[Electrify]

This thread isn't about which one would be better per-se, but rather why did the city puts all its eggs in the Spadina basket rather than the Christie (400 south extension) one? Surely building a highway through one of the wealthiest and most well connected neighbourhoods in the city was not going to be an easy sell with little controversy. Not to mention it wouldn't even connect with the Gardiner, just dump all the traffic out at the intersection of Spadina and Bloor! Meanwhile the Christie Expressway was to run through poorer neighbourhoods so it would probably face less opposition, still be accessible for those in Forest Hill, and would terminate at the Gardiner rather than on city streets.

My theory is that like the appeal of having a subway station steps away from your home, the planners at the time assumed the wealthy would have liked a highway interchange only a short distance away from their driveway. Of course, this ignores the foresight of the noise, air pollution, and excessive traffic congestion such a route would have caused for this community.

What are your thoughts on the subject?

 

[gweed123]

My guess is, and I could be wrong with this, but that the Spadina Expressway was given the green light first because it was paired with the Spadina Subway. By the time they started Spadina, urban expressways were starting to become less palitable. Pairing it with a subway reduced some of the bitter taste that the expressway caused. Ultimately though, even the pairing with the subway wasn't enough for the project to be completed.

 

[Paleo]

Maybe an analogy can be made to the York U/Vaughan, RHE, and Sheppard subway projects vs the DRL in that the owners of Yorkdale had better lobbyists. I don't know the history of ownership of that land, just speculating.

 

[adma]

My guess is, and I could be wrong with this, but that the Spadina Expressway was given the green light first because it was paired with the Spadina Subway. By the time they started Spadina, urban expressways were starting to become less palitable. Pairing it with a subway reduced some of the bitter taste that the expressway caused. Ultimately though, even the pairing with the subway wasn't enough for the project to be completed.

And possibly, too, the already excessive breadth of Spadina Ave would have made for better, more economical Decarie-esque repurposing than destructively plowing through the College & Grace zone or whatever would've been...

 

[junctionist]

Was The Annex among the most wealthy neighbourhoods at the time? It had academics from U of T, but wasn't this the era of rooming houses and Hungarian immigrants? The Spadina Expressway would be more practical to build thanks to the ravines south of Eglinton and the width of Spadina. The expressway-crazed planners were just drawing lines on maps at the time and ignoring almost anything in their path, even the most historic places like Fort York. But practically speaking, the most practical routes had to be exploited first. Spadina was closer to downtown which meant it was (in Modernist planning theory) more useful to the new suburban middle class needing to get downtown to the office buildings that were to "renew" it. Coupled with a 'sanitization' strategy with the subway line, it probably seemed the most viable.

 

[Electrify]

I was thinking more Forest Hill than The Annex. Even with it running through that ravine, there would be a complex interchange at Bathurst and St. Clair.