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Roads: Gardiner Expressway

Wrench said:
Why not just build concrete tunnel blocks just like the Danes & Swiss did when they built there Highway connection under water !
If they can build a highway under water so can we & put it out in lake Ontario. From the Humber river in the West to the Don in the west.
Have a couple of inter changes under water or three to the center core.
Could take 10 years and a lot of money & still have that ugly , rotting & old ages design. That should be buried but not just removed and only have Lakeshore widened a little bit. That would be a disaster not having through way connecting the Qew & the 404!
Armageddon
Then tear it down after the dredged tunnel highway is place.
Wow what a beautiful city we would have.
But you know that will never happen !
There isn't any European foresight here we can't even build a new subway without it being talked about for 30 to 40 years.
Oh well just a thought.
So lets just throw more more at the ugly raised highway a least we will still have a connection with the new Hybrid route.
Toronto will never be a World class city a long as it retains this piece of crap!
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I too don't understand why tunneling under the lake isn't being considered. Doing so wouldn't impede traffic, as the Gardiner would only come down once the under water tunnel(s) is completed (as you said). How great would it be to have the Gardiner, Lakeshore and The Queensway buried and High Park and the rest of the land abutting the lake, connected to the water again?
 
Some of you people here just come up with the most pipe dream ideas and think that somehow it makes complete sense. So why is tunnelling under the lake not being considered? I don't know, maybe it's because of the astronomical cost? Lets just ignore the engineering challenges for a moment and ask yourself whether spending tens of billions of dollars on a piece of car infrastructure makes any sense at all, at a time when the need for more transit has never been more urgent in this city. For that money you can probably build enough transit to eliminate the whole goddamn highway in the first place.
 
salsa said:
Some of you people here just come up with the most pipe dream ideas and think that somehow it makes complete sense. So why is tunnelling under the lake not being considered? I don't know, maybe it's because of the astronomical cost? Lets just ignore the engineering challenges for a moment and ask yourself whether spending tens of billions of dollars on a piece of car infrastructure makes any sense at all, at a time when the need for more transit has never been more urgent in this city. For that money you can probably build enough transit to eliminate the whole goddamn highway in the first place.
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I was being half serious. I'm aware that the cost would be massive . Even if we're just talking about the section from the Don River to Jarvis; the land that would form the removed section of highway could be developed, which would help recoup at least some of the cost (Galen Weston -- under the persuasion of a gogoplata -- could cover the rest).
 
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The latest noise about throwing $25 mil at beautifying the underside of the Gardiner: More lipstick on a pig. We will pay for these half-measures with a half-measure international reputation. Either bury the Gardiner or remove it. I sense we'll get the option 3 hybrid with this post-apocalyptic park under a highway.
 
Euphoria said:
The latest noise about throwing $25 mil at beautifying the underside of the Gardiner: More lipstick on a pig. We will pay for these half-measures with a half-measure international reputation. Either bury the Gardiner or remove it. I sense we'll get the option 3 hybrid with this post-apocalyptic park under a highway.
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Take a trip to Underpass Park and I highly doubt you'll be calling it post-apocalyptic. This type of improvement of dead space is urban. Kids skateboarding or playing b-ball under a highway? That's about as urban as urban can be.

And frankly, I don't envision a massive multi-lane surface highway as proposed with the Gardiner's removal to be urban. I think that's suburban. The real enemy when crossing USRC / Lake Shore Blvd / the Gardiner isn't the Gardiner IMO. The enemy is Lake Shore Blvd. Sure the Gardiner's on/offramps and how they meet the surface network need to be improved (which they will be). But I'd much rather walk under a bridge with either no traffic below it (or traffic-calming measures in place) than crossing a massive multi-lane highway (which will more than likely have light cycles timed in favour of traffic).

We should be reducing traffic on our surface network in the eastern waterfront, or removing it outright. Which I think a limited-access elevated highway does best.
 
