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

[NY99]

There's no reason why the Gardiner couldn't veer north underground just west of Bathurst and reemerge with ramps onto the DVP and Lakeshore,

where would you place the exit/entrance ramps? In a location that wouldn’t destroy the urban realm/overwhelm local road capacity/distrupt pedestrian flow, that is.
Much, much harder than you think

 

[sche]

where would you place the exit/entrance ramps? In a location that wouldn’t destroy the urban realm/overwhelm local road capacity/distrupt pedestrian flow, that is.
Much, much harder than you think

Well, pretty much putting exit ramps anywhere would be better than the current Gardiner. Besides, a Seattle type scenario would also work with no ramps.

I don't understand why the Gardiner isn't being buried in the same tunnel as the Ontario Line. There's no reason why the Gardiner couldn't veer north underground just west of Bathurst and reemerge with ramps onto the DVP and Lakeshore, but when such solutions were floated years ago, the consensus was that maintaining an elevated highway in modified form (Hybrid) at great expense with a few parks below it around Fort York (The Bentway) is as high as we're going to shoot. Depressingly "on-the-cheap" as always. I hope at this point there are at least creative solutions to sprucing up the crossings at Lakeshore under the Gardiner in the core. York and Lakeshore isn't too bad, but Spadina and Lakeshore, Yonge and Lakeshore, and Jarvis and Lakeshore are inhumanely grim. At least allow market stalls and food vendors to set up shop and create continuity where there are gaping holes in the streetscape. Bright lighting and art installations would go a long way on the medians between the east and westbound lanes and ramps. I'm surprised how badly programmed these spaces are.

I'm all for trying to spruce up and improve the space below the Gardiner to improve the pedestrian experience. That should really be happening.

However, the idea of putting the Gardiner in the same tunnel as the Ontario Like is kind of daft. Burying the Gardiner is a far greater undertaking than the Ontario Line, and any such proposal would be more like moving the Ontario Line into a new buried Gardiner, not putting the Gardiner in the Ontario Line tunnel. The Gardiner could never use the Ontario line route due to turning radius and lack of space - it would be a totally different route, most likely along the same general Lake Shore corridor. If I were to hazard a guess as to the combined cost, it would probably be like 30-40 billion+ (like the equivalent of 3+ Ontario Lines, or like 6+ Eglinton Crosstown LRTs)

 

[ciceror]

So how whats going to happen if an accident happens in those tunnels? Are they big enough for emergency vehicles to pass through? It certainty can't just have 2 lanes like in the picture

 

[afransen]

It could be ridiculous today but you never know what tomorrow brings. With new innovative ideas and inventions to tunnel underground to speed up the digging process . Who thought the Jetsons 1960s cartoon idea of viewing a person on a screen tv would become a reality. And now it's a normal thing to do on Skype etc.

Photo by Hanna Barbra
View attachment 284554

It's funny to think about the the failure of imagination. In the 90's, everyone though video calls were going to happen, but it was going to be done on a bulky box mounted in your kitchen.

 

[Undead]

It could be ridiculous today but you never know what tomorrow brings. With new innovative ideas and inventions to tunnel underground to speed up the digging process . Who thought the Jetsons 1960s cartoon idea of viewing a person on a screen tv would become a reality. And now it's a normal thing to do on Skype etc.

Photo by Hanna Barbra
View attachment 284554

I get what you're saying but it sounds a bit like a false equivalency, no? Besides, if tunnelling gets that cheap, we can just build as many subways as we want. Solves all our transit woes.

 

[cd concept]

I get what you're saying but it sounds a bit like a false equivalency, no? Besides, if tunnelling gets that cheap, we can just build as many subways as we want. Solves all our transit woes.

If you think 100 plus years ago a tunnel for rail and roads were blasted out with dynamite in the mountains. Which had a lot of man power and took way longer than today to get finished. And Shoring and digging plus dynamiting in certain areas were used for the subway system. Maybe a more advanced drilling system could be developed. Or some kind of chemical that could soften of melt the earth to make drilling easy and fast could be possible in the future .

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

The "problem" isn't building the tunnels - those are technical and cost issues; the problem is where you will dump the road traffic - something that's already saturated.

AoD

 

[Rainforest]

I don't understand why the Gardiner isn't being buried in the same tunnel as the Ontario Line. There's no reason why the Gardiner couldn't veer north underground just west of Bathurst and reemerge with ramps onto the DVP and Lakeshore, but when such solutions were floated years ago, the consensus was that maintaining an elevated highway in modified form (Hybrid) at great expense with a few parks below it around Fort York (The Bentway) is as high as we're going to shoot. Depressingly "on-the-cheap" as always. I hope at this point there are at least creative solutions to sprucing up the crossings at Lakeshore under the Gardiner in the core. York and Lakeshore isn't too bad, but Spadina and Lakeshore, Yonge and Lakeshore, and Jarvis and Lakeshore are inhumanely grim. At least allow market stalls and food vendors to set up shop and create continuity where there are gaping holes in the streetscape. Bright lighting and art installations would go a long way on the medians between the east and westbound lanes and ramps. I'm surprised how badly programmed these spaces are.

