Toronto Underpass Park | ?m | ?s | Waterfront Toronto

The_Architect said:
And you plan on paying for the burying of the Gardiner how, exactly? With the magical fairy and the magic money tree?

There are realists on UT, not just people who have all these fantasies but no way to put them into action. Do you know how much it cost Boston to bury their highways? There are much better solutions to do with the Gardiner than expensively burying it.

The Gardiner isn't even as much of a barrier as people are saying and whining about.. The REAL barrier separating the downtown from the lake are the tracks.
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Roughly 22 billion. Though the Gardiner will most probably cost cheaper. And every single Bostonian i've spoken to said in the end it's a lot better of a space. Yes it's an expensive project and i agree with you that the rail tracks are a bigger problem. However, you don't shoot a person down and call them a clow just because they brought up the suggestion. But that's what everyone here does. When the student came out with a plan to build a park on top of the gardiner he was ridiculed. For what? For thinking outside the box. But that's life in Toronto, big plans die because too many small minds.
 
Thanos said:
are you not aware you're on Urban Toronto where people don't like change and think very small. No wonder Toronto is considered boring by outsiders. Every time someone thinks of a big plan he's ridiculed as a lost cause.
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Toronto needs somebody like Obama. Somebody who's not afraid of a big change (or improvement) for better and who actually have the strength to make the change.
Some people say "those good things are impossible to achieve in reality" only because "they" can't. Those ordinary people are not good enough.
Good news is that Toronto can finally expect some real brains coming in (or simply staying) now that both Montreal and the US have fallen into Chaos.
 
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Thanos said:
When the student came out with a plan to build a park on top of the gardiner he was ridiculed. For what? For thinking outside the box. But that's life in Toronto, big plans die because too many small minds.
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I think I recall that it was a principal from Quadrangle that publicly put forward the idea of transforming the elevated Gardiner into an elevated garden.

Stupidest notion ever. Why would you clog up the freeway with an elevated ongoing maintenance issue!? You'd still be left with the issue of, uh, the whole freeway traffic thing, and you would still have a dark underbelly blocking access to the lakeshore. And you couldn't even see the park from anywhere else but the viaduct so you'd have to build a million secondary access stairs/ramps to get to it.

Besides, I kind of like the Gardiner - esp where it passes through downtown as far as the parkdale exit. It looks amazing at night from Queen to see the stream of cars flowing along the horizon.

But, and I think it has been suggested here already, burrying portions of the rail corridor makes a lot of sense. Esp west of Spadina and as far as Roncesvalles in intermittent chunks, providing greenspaces bridging between the city and the lake. That would be incredible.

I can deal with the gardiner. Better to keep the car noise up there. And, it would be a shame to lose that super cool experience of flying through the city on the elevated expressway at night.
 
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Thanos said:
Roughly 22 billion. Though the Gardiner will most probably cost cheaper. And every single Bostonian i've spoken to said in the end it's a lot better of a space. Yes it's an expensive project and i agree with you that the rail tracks are a bigger problem. However, you don't shoot a person down and call them a clow just because they brought up the suggestion. But that's what everyone here does. When the student came out with a plan to build a park on top of the gardiner he was ridiculed. For what? For thinking outside the box. But that's life in Toronto, big plans die because too many small minds.
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The pre- Big-dig viaduct in Boston actually generated some pretty interesting conditions. It's kind of sad to see it gone. The elevated expressway was full of mystique. Boston's north end, little italy, was a cultural island because of it, totally cut off by the viaduct, and right smack down town. People didn't even speak English - it was the closest thing to being in Italy. There were also all sorts of great spaces underneath the old iron roadway above. And the experience of driving through a forest of 19th and early 20th century buildings, 60 feet in the air, was incredible.

Admittedly though, the post Big-Dig open/greenspace affords it's own set of advantages.
 
