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

Whatever. See someone about your anger. TBM can handle 3 lanes. Read about Paris's A86. What do you mean, 90 degree angle? Who builds a tunnel at that angle? The map is a general concept of the routes. Of course there are no sharp angles. Have you been to Montreal or Boston? Both have underground expressways through their downtown cores. Do you know the parcels of land west of Bathurst north of the tracks? Do some research. I didn't pull these ideas out of my ass. The Front Street Extension is an old idea. Combining the DRL with a tunnel for the Gardiner is economical and good for the city. Better to pay more up front and meet long term goals than to throw a billion at a Gardiner Hybrid we'll want to tear down in 20 years. If TTC and Metrolinx determined it's permissible to tunnel a subway under either Queen or Richmond, then what I'm proposing isn't a stretch. There are boring machines that can dig diameters large enough to contain entire stations. A deck with two lanes and a service/shoulder lane and a deck with one platform and single direction railway can be accommodated in one tunnel. This project would require two tunnels.
 
Euphoria said:
Whatever. See someone about your anger. TBM can handle 3 lanes. Read about Paris's A86. What do you mean, 90 degree angle? Who builds a tunnel at that angle? The map is a general concept of the routes. Of course there are no sharp angles. Have you been to Montreal or Boston? Both have underground expressways through their downtown cores. Do you know the parcels of land west of Bathurst north of the tracks? Do some research. I didn't pull these ideas out of my ass. The Front Street Extension is an old idea. Combining the DRL with a tunnel for the Gardiner is economical and good for the city. Better to pay more up front and meet long term goals than to throw a billion at a Gardiner Hybrid we'll want to tear down in 20 years. If TTC and Metrolinx determined it's permissible to tunnel a subway under either Queen or Richmond, then what I'm proposing isn't a stretch. There are boring machines that can dig diameters large enough to contain entire stations. A deck with two lanes and a service/shoulder lane and a deck with one platform and single direction railway can be accommodated in one tunnel. This project would require two tunnels.
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Your plan is still flawed. Boston's big dig disaster cost $22B US and still suffers from leaking salt water. Not a good example. Montreal's A720 is more compatible but they didn't use any TBMs and is much shorter.

You map implied that it would be close to a right angle. I'm thinking you're talking about something like the 404 HOV SB to 401 WB tunnel? That's only 40km/h. It needs to start curving the Gardiner around Strachan and have it under everyone's home to have it close to 90km/h. That will work but you'll have to work with the ventilation shafts. Sure you can have 3+1 lane TBMs (it needs 3 lanes), they'll just be 12-15m wide meaning they'll be really deep. If you plan to have the Relief line on one deck and the highway on the second, the diameter would need to be even wider since the lanes are centred in the middle. The wider the TBM, the deeper it needs to be. The deeper it needs to be, the on/off ramps have to be longer. Your tunnel design is only good if you plan for just a start link from the current Gardiner to the DVP.

I know there's land beside the tracks. I'm not talking about that. Here's the problem, where does the on and off ramps go? You're going to need a lot of land to built those on/off ramps. The tunnel is already wider than the ROW on Richmond/Adelaide. The off ramp would have to branch out from the side of the tunnel. Those are space already under current building foundations so it's hard to build. The real question is low long does this tunnel last? All the salt in Canadian winter would cost a lot of problem with iron bolts between the tunnel liners.

I'm not a fan of this idea. Traffic just can't go anywhere when they exit from the off ramps. We need less cars in the core, not more. It's better to keep the Gardiner closer to the lake so traffic can buffer down there. I rather they take down the Gardiner and not spent a single dime for a new roadway. A much better way to save billions down the road. As I said, just build a large parking lot and force everyone to take transit with the relief line.
 
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Euphoria said:
Whatever. See someone about your anger. TBM can handle 3 lanes. Read about Paris's A86. What do you mean, 90 degree angle? Who builds a tunnel at that angle? The map is a general concept of the routes. Of course there are no sharp angles. Have you been to Montreal or Boston? Both have underground expressways through their downtown cores. Do you know the parcels of land west of Bathurst north of the tracks? Do some research. I didn't pull these ideas out of my ass. The Front Street Extension is an old idea. Combining the DRL with a tunnel for the Gardiner is economical and good for the city. Better to pay more up front and meet long term goals than to throw a billion at a Gardiner Hybrid we'll want to tear down in 20 years. If TTC and Metrolinx determined it's permissible to tunnel a subway under either Queen or Richmond, then what I'm proposing isn't a stretch. There are boring machines that can dig diameters large enough to contain entire stations. A deck with two lanes and a service/shoulder lane and a deck with one platform and single direction railway can be accommodated in one tunnel. This project would require two tunnels.
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We already discussed why this is nothing like Paris' A86. Repeating a bad idea over and over doesn't make it any better.
 
Its true that the best way to ease congestion (Perhaps the only way, even) is to toll the roads. But to make that work without clogging up city streets perpetually, you need to give commuters another viable way to get into the city. Unfortunately, both the subway system extensions and the GO RER system won't be up and running for years. And even when GO gets its act together, its frequency will be relatively low.

