I'm sure this is far beyond what the city has the bandwidth to plan for at the moment, but what are your thoughts on the further subdividing of the suburban 'blocks' made up by the old concession roads? I've talked it out with friends in the past to mixed reception.
I think a lot of this could be the northern extension of existing roads that simply dwindle out at various barriers, such as Avenue and Spadina. But seems like a finer grain street grid will be needed to sustain the spike in population soon to hit these neighborhoods.
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I broadly endorse the idea, I strongly favour, where practical, bringing the grid to 1km apart for all arterials both E-W and N-S.
That said, some roads are discontinuous for a good reason, if you look at number/size of valley crossings that Avenue Road would face, it doesn't make a lot of practical sense to connect it north.
Woodbine is discontinous because the DVP occupies a good chunk of its natural alignment, too much of which is in valleys/floodplains meaning it would not be useful, as aligned for an arterial.
That said, there are a number of spots, small and large that make some sense.
Some, like Willowdale/Bessarion are hard/costly relative to return (in the case of the former, if you were being fantastical if sensible, you would link it to Mt. Pleasant. But when you look not only at the direct cost of doing that, but also the add-on costs to allow for development that would help pay that off, it just doesn't seem like a logical priority.
Others make more sense to me. Those already planned including linking Bellamy across the 401, for instance.
While others seem fairly easy, Pharmacy across the 401, or extending Bermondsey/Sloane cleanly to Lawrence, and possibly south to St. Clair.
In the east end, roughly following Surrey to create an E-W road between Eglinton and Lawrence, at least from VP to Kennedy (then you have the GO Corridor to get across), but possible do that and go east as well etc etc.
As part of that exercise, I would generally want to downsize six-lane arterials to 4 lanes to make them more human-scaled.
For all of that.......I don't think the City is there except for the easiest, shortest linkages. The time to build multi-km new major roads was 3 decades ago when the land was cheaper or even not fully developed. Doing it now is cost prohibitive and rather disruptive.
But I'd love to see some coherent thought around doing just a few of these and making sure you pick the ones that most alleviate congestion, that most facilitate development, that most shorten transit commutes etc.
