I'm part of the minority here it seems, but I think removing the Gardiner would be a horrible idea. Sometimes you need to drive in to downtown, and it's already enough of a pain in the ass getting in there by car. Without the Gardiner every single street within 2 kms of the freeway would get even more congested.
Smaller cities in Canada don't have freeways serving their downtowns, because they don't need it. Fact is, there are more trucks needing to get into the city than total cars in downtown London (for example). Having thousands of trucks having to use city streets would be far worse than the current situation IMO.
Yes, the Gardiner isn't the greatest looking thing, but all these claims that it creates a pedestrian barrier between downtown and the waterfront, to me, is baloney. I've crossed Lakeshore plenty of times afoot and did not feel unsafe or uncomfortable at all. And every time I do walk there I'm surrounded by plenty of other people who also don't seem to be bothered by it.
If they were building a highway from scratch and had the space without having to demolish anything in the process, then yes, burying it would be a lot more elegant. But as it is, I don't think it's realistic. There would be at least a 5 year period of intolerable congestion, it would cost billions, and the only other city to have done it hasn't exactly come out of it with a perfect system (tons of structural, electrical and leakage problems).
