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Roads: Gardiner Expressway catch-all, incl. Hybrid Design (2015-onwards)

This is after they buried it in a very, very expensive tunnel.

And the motivation there was mainly to avoid damage & injuries/deaths from a future earthquake.

And like every other example that people love to cite, there’s a much bigger freeway very close by — in this case, 10 lanes of Interstate 5 that are 500 meters away. I don’t think anyone would object to removing the Gardiner if there was a 10 lane freeway where Richmond and Adelaide are located.
 
Work starts on the rehab of the Gardiner between Jarvis and Cherry Sts with closure of the WB offramp to York/Bay/Yonge for reconstruction starting tonight: https://www.cp24.com/news/it-will-n...-off-ramp-from-wb-gardiner-to-close-1.4508183

First part of the $2.3B work to rehab the existing highway. Closures of other ramps will follow later before this contract is completed in 2021.

While Toronto is still worshipping the automobile, other cities around the world are banning them.

If I lived close to work in a town of 300k I would probably bike too. A bit more difficult when you are 10km+ from the work place.
 
If I lived close to work in a town of 300k I would probably bike too. A bit more difficult when you are 10km+ from the work place.

I'm not sure why the alternatives to commuting by car are limited to cycling.

Transit is a perfectly reasonable option.

For shorter distances, walking is also quite reasonable.

What's being highlighted isn't just one city or one initiative. Its a determined effort, in many cities around the globe to shift away from a 'car first' line of thinking.

Part of such a shift is reducing expenses on maintaining high-cost auto-centric infrastructure by way of demolishing/narrowing highways, and/or by tolling them.

The key element in this is freeing up room in municipal/regional budgets to make additional investments in public transportation, and in the public realm, such as bike lanes, wider sidewalks and pedestrian-priority zones.

Put another way, if the choice were made to replace the eastern Gardiner with a lower-to-maintain grade-level road, the savings in costs might be enough to pay for the Waterfront East LRT and/or the GO Station at East Harbour. Making it easier for more people to choose alternatives to the car when commuting.
 
Thought it might be interesting to note that Sydney opened the first phase of it's new underground M4 freeway this week.

The tunnel extends the M4 motorway 5.5km closer to downtown. It's the first of a 3 phase project that will create a new, almost entirely underground loop from the M4 to the M5 near the airport. This includes a new full free-flow interchange just north of the airport and several other complicated tunnel interchanges and access routes.

While the project won't run directly downtown, it will connect to the Western Distribution Freeway which is a downtown freeway that already exists and ends about 2km outside of downtown.


A map of the full project is available here:

 
Work starts on the rehab of the Gardiner between Jarvis and Cherry Sts with closure of the WB offramp to York/Bay/Yonge for reconstruction starting tonight: https://www.cp24.com/news/it-will-n...-off-ramp-from-wb-gardiner-to-close-1.4508183

First part of the $2.3B work to rehab the existing highway. Closures of other ramps will follow later before this contract is completed in 2021.



If I lived close to work in a town of 300k I would probably bike too. A bit more difficult when you are 10km+ from the work place.

I bike from central Etobicoke to work downtown and back every day. 15 km one way.
 
Thought it might be interesting to note that Sydney opened the first phase of it's new underground M4 freeway this week.

The tunnel extends the M4 motorway 5.5km closer to downtown. It's the first of a 3 phase project that will create a new, almost entirely underground loop from the M4 to the M5 near the airport. This includes a new full free-flow interchange just north of the airport and several other complicated tunnel interchanges and access routes.

While the project won't run directly downtown, it will connect to the Western Distribution Freeway which is a downtown freeway that already exists and ends about 2km outside of downtown.


A map of the full project is available here:

Sure, Sydney has an extensive and growing tunnelled expressway system which is more often than not a delight to use. But Sydney tolls these roads, and that would be unacceptable in Toronto.
 
Toronto 'worships' the automobile? Stop the over-the-top comments.

Is that particular comment a tad loaded? Perhaps.

But to be clear, it would be entirely reasonable in reference to the comments of @Juan_Lennon416, among others in a comparatively progressive and urban forum.

The clear reference here is that Toronto is one of very few cities, facing a decaying waterfront/downtown expressway to spend considerable sums maintaining, rather than removing it, burying it, or otherwise mitigating it.

That's not unfair or illogical. Its substantive and accurate.

Its not irrational or hyperbolic to point out that there might be better ways to spend the money when considering pollution, climate change, urban planning, housing demand etc.
 
I guess the ramp closure marks the start of the more disruptive aspects of the project but they've been working on the underside of the Gardiner for a few months now.

Some photos from this evening of the progress there.

The first two images are looking east from Jarvis.
20190716_194515_HDR.jpg


20190716_194728_HDR.jpg


This is looking east close to Sherbourne.
20190716_195357_HDR.jpg


Looking west from Parliament.
20190716_195855_HDR.jpg


Looking east from Parliament.
20190716_200046_HDR.jpg


The prefabrication site seemed dormant for a while. But the construction of these large structures has started up again recently.
20190716_201805_HDR.jpg
 
To be fair Toronto’s existing highway network is skeletal and our existing motor vehicle transportation mode share is high.

Also, somehow highway discussions always centre on commuter interests. Where routes are commuter focused they have potential to convert users to other transportation modes. However, aren’t Cities primarily and more fundamentally logistics hubs? It’s great optics to say you are tearing down a downtown highway that has declined into a commuter route but it’s convenient to omit the likely massive build out of logistics infrastructure at the city perimeters that took over that highways original function.
 

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