Roads: Gardiner Expressway

[Riverdale Rink Rat]

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.

I know I'm in the minority, but I've never really found the whole thing as bad as people say. For me, the biggest issue wasn't the Gardiner nor the Lake Shore, but the fact there wasn't a heckuva a lot to do once you got to the harbour. Harbourfront Centre was fine enough for a winter skate or when something was happening my girls wanted to see or do, but it really took the last (ten?) years build out to make it a destination.

The first time someone suggested the Watermark deck for a pint was not all that long ago. Now, especially in summer, Queen's Quay is special. Condos, offices, tourists, decks, boats, concerts, museums, tons of stuff. Going under the Gardiner is an anticipatory experience and no longer a long walk to a long walk. Love it!

 

[Juan_Lennon416]

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 Lakeshore 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.

You missed my point. My point is if the talk is to take the elevated portion down, I rather the whole thing be taken down...not a small piece

 

[EastYorkTTCFan]

I really don't get what taking down the gardener does. Do poel just think the traffic on it will diaper and everyone will start taking public transit or something. The gardener has probably about double the amount of traffic on it as the lake shore does. If we tare it down do we expand lake shore and make it 12 lanes wide to hold all the traffic that will be forced on to it.

 

[LNahid2000]

I really don't get what taking down the gardener does. Do poel just think the traffic on it will diaper and everyone will start taking public transit or something. The gardener has probably about double the amount of traffic on it as the lake shore does. If we tare it down do we expand lake shore and make it 12 lanes wide to hold all the traffic that will be forced on to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

 

[Euphoria]

The 'induced demand' argument is often used citing the example of San Francisco's downtown expressway, which collapsed in an earthquake and was removed rather than replaced without giving rise the traffic nightmare many expected. I do think more transportation options are better than less. There still exist many people who like having the commute option of driving, or who just plain prefer driving. There is a certain association between freedom and individualism and the car. I question the viability of removing that option for visitors to the city or for city dwellers who seek a quick exit from downtown sometimes. While I don't agree with the Hybrid option and would rather see the eastern portion of the Gardiner removed, I understand the sentiment of wanting to retain the expressway in some form. I just don't think you can have the same quality of pedestrian experience with an elevated expressway in your path. It should be tunneled, but many transit advocates think burying it would divert funds from transit construction. I don't think that has to be the case.

 

[andrewpmk]

Did demolishing the Embarcadero Freeway really not make traffic worse? My guess is that most of the traffic ended up taking Bay Bridge, I-580 and Richmond-San Rafael bridge instead of the demolished freeway and the Golden Gate Bridge. The Bay Area doesn't exactly have a lack of traffic congestion, and the transit system is lousy. Many people have no alternatives to driving.

I do not believe that demolishing the Gardiner Expressway will not result in severe traffic congestion. Look at what happens when the Gardiner or DVP is closed for construction or "Ride for Heart". You get severe traffic jams on almost every road in the city those weekends. I think that "induced demand" is largely a myth perpetuated by anti-car types.

It is pretty unusual to demolish a busy expressway in a major city without replacing it, except in cases where the expressway collapsed. The only expressways that I can think of that were demolished were very lightly used, such as the Gardiner east of the DVP, or a section of the Robert Moses State Parkway in Niagara Falls, NY.

 

[ADRM]

The concept of induced demand is perfectly logical and there's ample precedent to support its tenets. Boil it down to the example a single consumer, for sake of simplicity and understanding:

> Susan Smith just moved to City A;
> Susan Smith owns a car and has, in the past, commuted in other cities via both public transit and by car, and is not significantly price sensitive to either, as she's most concerned with maximizing comfort and minimizing travel time.

If, when Susan moves to City A, there is a highway convenient to her commute that she has the option of taking, she has the option of taking it. If, when she moves to City A, there is no such highway (because it has either been removed or was never built in the first place), she obviously cannot choose an option that does not exist. If, on the other hand, said highway was removed and, at the same time, an LRT was constructed and opened prior to her moving to City A, she may choose to take it to work. That's an oversimplification, yes, but it's silly to dismiss the concept as a bit of anti-auto hooey.

Now, obviously, if we substitute Toronto for City A, the example fails in some sense because of the woefully inadequate choice of public transit options. Making any transport-related decision in a vacuum, without considering its knock-on effects, is a fundamentally bad idea and, unfortunately, that's how Toronto transit has been planned for an exceedingly long time.

What this debate needs is far less "car vs. transit vs. bike vs. whatever" rhetoric and much more holistic network planning and, equally as importantly, the funding to back it up. We're slowly getting there on the former, but we've to-date seen no indication that there will be any material progress made on the latter. Let's hope Council and the Mayor's office learn from their mistakes.

 

[LNahid2000]

The Embarcadero Freeway removal may have resulted in increased traffic, but it also resulted in this, one of my favourite places in to walk in San Francisco:

 

[CapitalSeven]

Well, you say that as though that postcard were pretty. 5000 drivers from Scarborough wanted the eastern Gardiner to stay!