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neubilder said:
I think I recall that it was a principal from Quadrangle that publicly put forward the idea of transforming the elevated Gardiner into an elevated garden.
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Wasn't it a Ryerson or UofT student?

neubilder said:
Stupidest notion ever. Why would you clog up the freeway with an elevated ongoing maintenance issue!?
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What maintenance issue? Several bridges around the world have pedestrian walkways on top. Why would Gardiner be so different?

neubilder said:
You'd still be left with the issue of, uh, the whole freeway traffic thing, and you would still have a dark underbelly blocking access to the lakeshore.
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The whole point is to improve what's there without tearing it down.

neubilder said:
And you couldn't even see the park from anywhere else but the viaduct so you'd have to build a million secondary access stairs/ramps to get to it.
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Kinda like the Highline Park in NYC and yet it's still verry successful.

neubilder said:
But, and I think it has been suggested here already, burrying portions of the rail corridor makes a lot of sense. Esp west of Spadina and as far as Roncesvalles in intermittent chunks, providing greenspaces bridging between the city and the lake. That would be incredible.
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Yes it would be better to spend the money on covering the tracks but that doesn't mean that we can't have a discussion and try to think of other solutions for the Gardiner other then tearing it down.
 
Sorry Thano, but you did not adequately address any of neubilder's concerns. Just because there are "several bridges around the world with" walkways on top, does not mean that there are not additional maintenance issues. Further, the Highland Park is nothing like the Gardiner, in either scale, location or context. And its legitimate to have concerns about the limitations of "prettying up" the underside of the highway in removing it as barrier (not to mention concerns about the city's ability to maintain the "pretty').
 
Thanos said in quotes:

"Wasn't it a Ryerson or UofT student?"

No, here is a link to the article.
http://www.thestar.com/yourcitymycity/article/799659--transforming-the-gardiner-into-a-garden?bn=1


"What maintenance issue? Several bridges around the world have pedestrian walkways on top. Why would Gardiner be so different?"

What maintenance issue? A 60-70 foot wide by several kilometer long bridge with hundreds of thousands of tons of earth and no drainage? Plus root systems that would need to be accommodated for in the design of the conversion? And it's several km's long? What maintenance issue?!

"The whole point is to improve what's there without tearing it down."

Uh, no. The whole point is dealing with the traffic requirements of the Gardiner Expressway in a less obtrusive manner. Ie, instead of the Gardiner.



"Kinda like the Highline Park in NYC and yet it's still verry successful."

Highline Park is an old railway corridor in an old part of the city. A completely different scale. The Gardiner is 2 to 3 times the height, 4-5 times the width, and is inaccessible other than via long on/off ramps.

"Yes it would be better to spend the money on covering the tracks but that doesn't mean that we can't have a discussion and try to think of other solutions for the Gardiner other then tearing it down.

This discussion has been ongoing for years and your contributions are stale.
 
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Riverdale Rink Rat said:
Uhh.. right there. Your park is over the rail lines, but it's the same airspace, give or take.
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I'm talking about only an elevated roadway - never said anything about additional levels for park space. Move the Gardiner over the rail lands and you can rip down the existing roadway and do what you like with Lakeshore - no need to bury it if you make it a 'Grand Avenue' like the Miller crew wanted. 2 lanes each way with transit ROW down the middle and start turning buildings towards the road instead of looking onto garbage bins and storage yards.


As to Underpass Park itself, I think the color changing LED uplighting of the concrete columns will do wonders. The renders aren't entirely accurate as to how it will look, but it will have a strong impact on the feel of the place when the sun isn't the main source of light.
 
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Underpass Park (the sections east of St Lawrence Street) is moving along quite well. Most of the concrete seems to have been poured, they have erected playground equipment and installed the soft stuff around it. Today they are testing lights and planting plants. As it is surrounded by other construction projects (River City etc) I assume it will not open until 2012 but it's certainly moving along.
 
One would have thought that the City would have done their repairs sooner but ..

This from WT Board minutes of September 20111.

"Underpass Park construction has commenced but the City has advised that the overpass structures need repair before the park can be opened to the
public. The City will need a number of months to complete this work so opening is planned for early Spring, 2012."
 
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