Roads: Gardiner Expressway

[arcum]

Would there still be 110,000 trying to drive this way? I doubt it.

And shouldn't we be looking at peak hour? Even the AWDT is going to seem high, because there is always traffic - but seldom any traffic jams.

Some of the 110,000 would probably spill over to local roads and try to go to alternate routes like Richmond, Queen, Bloor, Eglinton, etc.

When you just look at the peak hour everything seems really small and insignificant. For example, the Yonge subway 'only' carries about 30,000 riders in the peak hour. Why do we have a multi-billion $$$ subway just for 30,000 people?

Hence this is why the 5,200 drivers in the peak hour or 3% of drivers into downtown argument is silly.

The existing east Gardiner is, admittedly, overbuilt by a lane in each direction (after all, it was to connect to an eastern Scarborough highway), which rarely jams. But that doesn't mean removing it is easy and won't lead to traffic problems.

Personally I would love a boulevard, but first the proper transit needs to be in place.

 

[datamouse]

Could someone correct me if I'm wrong? The increased costs of inprove/maintain mostly come from 100 years of maintainence. We're not going to see approx. $500m of money that we can suddenly invest in transit. Yes, annually we can invest some more but the amount won't be enough to pay for large capital projects like WELRT.

Oh and though I'm not some major celebrity here I'll still take the moment to announce I've switched my support over to remove.

 

[rbt]

Could someone correct me if I'm wrong? The increased costs of inprove/maintain mostly come from 100 years of maintainence. We're not going to see approx. $500m of money that we can suddenly invest in transit. Yes, annually we can invest some more but the amount won't be enough to pay for large capital projects like WELRT.

The maintenance costs are more about gravy reduction than funding other large capital projects. Anybody who elected Ford to cut the gravy has their opportunity to win a little here, far more than councillor budgets.


Often NPV values do have the bulk of the impact in the near-term (next 20 years) rather than being back-loaded but I'm uncertain what they used to escalate/predict far-future maintenance costs so that may not be the case.

 

[salsa]

No no, you see it's only the AM westbound peak we should be worried about! Not those summer Saturday afternoons when there's a Jays game and a concert at the ACC and the Gardiner is closed or Lakeshore is closed or it's nice weather and harbourfront is busy or it's raining ... /sarcasm

Right. Because we should be building our infrastructure not for everyday traffic patterns but for special circumstances. In that case the 509 streetcar should have been a subway instead. The Allen expressway should be extended to Downsview Park to support the once-a-year Veld music festival. Removing the Scarborough expressway stub was bad planning because what about the Beaches Jazz festival or Firework shows at Ashbridges Bay. Of course you provide no numbers on the actual traffic volumes over the weekends, but I'm more than happy to hear more of your anecdotal stories instead. I await to hear about your wonderful Sunday morning drive last weekend during Ride for Heart. "If the highway is torn town this what traffic is gonna look like everyday... bla bla bla". Speaking of RFH, I attended it last year. Had an amazing time. Saw more people using the Gardiner than you drivers ever do.

Not those summer Saturday afternoons when ......it's nice weather and harbourfront is busy or it's raining

We must keep that Gardiner because what if it's raining or not raining. Lol.

 

[nfitz]

When you just look at the peak hour everything seems really small and insignificant. For example, the Yonge subway 'only' carries about 30,000 riders in the peak hour. Why do we have a multi-billion $$$ subway just for 30,000 people?

30,000 riders an hour ... in one direction. You think that's small and insignificant? That's beyond absurd ... surely you are trolling.

The existing east Gardiner is, admittedly, overbuilt by a lane in each direction (after all, it was to connect to an eastern Scarborough highway), which rarely jams.

It's overbuilt by 2 lanes in each direction. It only needs to be 4 lanes - not 8 lanes. If they'd have either moved it to the the originally proposed hybrid location, or put it along the new Lakeshore location, I could perhaps buy the hybrid. Putting it where it is, and Lakeshore elsewhere is just daft.