Once those are in place, sure - toll the roads. Toll the 401 too, for all I care. Doesn't have to be all the time - just during peak hours, in peak direction (If applicable).

Frankly, I don't think we should be encouraging more car trips. We should be building more transit and less expressways. Spending billions on a giant tunnel to house an expressway thats going to be constantly clogged up makes no sense to me, though it is a cool engineering project. At least the Gardiner gives you a nice view of the city as you sit in in traffic.
 
Imagine being clogged in the tunnels. Think of off those exhaustion the cars would make. Then having the passengers on the other deck smelling it all on the platforms above. They'll need heavy duty fans and major water pumps at every 10m to get all the waste out. Can't image all the money needed to keep the tunnel in a good shape.

I assume the rail line would be on the upper deck as it avoids all the water and is easier to build the station accesses.


They should just toll the entire downtown core during rush hour and get everyone onto transit.
 
Thank you for the thoughtful responses. I actually agree that the Gardiner should be removed, at least east of Jarvis. My point is simply, if we have to have one, bury it. The Hybrid idea is unsatisfactory.
 
I do want to respond to the technical question about how the underground expressway's on/off ramps would merge with the surface roadways. Richmond and Adelaide Streets between Bathurst and the DVP are four lanes each. Richmond does narrow down slightly west of John St., though it widens again just east of Portland. For that reason it's necessary to have the on/off ramps only along the four lane stretches. I would also stagger them. Have the two left lanes for flow-through traffic. Of the remaining two lanes, have the right-most lane for a bike path (only permissible where Richmond is four lanes wide; permissible for the entire length of Adelaide from Bathurst eastwards). Have the inside right lane (second from the right-most lane) as the lane for the on/off ramps and merges, as well as for parking (to reduce the violence of the roadway for pedestrians and cyclists). For example, there might be an off ramp from the expressway to the surface of Adelaide just east of Bathurst, which will require approx. 200 metres of merge room after the tunnel exit, which could then be followed by a row of parked cars, and finally followed by 200 metres of merge room before the on ramp. This configuration simply repeats, such that there are three or four on ramps staggered with three or four off ramps from Bathurst to the DVP. So, we have two fast flowing lanes on the left; a lane for tunnel on/off ramps, merges, and some parking; and finally on the right-most lane, a bike-lane. So the off-ramp merge-lane is never shared with the on-ramp merge lane, because it's always separated by a row of parking, but only one lane of traffic is dedicated to ramps and merges. I would keep merge lanes away from important north-south pedestrian corridors like John St., Spadina, Yonge, and Jarvis. Have the merges in the stretches of roadway with the least redeeming qualities. Then make King, Queen, John, Lakeshore Blvd., Front, and Wellington (between Clarence Square and Victoria Memorial Park) something special. Add ROW's for the streetcars on Queen AND King streets eventually. I'd love to see a ROW on College eventually, but that's another battle. The DRL stations will be located equidistantly between King and Queen (well, they end up being closer to Queen, because Richmond is very close to Queen and Adelaide is only slightly closer to King than it is to Queen). As mentioned, this makes the subway location similar to Montreal's Line One: parallel to and between two major streets (Sherbrooke and St. Catherine). In the expressway tunnel itself, the two left lanes are highway, the right-most lane is for merges, on/off ramps, and shoulder/service. The expressway is on the widest tunnel deck. The subway (single direction) is on the other deck. As mentioned, this plan requires two tunnels east of Bathurst. West of Bathurst, where the DRL isn't tunneled with the expressway, both directions of the DRL can be in one tunnel, on separate decks.
 
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AlvinofDiaspar said:
From the June WTDRP:

http://waterfrontoronto.ca/nbe/wcm/...&CACHEID=0fda42ac-4298-4f4a-83ca-70b1205839a1

AoD
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What a collosal waste of money. In 10-15 years, we won't even need urban expressways as self driving cars are going to change everything. Less vehicle ownership, cars driving in a train configuration, self regulating and synchronized traffic will make expressways within a city obsolete.

My only hope is that this is delayed like everything else in this city and put off long enough for a future city council to see the writing on the wall when the coming wave of self driving cars from all brands hit the roads in the next couple of years.
 
Sweet, if expressways aren't going to be needed then I can buy them at a discount. I would scoop up those assets in a heartbeat!
 
Accepting the context as is, this isn't a bad idea:

upload_2017-6-22_9-9-41.png


AoD
 

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MetroMan said:
What a collosal waste of money. In 10-15 years, we won't even need urban expressways as self driving cars are going to change everything. Less vehicle ownership, cars driving in a train configuration, self regulating and synchronized traffic will make expressways within a city obsolete.
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I doubt we can write off expressways that quickly, especially in assuming the speedy mass adoption of self-driving vehicles (there will be technical, regulatory and safety concerns raised- valid or not).
 
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jje1000 said:
I doubt we can write off expressways that quickly, especially in assuming the speedy mass adoption of self-driving vehicles (there will be technical, regulatory and safety concerns raised- valid of not).
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It is more likely that highways/expressways will become self-driving only first, where human driven cars will not be allowed to go on them at all.
 
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