on a ramp connector between two highways? Much to do about nothing.

In any case, since they are likely going to be choosing an option with a significant amount of new build, they should look at making sure what gets built is visually exciting. Heck, who knows it may even serve as a template for further rebuilds down the line.

AoD
 
Two of the unsolicited, off-the-wall proposals in the document seem much more interesting to me. At least the city is going to keep looking at them. No evidence of any imagination at all in the official proposals.
 
salsa said:
What is the "rail bridge widening" about under option 3?
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If I read it right, it sounds like they want to increase the east span (somehow). Figure for Concept 3 says "easterly extension of rail bridge". I am not sure how old that bridge is, but I would assume it would be better to just replace the entire thing.
 
smably said:
There's also this bit:

Oookay? And yet now they're proposing a ramp with a much lower design speed. So if it was necessary for safety reasons before, what happened? Council just had to say the magic words and now everything's fine?
Click to expand...
I thought the whole problem with the Eastern Gardiner was that it had to be replaced anyways. Now it looks like they prefer the options that require the least amount of Gardiner to be removed. Same as in the West, it only need a deck replacement and not a more major replacement.
 
BurlOak said:
I thought the whole problem with the Eastern Gardiner was that it had to be replaced anyways. Now it looks like they prefer the options that require the least amount of Gardiner to be removed. Same as in the West, it only need a deck replacement and not a more major replacement.
Click to expand...

Nope, the whole problem was always been that it needed major repairs - and whether it is worth it to keep it as is.

AoD
 
I prefer the dropped flyovers because they open up riverbanks, but can understand the ramp issues. That said, if they can build a development over a rail yard in New York, I don't see why you can't build a flyover over the rail yard. In their flyover options, they are assuming they have to build it only over city-owned land, which seems an unnecessary constraint.
 
salsa said:
So the ramp speed that staff were originally fighting so hard to protect turns out to be only 10 km/h less? Big whoop.
Click to expand...

Just goes that you shouldn't take staff reports at face value.

It's actually a bit disturbing that I am saying that. Shows how easy it is for staff to manipulate outcomes, and kind of supports the whole right wing ideology that facts aren't too important when making these decisions.

New question... Are these ramps being over designed? Would we be able to essentially build them like a 400 series flyover ramp and save money? (Ie. single piers for support, wider spans between supports, etc.)
 
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