Roads: Gardiner Expressway

[44 North]

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.

And for a couple years when QQW was under construction it was doubly worse. To get from the CN Tower/Dome to Harbourfront and vice versa was a nasty nightmare, particularly in winter. When taking visitors around I'd always apologize on this city's behalf - something I find myself doing all too often.

Still, with regards to crossing under the Gardiner, I think some of the answers could be a lot simpler (and less expensive). Improved lighting, colour, landscaping...etc. It really is more unwelcoming than it should/could be. Some of this will be fixed over time as general maintenance, capital works, and the removal/improvement of offramps and onramps. However these are standard highway/roadway projects (i.e with little to no frills attached). What the City really needs is a cohesive plan to improve the entire area under the Gardiner ASAP. Not piecemeal frou frou projects in pockets here and there. Rather a quick and cost-effective way to enhance the colour, ambiance, and overall experience for the tens or 100s of thousands walking (and I guess driving) under it every day.

Interestingly though, one of the ideas being considered for the waterfront transit "Reset" is to convert the Bay streetcar tunnel into an underground pedestrian (automated) walkway. I don't really support that (and IMO it runs roughshod over Jane Jacobs' principles), but if we want to convey people across Lake Shore / Gardiner without having them experience the dank darkness of its underbelly, maybe putting them underground can also be an answer?

 

[LNahid2000]

Can someone explain to me why Montreal was able to bury its downtown expressway, host an Olympics, and host an Expo, yet Toronto, a much bigger city with more economic heft and faster growth, cannot accomplish one of these things?

Montreal was larger than Toronto when these expressways were built and was also larger than Toronto when they won the Olympics and Expo 67 bids. I'm surprised people don't know this.

 

[PinkLucy]

And for a couple years when QQW was under construction it was doubly worse. To get from the CN Tower/Dome to Harbourfront and vice versa was a nasty nightmare, particularly in winter. When taking visitors around I'd always apologize on this city's behalf - something I find myself doing all too often.

Still, with regards to crossing under the Gardiner, I think some of the answers could be a lot simpler (and less expensive). Improved lighting, colour, landscaping...etc. It really is more unwelcoming than it should/could be. Some of this will be fixed over time as general maintenance, capital works, and the removal/improvement of offramps and onramps. However these are standard highway/roadway projects (i.e with little to no frills attached). What the City really needs is a cohesive plan to improve the entire area under the Gardiner ASAP. Not piecemeal frou frou projects in pockets here and there. Rather a quick and cost-effective way to enhance the colour, ambiance, and overall experience for the tens or 100s of thousands walking (and I guess driving) under it every day.

Interestingly though, one of the ideas being considered for the waterfront transit "Reset" is to convert the Bay streetcar tunnel into an underground pedestrian (automated) walkway. I don't really support that (and IMO it runs roughshod over Jane Jacobs' principles), but if we want to convey people across Lake Shore / Gardiner without having them experience the dank darkness of its underbelly, maybe putting them underground can also be an answer?

The Simcoe St. underpass is so much nicer than any other underpass in the area. So it can be done.

 

[aquateam]

Can someone explain to me why Montreal was able to bury its downtown expressway, host an Olympics, and host an Expo, yet Toronto, a much bigger city with more economic heft and faster growth, cannot accomplish one of these things? Is a pedestrian bridge really the best we can do? By the sounds of it, maybe we can't even do that. Please keep in mind that city council can overturn the hybrid option with an up and down vote. Nothing is in stone as of yet. Don't throw in the towel so quickly. Burying the Gardiner does not have to be a pricey "Big Dig." As far as I'm concerned, even at that price Boston's makeover was worthwhile. Keep in mind that burying subway will cost over a billion per kilometer. This is the cost of doing business.

Just to be pedantic, the cost of building a subway is a third of that. TYSSE and Eglinton LRT came in at about $330 million/km. The cost of a tunneled expressway is probably more than $1 billion/km because it's significantly wider/taller and has major ventilation requirements, as well as long approaches for the on/off ramps. So, for that amount, would you rather build X kilometers of tunneled expressway or 5 times X kilometers of subway?

