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.
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