 

[W. K. Lis]

Well, you say that as though that postcard were pretty. 5000 drivers from Scarborough wanted the eastern Gardiner to stay!

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say the 905's drivers wanted the eastern Gardiner to stay?

 

[andrewpmk]

The concept of induced demand is perfectly logical and there's ample precedent to support its tenets. Boil it down to the example a single consumer, for sake of simplicity and understanding:

> Susan Smith just moved to City A;
> Susan Smith owns a car and has, in the past, commuted in other cities via both public transit and by car, and is not significantly price sensitive to either, as she's most concerned with maximizing comfort and minimizing travel time.

If, when Susan moves to City A, there is a highway convenient to her commute that she has the option of taking, she has the option of taking it. If, when she moves to City A, there is no such highway (because it has either been removed or was never built in the first place), she obviously cannot choose an option that does not exist. If, on the other hand, said highway was removed and, at the same time, an LRT was constructed and opened prior to her moving to City A, she may choose to take it to work. That's an oversimplification, yes, but it's silly to dismiss the concept as a bit of anti-auto hooey.

Now, obviously, if we substitute Toronto for City A, the example fails in some sense because of the woefully inadequate choice of public transit options. Making any transport-related decision in a vacuum, without considering its knock-on effects, is a fundamentally bad idea and, unfortunately, that's how Toronto transit has been planned for an exceedingly long time.

What this debate needs is far less "car vs. transit vs. bike vs. whatever" rhetoric and much more holistic network planning and, equally as importantly, the funding to back it up. We're slowly getting there on the former, but we've to-date seen no indication that there will be any material progress made on the latter. Let's hope Council and the Mayor's office learn from their mistakes.

I don't believe that this so-called induced demand effect is very large. Look at what happens when the Gardiner or DVP are closed due to construction, special events, etc. You get massive traffic jams on Bayview, Don Mills, 401, Lake Shore, etc. Remember the Gardiner and DVP construction closures a few weeks ago? Many people work on weekends and have to go to work and the transit system in Toronto is a joke. Also there are severe traffic jams in bottlenecks where the road narrows. DVP between Eglinton and 401, 404 southbound between Finch and 401, and 401 eastbound near Brock Road are obvious examples.

The Gardiner is not that ugly anyway. There is a big ugly elevated rail corridor beside that it not going away. Burying the Gardiner would be the ideal solution but is prohibitively expensive. Toronto has severe traffic problems and I do not support anything that intentionally makes it worse.

 

[LNahid2000]

I don't believe that this so-called induced demand effect is very large. Look at what happens when the Gardiner or DVP are closed due to construction, special events, etc. You get massive traffic jams on Bayview, Don Mills, 401, Lake Shore, etc. Remember the Gardiner and DVP construction closures a few weeks ago?

You clearly don't understand how induced demand works. In economics, there is often a time lag between a decrease in supply and a corresponding decrease in demand. These time lags can often be greater than 1 year. People take time to adjust their behaviour after a decrease in demand, so using a 2 day road closure to justify that induced demand is false doesn't really work.

 

[nfitz]

I don't believe that this so-called induced demand effect is very large. Look at what happens when the Gardiner or DVP are closed due to construction, special events, etc. You get massive traffic jams on Bayview, Don Mills, 401, Lake Shore, etc.

You also get much more traffic on weekend Lakeshore East GO Trains. Surely that suggests the opposite.

Recently, with the westbound Gardiner opening up from 2 to 3 lanes, while eastbound is still 2 lanes, I'm seeing much faster AM peak westbound travel than I've seen in years.

These 2 observations suggest induced demand is very real.

 

[andrewpmk]

You clearly don't understand how induced demand works. In economics, there is often a time lag between a decrease in supply and a corresponding decrease in demand. These time lags can often be greater than 1 year. People take time to adjust their behaviour after a decrease in demand, so using a 2 day road closure to justify that induced demand is false doesn't really work.

So why is there a traffic jam on DVP between Eglinton and 401 and a traffic jam on 404 southbound between Finch and 401 at all hours of the day and night? The reason is that there is a bottleneck here. The connection between the DVP and 404 is only 2 lanes wide in sections. This has been a problem for many years, so people have had time to adjust their travel patterns accordingly.

"Induced demand" is often used as an excuse by anti-car types to not widen roads. I don't think that this effect is that large. If you widened the DVP and the DVP/404 traffic congestion there would be fewer people using Bayview and Don Mills and more people using DVP/404 and so the number of people using DVP/404 would go up and think that this is "induced demand". Perhaps there would be some additional traffic but I don't think there will ever be so much that the traffic becomes as bad as it was before, at least not unless Toronto grows a great deal. Traffic congestion on the DVP/404 would not disappear but I think it would be reduced substantially.

 

[LNahid2000]

So why is there a traffic jam on DVP between Eglinton and 401 and a traffic jam on 404 southbound between Finch and 401 at all hours of the day and night? The reason is that there is a bottleneck here. The connection between the DVP and 404 is only 2 lanes wide in sections. This has been a problem for many years, so people have had time to adjust their travel patterns accordingly.

You're exaggerating here, just like you do in all your posts in the cycling threads.