Watch the video above: City staff recommends tearing down the Gardiner Expressway. Mark McAllister reports.
TORONTO – City Staff are recommending the city’s 44 councillors approve the removal of the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway.
The recommendation, released Tuesday, suggests the removal of the highway “best meets the transportation and infrastructure, urban design, economics and environment objects” of the environmental assessment.
It would remove the elevated portion of the Gardiner Expressway from Lower Jarvis Street in the west to Logan Avenue in the east and require significant changes and investment in the surrounding area.
Construction crews would widen Lake Shore Boulevard east of Jarvis Street by two lanes.
The environment assessment studied four options for the future of the aging expressway, including removing, rehabilitating, improving or replacing. The city report notes removing the elevated portion of the expressway would cost $240 million but would be the cheapest option.
Timelines of Gardiner Expressway repairs (estimated):
- Removing the Gardiner would take six years
- Replacing the Gardiner would take eight years
- Maintaining the Gardiner would take six years
- Improving the Gardiner would take six years
In Depth: Trouble Overhead – An investigation of the Gardiner Expressway
But the city admits removing the Gardiner does have its drawbacks. It would increase travel times in the area by approximately 5 to 10 minutes.
“Quite frankly I think it’s a bad decision. I think the alternative that their proposing, the eight-lane road, is not going to satisfy anybody. Its’ going to be a congested street, it’s going to add to congestion and gridlock and in terms of the local community, no one is going to like an eight-lane road,” Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong said. “They say they are going to beautify it with trees and shrubs and flowers and that’s like putting lipstick on a pig.”
However removing the elevated portion of the Gardiner Expressway has found favour with First Gulf, a property management company, which sent an open letter to council and senior city staff urging them to support the removal option.
The letter cites the BA Group, which completed a study for First Gulf, suggesting removing the portion of the expressway would “support the new employment district.”
First Gulf does have a stake in the area, admitting its building a 60-acre site it compares to London’s Canary Wharf.
The report does have to be reviewed by the city’s Public Works Committee before going to a city council vote which will likely happen at the height of the mayoral campaign that lasts until October 27 and will likely be an election issue.
Mayor Rob Ford has already come out several times against removing the highway, suggesting on Feb. 5 that it would cause “traffic chaos.”
“I’m not going to tear it down, it will cause traffic chaos,” he said at the time. “I want to maintain it just like most of Torontonians want it to be maintained.”
Watch: (Feb. 5) Mayor Rob Ford suggests tearing down the Gardiner Expressway would cause ‘traffic chaos’
But the removal of similar expressways in other cities including San Francisco, Boston and Paris, France saw traffic volume either increase or absorbed by other routes, according to a study from the University of Connecticut. The same study suggested San Francisco and Boston also saw significant increases in property values surrounding the new boulevard while Paris saw economic increases in the area.
Accelerating repairs of the Gardiner Expressway
While the city is recommending tearing down the elevated portion of the Gardiner Expressway, another city staff report suggests accelerating current repairs meant to keep the highway usable.
The report suggests using prefabricated deck rather than concrete for the highway. Accelerating the rehabilitation would cost $115 million but city staff suggest it would be offset by the reduction in traffic and commuter impacts poised to cost $3 billion over eight years.
– With files from Mark McAllister
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