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

Towered said:
So when is this disrespectful waste of tax payers money getting underway?
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The above quote from insertnamehere leads me to believe it is a great spend - and not ideological:

Compare that to the Gardiner east, with 120,000 AADT. That traffic level is typically accommodated by a congested 6 lane expressway, or preferably, 8 lanes. To be accomodated in an arterial road, 10-12 lanes would be needed.. there are no arterial roads over 8 lanes in Ontario, and very very few roads wider than 10 lanes anywhere in the globe. It is a key arterial connecting the old city of Toronto to places north and east.
 
Why does all this traffic passing through downtown need to be accommodated in the first place? We’re reducing the value of some pretty choice real estate so suburban drivers can have a free ride.
 
pman said:
Why does all this traffic passing through downtown need to be accommodated in the first place? We’re reducing the value of some pretty choice real estate so suburban drivers can have a free ride.
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Because there is no alternative.

I'd support tearing the Gardiner down once GO is at 5 min frequencies all day both ways and the city is blanketed in subway lines.
 
Of course there’s an alternative. Develop the land, do an urban public realm rather than a mega-Boulevard, collect the incremental taxes and save a billion or so. Stop the DVP at Richmond and toll it to regulate demand. Or if user pay couldn’t possibly apply to expressways, because...Ontario, then let the resulting congestion work its magic to encourage a modal shift among some drivers heading downtown, and a shift to 401/427 for drivers just using it as a bypass. Or bipass if you’re into Hot Fuzz.
 
pman said:
Of course there’s an alternative. Develop the land, do an urban public realm rather than a mega-Boulevard, collect the incremental taxes and save a billion or so. Stop the DVP at Richmond and toll it to regulate demand. Or if user pay couldn’t possibly apply to expressways, because...Ontario, then let the resulting congestion work its magic to encourage a modal shift among some drivers heading downtown, and a shift to 401/427 for drivers just using it as a bypass. Or bipass if you’re into Hot Fuzz.
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if you dead end the Gardiner at jarvis, for an expanded public realm, what do you do with 120,000 vehicles a day? some of them will disappear for sure, but with that you are making a whole lot of economic activity dry up.

The world will of course not end, but I really struggle to comprehend how an "expanded public realm" will truly extract more economic value from the land that a key, high traffic transportation corridor.
 
innsertnamehere said:
if you dead end the Gardiner at jarvis, for an expanded public realm, what do you do with 120,000 vehicles a day? some of them will disappear for sure, but with that you are making a whole lot of economic activity dry up.

The world will of course not end, but I really struggle to comprehend how an "expanded public realm" will truly extract more economic value from the land that a key, high traffic transportation corridor.
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I don't see why it would be that difficult to comprehend.

A slightly less wide grand boulevard does not diminish carrying capacity that much (and the large boulevard showed as quite manageable.)

It is in fact partially off-set in the context of completing a local street grid.

The carrying capacity of two-way, all-day, RER on Lakeshore East and Stoufville far exceeds the volume of 2 lanes of road through downtown east or 2 existing lanes of the Gardiner in this area.

Add capacity from the Relief Line and your swimming in capacity.

Now compare than with freeing up even 7m of new land along the length of Jarvis to the DVP, you free up at least six hectares or 15 acres of development.

The yield on that in jobs + residents at anywhere near downtown densities is huge. That is very literal and very conservative, considering what is now land-locked (non-functional parcels that could be made functional by alignment shifts for a new road. It also discounts increased value on existing developed parcels due to increased desirability.

I'm not counting anything on the DVP ROW south of Richmond due to flooding issues and instead assuming we could get new parkland out of that area to the tune of another about 1.5ha or 4 acres.
 
Ideally, the thing should be tunnelled to Park Lawn.
Don't worry, one day, I will be able to pay for it out of my own pocket and I will make it so.

The thing is useful (I, personally, use it daily to get to and from work) but it's a heinous and pustulent scar on the city's face. Or a malignant tumour even.

Let me just hustle a few more blackjack tables and we'll get her buried where she belongs.
 
Tunneling is the best option (though not entirely feasible as some envision). But what's the next best thing? An elevated solution, one improved over the original highway existing today. Trenched is garbage since it creates a more enormous barrier than today; a surface boulevard could be *okay*, but it leaves a heckuva lot of traffic volume on the surface (while still creating a major barrier). Seems to me like improving the Gardiner is pretty solid.

The notion that it cuts the city or stymies development is not really true. We got development right up alongside it, and the real barrier is crossing Lake Shore. Besides, right in this very city we have renowned public spaces below highways. Underpass Park is always hopping, haven't checked out Bentway but I'm sure it's good too. A country that I'd love to visit and is very bicycle and foot-friendly is Japan, and they have lots of elevated highways through their cities.

And to add on to Insertname's post about 120k vehicles per day. For starters that's a sizable number and this city's core surface road network is bursting with little to no room for more. But what should also be considered is that those are vehicle numbers, and many of those vehicles do carry more than 1 individual. This isn't a suburban office park seeing the 1.3avg, there are many GO and intercity buses included in that number which rely on a easy movement in/out/across downtown.
 
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