I hear what you're saying. I think there's a hope that building a linear park under the Gardiner will have the feel of the High Line in NYC, the transformation of an old piece of urban transportation infrastructure into a vital, well-programmed public space in the core. I think there are interesting elements to the Loblaws development and that existing condo that uses the Gardiner as a canopy for the entrance. I also frankly enjoy the drive through the forest of steel and glass condos. For the driver it's an exhilarating urban experience. Maybe with some really unique programming that takes advantage of the context, this plan could be something special. I think wherever possible, if the elevated Gardiner must remain intact west of Jarvis, there should be development underneath it, so that it disappears to pedestrians' sightlines. Where the strips are too narrow or other considerations prevent development, a linear park, market stalls, skate parks, ice rinks -- you name it -- are probably our next best option. The problem is that long swaths of the Gardiner are above Lakeshore Blvd. The combination of the elevated expressway with its pillars and ramps, and the wide arterial road of Lakeshore that you describe, make the experience of walking or cycling to the lake distinctly post-apocalyptic. Believe me, I love the urban park experience. Bring on the graffiti walls, planters, murals. I'm just not sure that at the end of it all we're going to feel satisfied. I think we're kicking the can of removing or burying the Gardiner down the road. Maybe that's the best we can do right now.
 
For the hybrid section of the Gardiner, I'd hope that any sections that are not elevated will be put in a trench, so that we can develop over top like the City hopes to see happen above the train tracks west of Simcoe. Basically, let's try to make it disappear as much as possible, and where we can't, take advantage of the canopy and program beneath it.
 
Reading through report ....

"Funding sources that will be explored and reported back on may include, but would not be limited to .... Potential of utilizing new revenue tools, including road tolls."
​
As if ...
 
From the same Public Works and Infrastructure Committee - they want to shut down the Gardiner and DVP again in 2016, 2017, and 2018 for a triathlon.

Why is shutting down major expressways in Toronto considered acceptable?
 
salsa said:
Some of you people here just come up with the most pipe dream ideas and think that somehow it makes complete sense. So why is tunnelling under the lake not being considered? I don't know, maybe it's because of the astronomical cost? Lets just ignore the engineering challenges for a moment and ask yourself whether spending tens of billions of dollars on a piece of car infrastructure makes any sense at all, at a time when the need for more transit has never been more urgent in this city. For that money you can probably build enough transit to eliminate the whole goddamn highway in the first place.
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This. It was discussed in one of the GO threads I believe, but with enough funding and investment, I believe that GO-RER on the Lakeshore line could reach service levels comparable if not surpassing the Gardiner's overall capacity.

We can retain a boulevard for people absolutely needing automobile access, but imagine a future where everyone would drive to a GO-RER station along the Lakeshore line (situated every 2km), park their car, and board GO-RER to Union.

This is what the world class city that the pro-tunnel advocates speak of, would be envisioning.
 
WislaHD said:
This. It was discussed in one of the GO threads I believe, but with enough funding and investment, I believe that GO-RER on the Lakeshore line could reach service levels comparable if not surpassing the Gardiner's overall capacity.
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It is probably already well beyond Gardiner's capacity during AM peak.

Between Lake Shore East and Lake Shore West I see 12 trains (6 trains east) arriving at Union between 8am and 9am. They have a seated capacity of about 24,000 which GO probably achieves (end cars may have empty seats but middle cars have standing passengers).

Highway lanes typically get about 2500 vehicles per hour during ideal conditions and Gardiner has 6 lanes, so it might hit 15,000 vehicles between 8am and 9am. With low vehicle occupancy rates (around 1.1 per vehicle) GO should win, and that assumes free-flowing tightly-packed traffic on Gardiner which most days isn't what happens.
 
Build on/off ramps to the Gardiner west of Bathurst and build a Front Street extension west of Bathurst. Build a Go station in that corridor for the Go Lakeshore line to eliminate the need for those riders to use Union, and build multi-level parking garages in the immediate vicinity of the new station. Have a spur from the new Downtown Relief Line come down from Queen to access this Go station (at least streetcars). Now you've got a means to increase the number of train sets on the Go lines heading into the city, including Smart Trac, and a means to keep cars out of the core because commuters can park and get on transit. At that point you can remove the elevated Gardiner. (An additional option if we insist on maintaining an expressway connection between the Gardiner west and the DVP is to make it an underground toll highway. I say put it in the same tunnel as the DRL. Tolls can pay the capital costs of the tunneling the DRL. It also means we wouldn't have to deal with the costs of keeping the existing Gardiner open as we try to tunnel underneath it, because we're tunneling elsewhere, and could keep the existing Gardiner open until the tunnel is complete.)
 
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