City
It's Time to Drive or Get Off the Lot.
The Gardiner Expressway needs at least $87 million for repairs to its western segment. With the city in a buget crisis, and the McGuinty government refusing to pay its share for a road that is used as much by non-Torontonians as it is Toronto denizens, some councillors are calling for 'use at own risk' signs to be put up along the freeway. Perhaps the time has finally come (although some would argue that the time came a decade or more ago) for council to sit down and take a long serious look at the Gardiner, and to decide what they want it to be - or not be.
Toronto is a city that lost its connection with its waterfront long before any of us were alive - that's how the Gardiner was allowed to be built - shimmering concrete wall that it is - in the first place. While claims then that it is what seperates the city from the water must be taken with a grain of salt, there is good reason to believe that it - or the Lakeshore Boulevard underneath it - is impeding the progress of Torontonians to get back in touch with their beachfront.
There are lots of proposals to what to do with the Gardiner - from spending billions of dollars to change it from a bridge to a tunnel; to gutting Lakeshore Blvd and building retail and residential underneath it; to just tearing it down.
What is beyond question though, is that something must be done - Toronto can ill afford to keep paying millions of dollars on repairs for a psychological barrier to our own city. Build it up, build it under, tear it down; just do something with it. The status quo has proven to be unacceptable, unaffordable, and unwanted by all levels of government (thus the fight over who has to pay). Bring us back our waterfront, and let us choose the future of our city.
And if that means the concrete pillars and walls of the Gardiner need to tumble like a modern day Jericho, so be it. I'll be there, blowing my horn in celebration.
Discussion
14 Comments
Sort By Oldest First / Newest First
Subscribe
The statement that it's the only highway in or out of the downtown is patently false - the DVP does the same, although north/south.
Tearing it down would force people to reconsider how they travel.
Alternatively if it has to be kept then make it a toll road. Effective road pricing needs to be introduced into Toronto to manage congestion. Roads are the only transportation mode that we expect to use for free. If you travel by train the price of your ticket goes towards maintenance of the track. If you travel by plane part of your ticket is the cost of landing fees charged by the airport (to the airlines and thus indirectly to you) to cover the infrastructure costs. In Ontario (except in a few cases) drivers do not have to pay for the use of the infrastructure. Gasoline tax does not cover the full cost of the road infrastructure, it only covers about 20%. Those who use the infastructure should pay for it.
Alternatively if it has to be kept then make it a toll road. Effective road pricing needs to be introduced into Toronto to manage congestion. Roads are the only transportation mode that we expect to use for free. If you travel by train the price of your ticket goes towards maintenance of the track. If you travel by plane part of your ticket is the cost of landing fees charged by the airport (to the airlines and thus indirectly to you) to cover the infrastructure costs. In Ontario (except in a few cases) drivers do not have to pay for the use of the infrastructure. Gasoline tax does not cover the full cost of the road infrastructure, it only covers about 20%. Those who use the infrastructure should pay for it.
Burying the expressway is the only method I can think of to change the connection between the city and its waterfront, but how realistic is that? Perhaps the money earmarked for the Vaughn extension would be better spent doing this?
But then where do you get the billion or so required to knock down all the hideous condos.....
Creating a BRT idea is certainly an interesting one - although if the city every actually decided to put some efforting into the Harbourfront RT, it probably wouldn't be nessecary. The one thing that is certain though, is that the combination of the Gardiner with the Lakeshore directly underneath is killing the link between the city and the lake. One of them has to go.
Miles:
The problem with burying the expressway is that it would be horrifically expensive - it would also be much less functional and environmentally acceptable than subway building.
As for the condos, we have to work with what we have. The dirty little secret though, is that the land between the condos and the waterfront is public land. If we develop the entire stretch, people will start to realise that it is.
For whatever reasons, Toronto's waterfront is just godforsaken. Sad because it has so much potential.
As per the longer-term issue of what to do with the downtown portion of the Gardiner, it is somewhat of a fallacy to suggest that it is imperative to traffic flow. Downtown Toronto has grown not because of the Gardiner, but despite the Gardiner. All increase has been absorbed via transit. Pretty much the same volume of traffic uses the Gardiner today as did 40 years ago. As many other cities have found (including NYC and San Francisco) expressway to downtown often create congestion, not alleviate it as it gives people an excuse to drive into the city.
A combination of ending the Gardiner proper at around Dufferin with some tunneling around Fort York and a wide University-type Avenue, plus S-Bahn-like GO service could easily render the Gardener useless.
Are you suggesting ending the Gardiner at Duffering going west or east?
Anon:
If you want to know why burying the Gardiner isn't feasible, just visit Boston.
I would think the current incarnation of The Gardiner could come down starting somewhere around Dufferin all the way to the DVP.
People also need to keep in mind that the current Gardiner isn't exactly a great traffic delivery system in and of itself (with only three downtown exits).
I knew that the Gardiner didn't have many downtown exits, but I didn't realise that it was only three. Thanks for the info.