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Roads: Gardiner Expressway

Riverdale Rink Rat said:
hahaha... if you go back to the beginning of this thread, you'll see that the price has been pretty consistently the same over time. It's going to cost about a billion dollars, give or take a Front Street Extension.

Also -- 2006(!) appearances from AllabootMatt and AoD as 'guests' of the site. It's the Hotel California, folks! "You can check out any time you like..."
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Yeah for some reason I had been thinking it cost about $400 Million.
 
DarnDirtyApe said:
And don't forget that the surface road option is not free, so we're really looking at the net difference between the two options.
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When the net difference is $500M, that's a very big net.

DarnDirtyApe said:
Or people and goods from the rest of the east end, southern Scarborough, Leaside, Thorncliffe, Don Mills, etc. to get downtown or points west, or for people and goods from York Region to get to the waterfront, Rogers Centre, etc. There would be a lot of traffic on this surface boulevard...
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A small example of how the surface boulevard would stack up would be Lake Shore after they tore down the Leslie stub. By improving Lake Shore dramatically, the stub getting axed allowed for better traffic patterns, better bike paths, and a much improved neighbourhood no longer caught beneath a crumbling concrete barrier.

We lived in Riverdale and Old East York. Car travel to points west, particularly in rush hour, was not made faster by the 30-45 seconds of speedy travel from the Gardiner Ramp to Yonge. Your travel time to, say, the airport was all about the bumper-to-bumper traffic heading west from downtown to Mississauga. Same thing about getting on the DVP at Don Mills to head south. A University Avenue from the Don to Jarvis or Yonge is not going to change your travel time.

The amount of exaggeration by car drivers about how much their lives will be changed is quite impressive. Tearing down a 6 lane highway over top a very sketchy four lane surface road to build an 8 lane surface road with proper turning lanes and traffic signalling should make drivers jump with joy. Why does it not? Could it be that most of the protesters don't actually want to go to downtown, but are thinking about the three times a year they come down the DVP to go to the Ex? Because if you were going to the Islands in the summer, say, having the DVP drop you at the mouth of the Don, then a signalled turning lane onto a rebuilt QQE would be great. Or if you were headed to the Distillery, you'd still get off at Richmond, or maybe curl around to much better access at Cherry. Or if you were headed to the ACC, you'd be greeted by overhead searchlights and a great view of the Old Post Office side, instead of the side of the Gardiner.

The transport trucks thing is a bit a red herring as well. The DVP/Eastern Gardiner highway combo is a car commuter highway, not a transport highway. Sure, there's trucks, but it's not the 401/427/403 by any stretch of the imagination.
 
I'm hoping that a cost/benefit analysis was done. Because of the high costs and how few people Gardiner East moves, I'd expect all the options to have a negative cost:benefit ratio.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
I'm hoping that a cost/benefit analysis was done. Because of the high costs and how few people Gardiner East moves, I'd expect all the options to have a negative cost:benefit ratio.
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This should be an easy decision to make. As usual, we should pick the option with the highest cost/benefit ratio. This isn't rocket science. I'll support whatever has the best ratio.
 
Previous studies have indicated that the surface road would add 10-15 minutes to one-way travel time through the area in the best case scenario, assuming that the DRL was built. That's pretty significant! Remember, 120,000 vehicles use the Eastern Gardiner every day.

Our life is based around the existence of the eastern Gardiner - my wife commutes from the east end to Mississauga every day, and we also have family in the west end who are regular babysitters. We will almost certainly have to sell our house and move if the teardown happens.
 
DarnDirtyApe said:
Previous studies have indicated that the surface road would add 10-15 minutes to one-way travel time through the area in the best case scenario, assuming that the DRL was built. That's pretty significant! Remember, 120,000 vehicles use the Eastern Gardiner every day.

Our life is based around the existence of the eastern Gardiner - my wife commutes from the east end to Mississauga every day, and we also have family in the west end who are regular babysitters. We will almost certainly have to sell our house and move if the teardown happens.
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The study at the beginning of this thread shows nothing of the kind in the way of longer travel times. It does, however, talk to the Richmond/Adelaide ramps going from one to two lanes. Does anyone know if that is still supposed to happen?

My sympathies, but if your life revolves around Mississauga to that extent, you should move to Mississauga. There must be something about the east end that keeps you there, right? Maybe your family can adjust to you, rather than the other way around. Or maybe your wife's job is portable? If the Unilever site does get developed out quickly, there should be 10,000 jobs looking for candidates!
 
