For waterfront denizens, downtown is suddenly much closer
By Allison Hanes, National Post
Rushing home to his condo at Lower Simcoe Street and Bremner Boulevard yesterday to watch the kids while his wife went to an appointment, Gokhan Tulunay took an efficient and obvious route that would not have been possible a week earlier.
He dashed down Simcoe from Front Street, using a new 80-metre-long tunnel under the tracks, turning what would have been a 10-minute detour into a two-minute jaunt.
The underpass opened just last Friday, but Mr. Tulunay said he has used it every day since.
“It’s very, very beneficial for me,†he said. “It has cut in half the time to get to work. I was really happy when this opened.â€
The $44-million tunnel has created a new link between the core and the waterfront for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers.
It offers two lanes of vehicle traffic in each direction, plus bike lanes going both north and south.
Construction took two years and John Bryson, manager of structures and expressways for Toronto’s technical services division, said it was ready none too soon.
“We opened it at noon last Friday and I don’t think we were open 15 seconds when the first car went by,†he said. “Everybody was waiting I guess and now it’s just flowing like the river.â€
There are extra-wide sidewalks illuminated by what Mr. Bryson called “probably the best tunnel lighting in the city at this point.â€
The concrete is washed a warmer shade of grey and an early graffiti tag has already been painted over.
The councillor for the area, Adam Vaughan (Trinity Spadina), said the 80-metre excavation under the rail corridor was fraught delays due a “strange series of legal somersaults†required to get to the bottom of all the past and present owners of the land, once a Crown holding.
“It’s a good little piece of road construction, it’s just a shame it took so long,†Mr. Vaughan said.
But he said it’s a critical piece of infrastructure for residents of all the mushrooming condo towers, as well as those visiting downtown Toronto.
‘‘We’ve now created a pedestrian scale, normally routed access that’s obvious to the person walking or riding or driving. They now know how to get to the waterfront,†said Mr. Vaughan. “It’s a great north-south connection from the inner city to the waterfront, but it also takes a lot of pressure off all the other north-south streets, which make them better places for people to drive, decent places to walk, better places to cycle. The waterfront is often designed as an east-west project, but it’s all about north-south connections. Those are really an important addition to the downtown.â€
To further ease the flow of people to the waterfront, on the other side of busy Lake Shore Blvd. and the elevated Gardiner Expressway, the city has put in ultra-wide crosswalks and pedestrian signals at Lower Simcoe Street under the highway.
Matt Duffy, 25, tried the Simcoe underpass for the first time yesterday on his way home to the CityPlace complex from a job interview in the financial district. He said he will likely use it often because it is far more pleasant than alternative routes to get from the condo development at Spadina Avenue and Front.
“Spadina is such a horrendous road, because there’s no other way to get in the city from that side,†said Mr. Duffy. “I would usually go Blue Jays Way or York, but there’s so much in that area in between you really overshoot.â€
And there’s one other thing that impressed him: “It’s got a bike lane too, so that’s another big plus. It’s got a big bike lane. It’s really nice.â€
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