 

[Riverdale Rink Rat]

Toronto weekend traffic is very high.d

But Gardiner East weekend traffic is not. I drove from Riverdale to the CNE Saturday mornings for years (my daughter rode at the Horse Palace.) There were MANY days we were the ONLY car from the Carlaw ramp to reconnecting to Lake Shore at the SkyDome at 9am-ish on a Saturday.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Yeah?

Millions of people use the 50,000 km pan American highway. Should we design that entire route to be a 40 lane super highway now?

Like I said before, people moved per day has little bearing on the design.

Would 26 lanes be fine? From this link:

The Katy Freeway at Beltway 8 is 26 lanes across.

Here's how that breaks down: 12 main lanes (six in each direction), eight feeder lanes and six managed lanes. The managed lanes carry mass transit and high-occupancy vehicles during peak hours and are made available to single-occupancy vehicles for a toll fee during off-peak periods.

That's in Houston, Texas. And it has a toll, see this PDF. During the non-hour hours, the toll is about 40¢, while during the rush hours it could be $3.20.

 

[arcum]

30,000 riders an hour ... in one direction. You think that's small and insignificant? That's beyond absurd ... surely you are trolling.

It's overbuilt by 2 lanes in each direction. It only needs to be 4 lanes - not 8 lanes. If they'd have either moved it to the the originally proposed hybrid location, or put it along the new Lakeshore location, I could perhaps buy the hybrid. Putting it where it is, and Lakeshore elsewhere is just daft.

The "Remove" crowd is trying to convince everyone that 5,000 vehicles from the Gardiner don't matter. 30,000 doesn't really seem much larger than 5,000 when you consider the population of the GTA is 6+ Million.

Fitting 110,000 AADT into four lanes would be tough, it would be severely congested. Six is much more reasonable.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

What is the nonsense that I am reading?

Why in hell would we design road capacity to handle a full days traffic at once opposed to peak hour demands?

If we design a road to handle demand at its HIGHEST point, it will handle demand at all other hours. It's not like the 8-lane boulevard will transform into a 2-lane road off-peak or on the weekends.

We don't design subways to handle an entire day's demand, but the demand at its highest point. The same principle applies to roads, pipes, electricity and everything else because if the capacity is sufficient when it is needed most, then it is adequate all other times.

 

[salsa]

The "Remove" crowd is trying to convince everyone that 5,000 vehicles from the Gardiner don't matter.

No. The remove crowd is trying to convince everyone that the benefits of removing the Gardiner far outweigh the couple of minutes of delay that those drivers would get. However I don't hear them advocating for taking down the west part of the Gardiner too even though it's only 4% of commuters. Because unlike the eastern part, that wouldn't make much sense according to the facts. But if that's how you want to paint boulevardites, then I will gladly do the same to you.

1. Gardiner supporters only care about how drivers are affected. They couldn't care less about other important considerations such as waterfront revitalization, economic development, public realm or sustainability, because anything the slows down a car for even half a minute is a non starter and that's all that matters. Even if the evidence said it would be zero minutes, they will refuse to believe it anyway no matter how many planners and respected experts come out in favour of the boulevard.

2. Gardiner supporters talk about how slowing down those 3% of commuters will damage the economy, but have nothing to say about the 49% of TTC users who endure daily subway meltdowns and overcrowded buses that causes way more lost time on a daily basis than the 2-3 minutes that drivers are being asked to accept.

3. Gardiner supporters and the drivers who use it have an inflated sense of self-importance in the overall transportation network. Sorry to break it to them but:

4. Gardiner supporters want to unnecessarily spend millions more on a highway when that money could be better spent on transit improvements that benefit way more people.

5. Gardiner supporters talk about "commute times" a lot, but that only refers to the tiny minority of commuters who drive. Commute times of transit users or other non-motorists are not included in their rhetoric. As Denzil Minan Wong said, these are "not real people".


See, I can misrepresent too. Not all hybrid people think like that, but many of them do.

 

[Amare]

What is the nonsense that I am reading?

Why in hell would we design road capacity to handle a full days traffic at once opposed to peak hour demands?

If we design a road to handle demand at its HIGHEST point, it will handle demand at all other hours. It's not like the 8-lane boulevard will transform into a 2-lane road off-peak or on the weekends.

