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Roads: Gardiner Expressway

Lone Primate said:
Aw, man. This is so fukt. Vaughn's just going to win this in a cakewalk. Boys, are any of you old enough to remember when half the banks and insurance companies and other corporate headquarters that currently reside downtown showed up here from Montreal thirty years ago when their apostrophes came under threat from Bill 101? Now do you honestly think that companies that hauled ass (and workforces) down the 401 are above moving twenty miles north if you make it next to impossible for their workers to get downtown in time to do a day's work, and still have time for a life in a house at some compromise location in the burbs somewhere halfway between their job and that of their spouse? Let me put a fine point on it for you: every time you make it HARDER for people to get in and out of a place, YOU KILL OFF JOBS THERE. I'm not saying build the Spadina or 16-lane Yonge Street... but stop acting like rubbishing our existing infrastructure is a good idea. It isn't. It's the smug NIMBYism of a bunch of hothouse flowers who can't see past their own petals and don't realize just how scarce the sun, rain, and fertilizer could become.

Do you remember that scene in Hannibal where Lector is feeding Krendler bits of his own brain and Krendler's babbling about how good it smells? Reading the comments here brings that right back to me.
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The threat of Quebec separation is a lot more serious than tearing down a small portion of a highway - the two aren't even remotely comparable.

You're forgetting that the vast majority of people working downtown get there by subway or GO train, and most of the traffic on the Gardiner isn't through traffic. There wasn't a mass exodus for Long Island when they tore down the West Side Highway was there? And I've said it before but it's worth repeating - if London can live without a single freeway in its central area, surely Toronto can live with two.

Lone Primate said:
The thing that's funniest of all is that we're supposed to tear down the five-story-high Gardiner, which "blocks access to the lakeshore"... what access to the lakeshore? Pardon me, has any one of you seen Lake Ontario lately without being within seventeen feet of it? The last I looked, our vaunted "lakeshore" was a five-mile curtain of condominium steel and glass. Well, I suppose those poor souls really shouldn't have to look at the ugliness of people who don't live there moving back and forth on the Gardiner, spoiling the view of the lake that they're denying the rest of us in the first place.

Never mind tearing down the Gardiner. If you want the lakeshore back, tear down the bloody condos. Nothing south of Front Street.
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This "wall of condos" argument has no substance. Toronto's just like any other city, where its high rises go right down to the water. Just like Hong Kong, New York, Chicago, Sydney, Singapore, Vancouver, Miami... I wonder if people in those cities complain about walls of condos or walls of office buildings blocking the views of people a kilometre or two from the water.
 
MisterF said:
The threat of Quebec separation is a lot more serious than tearing down a small portion of a highway - the two aren't even remotely comparable.
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Moving up the DVP to York Region isn't anything like moving down the 401, either, so I suppose it evens out. Nothing you've said counters my point that making it harder for people to get where they have to go is not a likely strategy for maintaining the integrity of the core. Regardless of how many use other means, some of them -- tens upon tens of thousands -- use the DVP and the Gardiner to get downtown and back home every day. It's hard enough as it is. People don't use those route because they love them, they use them because they're the most practical for them. A serious transit strategy has to take that kind of thing into account.


MisterF said:
There wasn't a mass exodus for Long Island when they tore down the West Side Highway was there?
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Are you sure? What are the relative stats on office space in Manhattan and Long Island? Where are new offices choosing to locate, and why? We'd have to know those things to address this supposition.


MisterF said:
And I've said it before but it's worth repeating - if London can live without a single freeway in its central area, surely Toronto can live with two.
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If we can be allowed to. I'm not talking about building anything NEW, after all; just keeping the capacity we already HAVE.


MisterF said:
This "wall of condos" argument has no substance.
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Well, then what's all this guff I keep hearing about how the Gardiner is separating the people from "their" lakeshore? Whose lakeshore? I can walk under the Gardiner at hundred places. But when I do, most of the time I'm looking at somebody's terrace, not sailboats. So what is it separating me from? The breathtaking view of apartment buildings? Hoo-rah, tear it down, yeah... Let me see the glass and guard rails I've been missing.
 
MisterF said:
You're forgetting that the vast majority of people working downtown get there by subway or GO train
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Now I think it's interesting that you make this assertion. What is it founded on? I just happened to notice, on page 44 of the Mississauga Office Strategy Study posted on another thread, that transportation modal figures for Toronto (all Toronto, admittedly) is 21% transit, 1% GO Train, and 69% auto driver/auto passenger. Now I have no idea how you slice and dice that to come up with figures representative to the downtown core alone, but even so, this strongly suggests to me that you might be wrong in making this claim, or that you're at least off the mark by claiming a "VAST" majority of people get to work downtown by the subway or the GO. And this is at the heart of the matter for me. I used to work downtown; I came to absolutely loathe the GO Train (nice idea, but terrible execution) and the subway came nowhere near where I lived. And you know, that's still true for most people. But the car, it's right in the driveway. So before we start talking about tearing down our highways, I think we need to have alternatives in place beforehand. Get some serious LRT action snaking through the burbs and I'm ready to mull this over. But right now, it's only going to make 905 look more attractive to new and existing businesses.
 
