To the point someone made a couple pages ago about the Lake Shore actually being a worse pedestrian experience offender, I think that's right (though we're talking about two pretty awful offenders). I took some tourists in from Europe down to the waterfront from the CN Tower/roundhouse plaza area on the weekend. They loved what has been done with the waterfront/harbourfront, but were floored at just how difficult/unwelcoming the walk to the waterfront is ("oh, I didn't know Robert Moses also worked in Toronto" was a comment).
Given that a complete teardown of the Gardiner is both probably unfeasible in the next numerous generations and, perhaps more importantly, that it mightn't actually accomplish many of the goals advocates of a teardown seek, that got me thinking about alternatives, expressly with the goal of opening up the waterfront to pedestrian traffic.
The only semi-real alternatives my mind could muster were some sort of elevated pedestrian bridge experience (maybe one that's less traditional ped bridge and perhaps brings in some High Line-esque qualities to its design) on either York or somewhere slightly west thereof that would run over LS but under the Gardiner or, of course more ambitiously, a similar treatment that actually ran over the Gardiner at one of those same junctions. The latter conjured a proposal I recall from the Gardiner East debate.