Construction inflation is a real phenomenon that's hard to explain. There's no way we could build the Bloor-Danforth line, for instance, at the cost and timeline that it was built in the 1960s (even taking into consumer price index). Remember that the originally Yonge line and Bloor Danforth line were also constructed just from TTC fare revenue, without general city funds going into their construction.

The private sector and condo developers have done very well in Toronto. It's time the public received something in return. Between tolls, private sponsorships, the synergy of combining construction with burial of the DRL, and rededication of funds from the planned hybrid option, I'm sure we could make a go of a much better expressway and transit option for the city that meets our long term goals in a number of areas. It's really up to you and the citizens to advocate. If you don't push for better options, you won't get them.

Relying on the private sector is one way of ensuring nothing gets done. Soliciting donations from companies hasn't even gotten us the Arc-en-ciel lighting replaced at Yorkdale station. If you want something grand we need other levels of government at the table. Trudeau is spending like a drunken sailor on payday, so now is probably a good time to go for it.

Montreal was larger than Toronto when these expressways were built and was also larger than Toronto when they won the Olympics and Expo 67 bids. I'm surprised people don't know this.

But we are bigger now than they were at the time. Although admittedly all current Montreal megaprojects now seem to involve replacing existing crumbling infrastructure at 10x the price they were originally constructed at.

 

[Euphoria]

I'll grant that labour costs are higher today than they were 40 plus years ago accounting for the rise in inflation. The relative size of Montreal's economy to the overall Canadian economy as well as the real size of Montreal's economy back then accounting for inflation is not as large as Toronto's economy today.

 

[ADRM]

Also worth noting that those such data points, while relevant to some degree, wind up being less important than the makeup of the city councils that wind up proposing, reviewing, approving, amending, and/or rejecting projects. As we saw with the Gardiner East debacle (to identify just one), this particular group (as many before it and, presumably, many yet to come) is perfectly willing to make massive decisions with far-reaching consequences based on little, no, or bad data or logic.

We're likely to pay the better part of a billion dollars to keep the eastern portion of this ugly heap afloat, at the end of the day, solely as a result of the yays and nays of 44 of Toronto's not-so-finest (many are fine but the bad ones are exceptionally harmful and more than negate the best efforts of the good ones).

 

[Juan_Lennon416]

The whole thing has to come down...not a small piece. If we are dedicated, we could do it!

 

[EastYorkTTCFan]

The whole thing has to come down...not a small piece. If we are dedicated, we could do it!

and what does it get replaced with? do we make the lakeshore as wide as the 401? just look t the traffic on other streets when it''s closed for maintenance or the ride for heart and anything else. Tearing it down without a replacement solution does nothing but increase traffic everywhere.

 

[Armour]

and what does it get replaced with? do we make the lakeshore as wide as the 401? just look t the traffic on other streets when it''s closed for maintenance or the ride for heart and anything else. Tearing it down without a replacement solution does nothing but increase traffic everywhere.

As was mentioned a few pages back: pre-fab tunnels under the harbour.

How feasible would that actually be? Could a tunnel not be constructed in sections off site, then shipped to the harbour, assembled and placed on stilts or the lake bottom?

What would the approximate cost of such an idea be? Would it not be much cheaper than to construct everything right on site (would the latter require temporarily draining sections of the harbour adjacent to the dock walls?)?

 

[salsa]

As was mentioned a few pages back: pre-fab tunnels under the harbour.

How feasible would that actually be? Could a tunnel not be constructed in sections off site, then shipped to the harbour, assembled and placed on stilts or the lake bottom?

Okay, now how would you build all the offramps between downtown and the middle of the harbour? Not to mention the transition segments where the tunnel has to reconnect with the rest of the Gardiner.

