TORONTO – After Global News revealed thousands of documents detailing the state of the aging Gardiner Expressway, city councillors began to question why the environmental assessment of the Gardiner was cancelled, and what options are available for the future.
Through Freedom of Information legislation, Global News obtained thousands of pages of inspection reports, emails and briefing notes, detailing hundreds of issues with the elevated portion of the Gardiner Expressway between 2009 and the fall of 2012.
That investigation, along with briefing notes submitted to the city’s budget committee Wednesday, formed the basis for heated vitriol between councillors as they asked what should be done with the Gardiner Expressway.
Toronto’s Chief Planner Jennifer Keesmaat raised the issue of the Gardiner’s place in Toronto’s future on Global Toronto’s The Morning Show Thursday.
“We don’t have a decade,” Keesmaat said. “The challenge is, it should never have been built in the first place. Now that we have it, what do we do with it?”
The current plan to rehabilitate the Gardiner for a price of approximately $600 million over 12 years entails replacing the road deck completely.
Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, chair of the Public Works Committee, said the city needs to take “decisive” actions to fix the Gardiner and the current plan involves an unprecedented level of investment.
“I think that we have to move forward with the repairs because if we don’t, we could squander millions of dollars, and as we all know now, the Gardiner is deteriorating and we have to take some…pretty decisive decisions and actions,” Minnan-Wong said.
At the end of the 12-year rehabilitation, Minnan-Wong said the Gardiner will essentially be a new highway.
But is repairing it the best option?
Another option is tearing down the expressway.
Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno agrees with tearing it down, arguing the roughly $500 million earmarked for a repair project would be “ill-spent.”
“While the aqueducts built by Romans – its oldest sections more than 2,300 years old – are still functioning in places as testament to the architectural genius of its constructors, the Gardiner is limping into strained inefficiency and structural decrepitude after less than six decades,” Dimanno writes.
Councillor Gord Perks, a former chair of the Public works Committee, agrees. He says he would prefer the eastern portion of the Gardiner be torn down – but only after an environmental assessment (EA) confirms that.
“I think the first and most important thing is we have to complete the environmental assessment. I think that we have failed as an elected government if we make a $500 million decision without the technical and financial advice that we need,” Perks said.
“My inclination, personally, I would hope that environmental assessment would tell me that it’s a good idea to take down the eastern portion of the Gardiner.”
Perks said the elevated portion of the Gardiner could have a “tremendously negative impact” on the surrounding area.
Moreover, he says he would rather the city pay a large lump sum to tear it down, rather than “millions a year in perpetuity to keep that thing from falling down.”
Councillor Janet Davis agrees with Perks – but only about the need for a completed environmental assessment – without it, she says, she does not have the necessary information to make an informed decision.
“We’ve got a railway and railway tracks running east-west along that corridor, we have a big berm that separates the water front from the rest of the city,” Davis said. “What are the impediments to connecting the rest of the city to the Lakeshore? And will it work? Will it reduce traffic capacity? How many lanes will it be? Can you still connect it to the Don Valley Parkway?”
“These are all the questions that were going to be answered by the EA,” she said.
Follow @jamesarmstrong7
Comments