Toronto Underpass Park | ?m | ?s | Waterfront Toronto

PUTOTO said:
And why is that?
Btw, sorry, how old are you? 60s or 70s?
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Close. 28. Who's going to pay for it? Where will traffic be diverted for the many years this would take to complete? The gardiner should have been buried years ago, or better yet, to begin with. I can't see anyone taking on such a challenge. Our roads are horrendous enough. I can't imagine how backed up traffic would be if the tunneling were to become reality.
 
Marcanadian said:
Projects like this will undermine the Gardiner's impact, so I don't support burying the Gardiner.
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Wouldn't you rather have open sky above, instead of walking under a highway? You could still have room for such outdoor spaces if the Gardiner were to be buried. They'd be even more inviting.
 
This weekend I took the Toronto Art Walk, a tour of public art around Metro Hall, CBC, Convention Centre, Skydome, ACC. I found it very worthwhile. Even as someone who reads this forum regularly and pays attention to art and architecture and public space, I realized that I had passed many of these works many times without stopping to take notice. However, I was saddened by the state of some of the works. No water ran from the Spiral Fountain in front of the Skydome Hotel, and it was mostly obscured by bushes. The pool at the Salmon Run at the bottom of the Tower was emptied of water and instead there were windblown piles of debris. There was also debris around the mountains in front of the Ritz, and there was graffiti on it. In the ribs of the supports for the table underneath the nearby camping tent was cardboard for the homeless. Pushed up against the bottom of the water sculpture in David Pecaut Square was a discarded Second Cup beverage container and a dead rat.

This tour was conceived in about 2003, so recent public art wasn't a part of it. But even newer works can quickly become diminished. Five million dollars was spent on the Simcoe Wavedeck but no one can remove the crappy little dinghy dock that sits five feet in front of it. Down at the Rees Wavedeck the Sailing and Powerboat Centre has attached another crappy temporary dock out from it, right at the dip that was designed for kayakers and canoeists. Nearby at HTO there are fewer Muskoka chairs this summer, and the expensive stone surfaces are ground by bikers and skateboarders. The canoe at Canoe Landing attracts dirt and graffiti and the signage was falling apart in less than a year.

There are all these great projects (most recently Sherbourne Commons and Sugar Beach) that we get excited about when we see the renders or when we first walk the completed project, but how well will they be maintained? The older public art which I viewed on the Art Walk were mostly standalone pieces. Now the entire parks are being designed as art pieces, as concepts. How many years until the concept breaks down under modifications and lack of attention? I'd say that the Wavedeck at Rees has already been bastardized, and completion of the entire Wavedeck project is still years in the future. We now fear that the new surfaces of the skate pavilions at Sherbourne and Nathan Phillips invite scratching and vandalism.

So after walking this tour this past weekend, I now look at the picture of the inventive play equipment being erected beneath an underpass in an area that is still mostly promise, which one day may be great but which may also become a little sad if plans there become stalled by politics or economics, and wonder what the chances are this park will be something we're proud of five years or ten years down the road. I like that they're pushing these projects ahead, but I worry for them. Sometimes it seems like Toronto is a lot better at plans and concepts and renders than we are at respecting and maintaining what we have.
 
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Nads Gone Bads said:
Wouldn't you rather have open sky above, instead of walking under a highway? You could still have room for such outdoor spaces if the Gardiner were to be buried. They'd be even more inviting.
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Sure I would, but it would be chaotic and insanely expensive to bury the Gardiner. It's a mistake we have to make the best of.
 
and even more ultterly stupid to eliminate the highway all together.

Metropolitans come with their history and packages. City planning is a big on-going experiments all together and you're going to get things that you wish the city had done differently from the on-set.

People who can't live with this should move to Woodstock.
 
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FYI guys, underpass park doesn't even involve the Gardiner Expressway.


But it does involve making the best of an infrastructure inherited from a time when politicians believed transportation efficiency was more important than the community it was intended to serve.

Beware, the Ford administration is forcing the same mindset on Toronto. again, 50 years after everybody realized it was a mistake.
 
And the Gardiner isn't the only thing separating the city from the lake -- I'd argue that a much bigger impediment is the rail right-of-way. And it would likely be far cheaper to cover the railway with an urban park that it would be to bury the Gardiner.
 
I think the idea of an elevated span across the downtown is fantastic and would have a huge impact on the skyline, but like all the others ideas, the huge cost and massive disruption are likely to prevent them from ever happening.

Sometimes you wish for a Chinese sort of will/ability to impose big changes that are long and disruptive in implementation, but eventually for the good.
 
Marko said:
Sometimes you wish for a Chinese sort of will/ability to impose big changes that are long and disruptive in implementation, but eventually for the good.
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So... you take out an elevated road, and replace it with an elevated park? And that's good?

Almost everyone I know that complains about the Gardiner never go near it. It's about a two minute walk under the Gardiner on York, and then you're on QQ. It's people that don't use QQ or the harbour that say they'll use it when the Gardiner's gone (I guess the 'negative vibes' will somehow diminish), but I doubt it. The Gardiner is an enormous piece of infrastructure, and the city has learned to embrace it (ACC, condos on the railway lands, Roundhouse or Canoe Landing parks, etc.) Leave it be.

And, more on topic: We might learn something in the building of Underpass Park that'll be very useful in connecting June Callwood to points north. (I'm a big fan of the Fort York entrance idea.) This could be a good one!
 
Nads Gone Bads said:
Wouldn't you rather have open sky above, instead of walking under a highway? You could still have room for such outdoor spaces if the Gardiner were to be buried. They'd be even more inviting.
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Nads, are you not aware you're on Urban Toronto where people don't like change and think very small. No wonder Toronto is considered boring by outsiders. Every time someone thinks of a big plan he's ridiculed as a lost cause. You know Boston was stupid for tearing down and putting their highways underground.

Though i think the money would be better spent on covering the railroads with parkland and only parkland and getting rid of those ugly poles on our sidewalks.
 
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Tulse said:
And the Gardiner isn't the only thing separating the city from the lake -- I'd argue that a much bigger impediment is the rail right-of-way. And it would likely be far cheaper to cover the railway with an urban park that it would be to bury the Gardiner.
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Double bingo.
 
Thanos said:
Nads, are you not aware you're on Urban Toronto where people don't like change and think very small. No wonder Toronto is considered boring by outsiders. Every time someone thinks of a big plan he's ridiculed as a lost cause. You know Boston was stupid for tearing down and putting their highways underground.

Though i think the money would be better spent on covering the railroads with parkland and only parkland and getting rid of those ugly poles on our sidewalks.
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And you plan on paying for the burying of the Gardiner how, exactly? With the magical fairy and the magic money tree?

There are realists on UT, not just people who have all these fantasies but no way to put them into action. Do you know how much it cost Boston to bury their highways? There are much better solutions to do with the Gardiner than expensively burying it.

The Gardiner isn't even as much of a barrier as people are saying and whining about.. The REAL barrier separating the downtown from the lake are the tracks.
 
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