We don't design subways to handle an entire day's demand, but the demand at its highest point. The same principle applies to roads, pipes, electricity and everything else because if the capacity is sufficient when it is needed most, then it is adequate all other times.

I really don't know to be honest. It seems as though the newest craze in Toronto is to under-build and build for what we currently see, and not for the future.

It's like we enjoy seeing communities be in their own little island filled with crazy congestion. I gave the example of Humber Bay earlier, but another example of a community in their own little car-dependent, traffic packed area is Liberty Village. The Front Street Extension could have helped out, but that will never happen and condos are going up around in it's place.

The thing is that Toronto has already got it wrong twice with similar situations, I dont expect things to be much different *if* part of the Gardiner is torn even with Waterfront Toronto's oversight. If there was not going to be thousands of residents moving around this area of the Gardiner in the next 10-20 years i'd support tearing it down, but I've already seen Toronto make similar mistakes that I don't want to see repeated yet again.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

You think car trips in the Gardiner will be bigger in 30+ years than it is today?

I think we've reached peak car.

 

[44 North]

1. Gardiner supporters only care about how drivers are affected. They couldn't care less about other important considerations such as waterfront revitalization, economic development or sustainability, because anything the slows down a car for even half a minute is a non starter and that's all that matters. Even if the evidence said it would be zero minutes, Gardiner supporters will refuse to believe it.

2. Gardiner supporters talk about how slowing down those 3% of commuters will damage the economy, but have absolutely northing to say about the 49% of TTC users who endure daily subway meltdowns and overcrowded buses that causes way more lost time on a daily basis than the 2-3 minutes that drivers are being asked to accept.

3. Gardiner supporters and the drivers who use it have an inflated sense of self-importance in the overall transportation network. Sorry to break it to you but:

LOL + SMH.

I really don't know to be honest. It seems as though the newest craze in Toronto is to under-build and build for what we currently see, and not for the future.

Hmm. Yes and no. We underbuild where we should clearly overbuild. But where all evidence points to where we should underbuild (or not build at all)? That's where we ignore real priorities and spend a generation's worth of capital to overbuild. This is why some fields and parking lots have the same subway coverage as one of the largest financial districts in the New World.

 

[nfitz]

Fitting 110,000 AADT into four lanes would be tough, it would be severely congested. Six is much more reasonable.

And again. You are confusing AADT with AWDT. #fail

 

[superman]

No. The remove crowd is trying to convince everyone that the benefits of removing the Gardiner far outweigh the couple of minutes of delay that those drivers would get. However I don't hear them advocating for taking down the west part of the Gardiner too even though it's only 4% of commuters. Because unlike the eastern part, that wouldn't make much sense according to the facts. But if that's how you want to paint boulevardites, then I will gladly do the same to you.

1. Gardiner supporters only care about how drivers are affected. They couldn't care less about other important considerations such as waterfront revitalization, economic development, public realm or sustainability, because anything the slows down a car for even half a minute is a non starter and that's all that matters. Even if the evidence said it would be zero minutes, they will refuse to believe it anyway no matter how many planners and respected experts come out in favour of the boulevard.

2. Gardiner supporters talk about how slowing down those 3% of commuters will damage the economy, but have nothing to say about the 49% of TTC users who endure daily subway meltdowns and overcrowded buses that causes way more lost time on a daily basis than the 2-3 minutes that drivers are being asked to accept.

3. Gardiner supporters and the drivers who use it have an inflated sense of self-importance in the overall transportation network. Sorry to break it to them but:

4. Gardiner supporters want to unnecessarily spend millions more on a highway when that money could be better spent on transit improvements that benefit way more people.

5. Gardiner supporters talk about "commute times" a lot, but that only refers to the tiny minority of commuters who drive. Commute times of transit users or other non-motorists are not included in their rhetoric. As Denzil Minan Wong said, these are "not real people".


See, I can misrepresent too. Not all hybrid people think like that, but many of them do.

Chart would suggest that we could tear out bike lanes too .

Kind of on the fence about the Gardiner issue, my question is whether the (really wide) boulevard is actually really a better pedestrian realm than the elevated highway...

Or do we just need to do a better job at elevated structures (ahem, SRT upgrade vs Subway).