DDA -- if you live in the east end, what was your experience with the Leslie stub teardown? Mine was unalloyed pleasure. It made driving much easier and the neighbourhood much nicer.

I sincerely believe doing the same for eastern Gardiner to Jarvis, at least, will have the same effect.
 
DarnDirtyApe said:
Our life is based around the existence of the eastern Gardiner - my wife commutes from the east end to Mississauga every day, and we also have family in the west end who are regular babysitters. We will almost certainly have to sell our house and move if the teardown happens.
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that makes tearing down the Gardiner even more attractive - people actually will be incentivized to live closer to work or wherever they need to go often, instead of live where they get the most space on their buck. The fact so many people live in Brampton or Georgetown while work in downtown Toronto shows we are not doing enough to discourage urban sprawl. People should be taxed for doing that.
 
DarnDirtyApe said:
Previous studies have indicated that the surface road would add 10-15 minutes to one-way travel time through the area in the best case scenario, assuming that the DRL was built. That's pretty significant! Remember, 120,000 vehicles use the Eastern Gardiner every day.

Our life is based around the existence of the eastern Gardiner - my wife commutes from the east end to Mississauga every day, and we also have family in the west end who are regular babysitters. We will almost certainly have to sell our house and move if the teardown happens.
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What studies? I don't recall anything like that. We're talking 5 minute difference at best.

traveltimes.jpg


The assumptions made are nothing unreasonable:
- Relief Line
- East Bayfront LRT
- GO Service improvements
- Full build-out of the waterfront including the Port Lands over 40-50 years
- City population growth of 30%
- City employment growth of 30%
- Increase of downtown trips of 50%


And if you read today's G&M article:

Waterfront Toronto and city staff were tasked with studying that option and in addition seeing what could be done to reduce the travel delays associated with the remove option, which would also open up the Unilever site. According to people familiar with the pending report, replacing the Gardiner East with a boulevard will mean less delay for drivers than was originally thought.
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Another thing to consider:

Construction effects would be substantial, especially for the “Replace” option which would require a complete shutdown of both the Gardiner and Lake Shore for 8 years. Such an interruption is not practical, and “Less Preferred” as a ranking is an understatement. The shortest construction period would be for the “Remove” option which could be accomplished in two 18-month shutdowns, one for each direction.
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Looks like you will be selling sell your house anyway should the replace option win the day.
 

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Riverdale Rink Rat said:
hahaha... if you go back to the beginning of this thread, you'll see that the price has been pretty consistently the same over time. It's going to cost about a billion dollars, give or take a Front Street Extension.

Also -- 2006(!) appearances from AllabootMatt and AoD as 'guests' of the site. It's the Hotel California, folks! "You can check out any time you like..."
Click to expand...

DarnDirtyApe said:
Previous studies have indicated that the surface road would add 10-15 minutes to one-way travel time through the area in the best case scenario, assuming that the DRL was built. That's pretty significant! Remember, 120,000 vehicles use the Eastern Gardiner every day.

Our life is based around the existence of the eastern Gardiner - my wife commutes from the east end to Mississauga every day, and we also have family in the west end who are regular babysitters. We will almost certainly have to sell our house and move if the teardown happens.
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The study said that travel times would be increased by at most 10 minutes. And the new EA will apparently show that the impact on travel times will be significantly less than the 10 minutes originally anticipated.
 
salsa said:
What studies? I don't recall anything like that. We're talking 5 minute difference at best.
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Am I misreading something....the chart you show in support of that shows the A-D commute time is 15 minutes longer comparing remove to the base (2012) time. B-D also 15 minutes longer....C-D 10 minutes longer and E-D 5 minutes longer.
 
May I ask why we need a Yonge/York ramp? That creates a lot of gridlock. I mean, having a ramp at Spadina and Jarvis is not convenient enough for drivers? I think the entire Yonge/York ramp should be removed completely. Why would we allow cars to downtown on Yonge st, and then what, run directly on downtown Yonge st?
 
salsa said:
What studies? I don't recall anything like that. We're talking 5 minute difference at best.

View attachment 44124

And if you read today's G&M article:
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Thank you Salsa. Really helps boil it down.

I'd point out that the chart actually indicates 10 minutes over Maintain, but as the G&M article says, that's going to be even less with the further analysis. Furthermore, won't those delays only be felt during rush hour?

$660 million, for less than 10 minutes, for a minority of drivers, some of the time. Given all of the other benefits, what other legs does Gardiner East have left to stand on?
 
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