 

[Armour]

Okay, now how would you build all the offramps between downtown and the middle of the harbour? Not to mention the transition segments where the tunnel has to reconnect with the rest of the Gardiner.

I don't know. That's why I'm asking questions; so I can gain more perspective and be alerted to things that I haven't thought about.

 

[ADRM]

I don't know. That's why I'm asking questions; so I can gain more perspective and be alerted to things that I haven't thought about.

Great point, Armour—important to remember that this forum can also be a place to gather inspiration and educate oneself, rather than solely acting as a destination for folks to display how much they know about a topic.

An important note about any sort of sub-grade construction in the area: If you look at many EAs or remediation reports from developments in and around the waterfront, you'll often see extensive consideration of the extremely unpredictable subterranean environment (much of it being landfill)—that's a consideration that could render a complete tunnelling either impossible or (even more) cost-prohibitive.

To clarify some of the earlier commentary, Boston's Big Dig was an unmitigated disaster (I've linked to a good Boston Globe post-mortem below); it wound up costing the city $15 billion, a little ways off its $2.6 billion budget, and was 8 years behind schedule. Now, there are new technologies (such as those used in Switzerland's Gotthard Base Tunnel, as mentioned in the Globe article) that could potentially mitigate a Big Dig-esque disaster, but that's mostly all to say that "bury the thing" is an understandable sentiment given how awful the Gardiner/Lake Shore combo are, but one that oversimplifies the matter.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazin...dig-deliver/tSb8PIMS4QJUETsMpA7SpI/story.html

 

[PinkLucy]

What gets done when the Gardiner is closed for spring maintenance? Well, according to the City, plenty:

Work that was completed included:
• demolition of the Dowling Avenue bridge spanning the Gardiner Expressway
• 7,900 square metres of road-surface grinding, and paving on 2.1 lane kilometres of roadway
• 8,700 metres of cracks sealed
• 650 potholes filled
• 1,300 square metres of bridge deck repaired
• 690 metres of guiderail installed
• seven crash systems repaired
• 430 tonnes of debris removed
• more than 150 curb-kilometres of roadway flushed and swept
• 860 catch basins cleaned and flushed
• 520 trees pruned
• seven hectares of grass cut
• 17 tonnes of logs and wood chipped
• 35 bridges inspected, five of them chipped as a result of inspection
• 500 street lights re-lamped along with 200 metres of conductor replaced and 50 new street light fixtures installed
• 467 signs, including overhead signs, inspected, maintained and repaired
• 800 glare shields installed
• 133,000 metres of line painting installed
• 11 variable message sign sites assessed
• 28 culverts inspected
• 15 other structures inspected, and
• 20 closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras inspected.

 

[Riverdale Rink Rat]

Montreal was larger than Toronto when these expressways were built and was also larger than Toronto when they won the Olympics and Expo 67 bids. I'm surprised people don't know this.

I don't know when they 'buried' the Montreal expressway (it's in a trench rather than a tunnel most of the way, no?) but for someone who walks from Sherbrooke to Old Montreal, that trench/tunnel is as crappy an experience as walking under the Gardiner. IMHO.

Also, their Olympics was a disaster of biblical proportions.

 

[muller877]

The whole thing has to come down...not a small piece. If we are dedicated, we could do it!

Why? We are building great residential and commercial both just North and South of the elevated portion. Look at the LCBO lands, the Sun Life building, etc. They are all built or being built right beside the Gardiner without the need to tear it down. After everything that has been announced is built there is only 2 km of the elevated highway that will be exposed without development on each side.

So new residents and employers do not have a concern with the construction. Who does? What are their profile?

1. landowners who want to sell their vacant lots for even more money
2. Developers who want to make more money
3. the "war on car" lobby
4. a few others

I lived south of the Gardiner. I've also lived north and walked south for work. The tracks and Lake Shore are worse than the Gardiner for access across this transportation corridor. It would be a shame to put more cars on roads which pedestrians have to cross vs keeping them separated.