MisterF said:
And I've said it before but it's worth repeating - if London can live without a single freeway in its central area, surely Toronto can live without two.
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That's a valid point and I would like the see the Gardiner removed (and not just the eastern portion - I'd like to see the entire thing disappear completely east of the Humber river), but to be fair, London has a vast public transit network while Toronto doesn't yet. The Gardiner should be replaced with a massive investment in transit, with a full subway DRL for starters.
 
Lone Primate said:
Now I think it's interesting that you make this assertion. What is it founded on? I just happened to notice, on page 44 of the Mississauga Office Strategy Study posted on another thread, that transportation modal figures for Toronto (all Toronto, admittedly) is 21% transit, 1% GO Train, and 69% auto driver/auto passenger. Now I have no idea how you slice and dice that to come up with figures representative to the downtown core alone, but even so, this strongly suggests to me that you might be wrong in making this claim, or that you're at least off the mark by claiming a "VAST" majority of people get to work downtown by the subway or the GO. And this is at the heart of the matter for me. I used to work downtown; I came to absolutely loathe the GO Train (nice idea, but terrible execution) and the subway came nowhere near where I lived. And you know, that's still true for most people. But the car, it's right in the driveway. So before we start talking about tearing down our highways, I think we need to have alternatives in place beforehand. Get some serious LRT action snaking through the burbs and I'm ready to mull this over. But right now, it's only going to make 905 look more attractive to new and existing businesses.
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Maybe "vast" was an overstatement but it's definitely the majority. Look at the link on the first page of this thread. Of commuter trips in the central area:

45% take the TTC
15% take GO
10% take the Gardiner
30% drive on other roads

That doesn't include pedestrians and cyclists. Modal share for driving will continue to fall; TTC and GO ridership is growing fast and the amount of car traffic isn't.

I doubt the banks will move to Vaughan because 10% of their employees take a few minutes longer to get to work. If that had happened in Manhattan or any of the other cities that have removed their waterfront expressways I'm sure we would have heard about it by now.

Lone Primate said:
Well, then what's all this guff I keep hearing about how the Gardiner is separating the people from "their" lakeshore? Whose lakeshore? I can walk under the Gardiner at hundred places. But when I do, most of the time I'm looking at somebody's terrace, not sailboats. So what is it separating me from? The breathtaking view of apartment buildings? Hoo-rah, tear it down, yeah... Let me see the glass and guard rails I've been missing.
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Sure you can cross the Gardiner but it's not a pleasant crossing. Are you talking about the few condos at the foot of Yonge that actually do form a barrier, or all the buildings on the north side of Queen's Quay and Lakeshore Blvd? The latter is a pretty good model: buildings with retail on the first floor on one side of the street, and parks and attractions on the water side. It's what you see in all the cities I mentioned earler, and it describes most of Toronto's central waterfront.
 
So the Gardiner's 10% includes drivers coming from the west, right? And the roads' 30% includes DVPers that get off at Bloor/Richmond/Adelaide? Makes highways' share of downtown commutes seem rather puny.
 
MisterF said:
Are you talking about the few condos at the foot of Yonge that actually do form a barrier, or all the buildings on the north side of Queen's Quay and Lakeshore Blvd? The latter is a pretty good model: buildings with retail on the first floor on one side of the street, and parks and attractions on the water side. It's what you see in all the cities I mentioned earler, and it describes most of Toronto's central waterfront.
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Do you mean all those stores that are empty between Spadina and Bathurst? The parks where the city lets the grass die due to lack of watering?
 
^ Glen, have you been down to the waterfront lately? Those empty store fronts are starting to fill. So far this summer a tanning salon, a jugo juice and a pet grooming place are all due to open (The tanning salon just opened last week). Already there are a couple dry cleaners, a sushi restaurant and a spa on this stretch. Considering the Yuppy population that lives in this area, its these type of stores that will be used. The only thing missing is a Starbucks and maybe a pub/restaurant and the area will be complete. You should come down here and see what's actually happening sometime.

As for your issue with the grass... I can only assume you're talking about the Music Garden, which again I suggest you come down and see for yourself because since May 1st I've seen city workers there working on it just about everyday.
 
In my view, there should be no parks north of Queens Quay on the waterfront. The one small park there serves no role and ought to be filled with a condo or some low level retail or something.

One big park stretching from the Gardiner to the Water is a horrible, terrible nightmare of an idea that no one ought to take seriously.
 
Archivist, I agree completely. This notion, promoted by LP and so many others, that a good waterfront necessarily equals acres and acres of parkland must be debunked.
 
I agree with Blovertis and Archivist. The Music Garden area should serve as a model for our waterfront development. A thin strip of greenery south of Queen's Quay with the north side built up, preferrably with low- to medium-rise condos. One thing that would make that stretch of Queen's Quay better would be retail in those condos, especially things like cafes, bakeries, etc.

Add a little bit of:

150124p1.jpg


to...

spadina_quay.jpg
 
TKTKTK said:
The shorter 2s sections are plenty high. Well, unless people in the future are giants. Can you imagine?! How scary!
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Are you joking? Hilarious! This is the very same TKTK who expressed that lowering the clearance in a tunnel (to a level that is of course perfectly safe, just lower than usual) to save billions on construction costs would be frighteningly confining.
 
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