I think the buried Gardiner would be a good idea, except for the astronomical cost.

All other problems, with the ramps location and the emergency vehicle access, could be solved. Tunneled expressways aren't uncommon, Montreal has some for example.

But the cost .. we can build the second Relief Line (OL as designed will fill up in a few decades, and will need another relief), and add a partly tunneled Dufferin LRT, for the price of tunneling the 6-8 lanes wide expressway.

 

[cd concept]

The "problem" isn't building the tunnels - those are technical and cost issues; the problem is where you will dump the road traffic - something that's already saturated.

AoD

I think the vehicles in the future will be smart to flow in an organized fashion in traffic according to traffic light mods etc. And the proposed highway tunnels will have toll radar creating tax revenue for future city infrastructure. You still need more road access for buses, trucks, cabs etc. As for the city of Toronto alone will grow and extra million in the future from 3 million .

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

I think the vehicles in the future will be smart to flow in an organized fashion in traffic according to traffic light mods etc. And the proposed highway tunnels will have toll radar creating tax revenue for future city infrastructure. You still need more road access for buses, trucks, cabs etc. As for the city of Toronto alone will grow and extra million in the future from 3 million .

I have some doubts about how much extra capacity you can squeeze out from existing surface roads in built up area (which is unlikely to change) in an unpredictable urban environment. Also if you argue you can squeeze out more capacity in surface roads through innovation, you can also apply the same principle to highways - which is actually more amenable to this type of innovation.

Plus if you want to run with the notion of innovation, you are probably more likely to see personalized air transportation.

AoD

 

[W. K. Lis]

I have some doubts about how much extra capacity you can squeeze out from existing surface roads in built up area (which is unlikely to change) in an unpredictable urban environment. Also if you argue you can squeeze out more capacity in surface roads through innovation, you can also apply the same principle to highways - which is actually more amenable to this type of innovation.

Plus if you want to run with the notion of innovation, you are probably more likely to see personalized air transportation.

AoD

In addition, with so-called autonomous vehicles (driver-less) they'll still use up real estate with NO ONE inside them, and the fuel to power them. If electrical, there would be no fuel tax to collect revenue from to pay for the provincial highways (the Gardiner and Don Valley would be maintained with property taxes, with the 905ers use them for free, if we continue to use them with tolls).

 

[asher__jo]

In addition, with so-called autonomous vehicles (driver-less) they'll still use up real estate with NO ONE inside them, and the fuel to power them. If electrical, there would be no fuel tax to collect revenue from to pay for the provincial highways (the Gardiner and Don Valley would be maintained with property taxes, with the 905ers use them for free, if we continue to use them with tolls).

If Toronto is to have freeways, then tolling them should be a must.

 

[gibsonm]

where would you place the exit/entrance ramps? In a location that wouldn’t destroy the urban realm/overwhelm local road capacity/distrupt pedestrian flow, that is.
Much, much harder than you think

In Boston the ramps discretely emerge from underground on the right or leftmost lane. I don't think it's especially hard engineering if our widest one-way streets are used, but it comes down to will and imagination, which I don't see at Metrolinx or TTC. It takes decades to build stumpways. At this point, put some cheap LED floodlights, shawarma carts, and some cheap Ryerson student's design studio art under the Gardiner at Spadina, Yonge, and Jarvis. It would be a vast improvement on the barren brutalist obstacle course that's there now.

 

[cd concept]

If Toronto is to have freeways, then tolling them should be a must.
You should have the options weather to pay and get to where your going quick . Or not to and get stuck in traffic when it happens. We're taxed enough in this Province and Country. So if the private sector wants to build a 62 km underground toll highway let them !

 

[Rainforest]

In addition, with so-called autonomous vehicles (driver-less) they'll still use up real estate with NO ONE inside them, and the fuel to power them. If electrical, there would be no fuel tax to collect revenue from to pay for the provincial highways (the Gardiner and Don Valley would be maintained with property taxes, with the 905ers use them for free, if we continue to use them with tolls).

This touches two separate issues. The loss of fuel tax revenue is inevitable, whether the new electric transportation is dominated by public transit or personal vehicles. We can't lament about the fossil fuel being evil, and at the same time maintain that we can't stop using it because it creates irreplaceable tax revenues.

Regarding the use of urban real estate: it is likely that any kind of personal vehicles will remain less efficient (compared to public transit), but some improvements can be made. For example, autonomous vehicles may be able to hook themselves into a train made of 5 / 10 / 20 units, and travel the common / most congested section of their route in that fashion. That would save the road space because the bundled vehicles wouldn't need to maintain the 2 seconds gap. The gap is legally required between independently moving vehicles to prevent collisions; each vehicle must be able to break and stop if the vehicle ahead stops suddenly. But if the vehicles are physically connected, the gap wouldn't be required.