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Even as a boulevard, the roadway will still be a fast moving roadway. Spare some change Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Mulclair for taking down the Gardiner?
 
WislaHD said:
For once, ksun is spot on. Developers are the reason this city is profiting as well as it is.

They have billions invested in the city and have a much larger interest than any of us in having a functioning, growing city. But what do they know?
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In the 50s and 60s developers got cities to remove established built form in favour of putting in their profitable construction, ignoring the needs of the people already using the area. We called it urban renewal.
 
So why do we have to wait until 2019 for the demolition of the Gardiner to begin? I hope there's a way to expedite the process, ahead of the upcoming provincial elections.
 
As a resident of the Distillery District, I am a huge proponent of tearing down the East Gardiner and replacing it with an expanded 8-lane Lakeshore Boulevard. These images were taken June 6th from street level on Parliament Street (looking south) and from above:

Parliament Street looking south from Mill Street:


Closer view of the elevated expressway and railway underpass at the foot of Parliament St:


The East Gardiner from Parliament Street to Jarvis Street:






 
WislaHD said:
On the other hand, adding street capacity ends up increasing congestion, as Texans just found out recently:

http://www.planetizen.com/node/77888
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This is an important concept, and may be the reason why the current expressway-user numbers don't matter.

Given a choice people will always drive until congestion levels get so high it's quicker to take transit. Therefore the ratio of drivers-to-transit-users for people with a choice is determined by the capacity of the roads versus the robustness of the transit system as much as anything else. If you increase the road capacity you don't end congestion - you just get more people driving and fewer people taking transit. Conversely, if you reduce road capacity you end up with the same congestion, but more transit users and fewer cars in the downtown. That is assuming of course your transit system has the capacity to take the extra people. Therefore there are strong environmental and social arguments to be made for reducing road capacity and increasing transit capacity.

When Tory says it's going to take commuters an extra ten minutes to get downtown, what he is really saying is there will be more people on the transit system and fewer driving since that ten minutes extra driving time will convince a lot of people to take transit instead.
 
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TheTigerMaster said:
So why do we have to wait until 2019 for the demolition of the Gardiner to begin? I hope there's a way to expedite the process, ahead of the upcoming provincial elections.
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Fearing the PCs getting elected and upload the Gardiner and DVP to the province?
 
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The DVP was never provincial. Only the section of the Gardiner west of the Humber was downloaded to the city. Why would the PCs want to upload the DVP/Gardiner to the province?
 
Edward Skira said:
The DVP was never provincial. Only the section of the Gardiner west of the Humber was downloaded to the city. Why would the PCs want to upload the DVP/Gardiner to the province?
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They promised it in the 2014 election. It would be very popular with the outer 416 and the 905 too.

The portion west of Humber belonging to the city never made sense.. Uploading the whole thing makes political and transportation sense. Next would be the Linc Alex and Red Hill plays - if it ever became politically popular
 
Edward Skira said:
The DVP was never provincial. Only the section of the Gardiner west of the Humber was downloaded to the city. Why would the PCs want to upload the DVP/Gardiner to the province?
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I have no idea why I typed "back to the province" instead of "to the province", but as Burloak said, that was their election promise, but I think it got overshadowed by the "100k jobs" scare.
 
Let me go on record as saying that John Tory is making another one of his famous blunders and in time it will be recognized as such. I have never been a supporter of Tory because I think the man has terrible judgement and not an ounce of creativity in him. He is all about being practical and doing what is expedient. Therefore, I am not at all surprised he wants to keep the Gardiner, as I would expect Rob Ford to have done the same and as I have said before, I see Tory and Ford as having pretty much the same agenda. (to play to the suburbs for votes, at the expense of the city) Hopefully, people will wise up to this guy, sooner than later.

When it is too late, the general consensus will be what the hell were we thinking? (another great opportunity blown) There, now I have it on record, for future reference. Well, unless Tory is defeated at council but I don't have much faith with people like Mamo on council.
 
howl said:
This is an important concept, and may be the reason why the current expressway-user numbers don't matter.

Given a choice people will always drive until congestion levels get so high it's quicker to take transit. Therefore the ratio of drivers-to-transit-users for people with a choice is determined by the capacity of the roads versus the robustness of the transit system as much as anything else. If you increase the road capacity you don't end congestion - you just get more people driving and fewer people taking transit. Conversely, if you reduce road capacity you end up with the same congestion, but more transit users and fewer cars in the downtown. That is assuming of course your transit system has the capacity to take the extra people. Therefore there are strong environmental and social arguments to be made for reducing road capacity and increasing transit capacity.

When Tory says it's going to take commuters an extra ten minutes to get downtown, what he is really saying is there will be more people on the transit system and fewer driving since that ten minutes extra driving time will convince a lot of people to take transit instead.
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YEP. That's exactly right!
 
Well hopefully tolls go on the dvp and gardiner to pay for this big mistake so at least we can make some money off of it.
 
From the Toronto Sun, at this link:

Here’s where councillors stood on the Gardiner issue as of Friday night:

HYBRID (15 votes)

  • Mayor John Tory
  • Vince Crisanti
  • Stephen Holyday
  • Justin Di Ciano
  • James Pasternak
  • Frances Nunziata
  • Frank Di Giorgio
  • Christin Carmichael Greb
  • Cesar Palacio
  • Jaye Robinson
  • Jon Burnside
  • Denzil Minnan-Wong
  • Michelle Berardinetti
  • Gary Crawford
  • Norm Kelly
REMOVE (16 votes)

  • Maria Augimeri
  • Sarah Doucette
  • Gord Perks
  • Ana Bailao
  • Mike Layton
  • Joe Cressy
  • Joe Mihevc
  • Josh Matlow
  • Kristyn Wong-Tam
  • Pam McConnell
  • Mary Fragedakis
  • Paula Fletcher
  • Janet Davis
  • Mary-Margaret McMahon
  • Shelley Carroll
  • Paul Ainslie
WILDCARDS (14 votes in three categories)
UNDECIDED (9 votes)

  • John Campbell
  • Giorgio Mammoliti
  • Anthony Perruzza
  • Michael Thompson
  • Glenn De Baeremaeker
  • Jim Karygiannis
  • Chin Lee
  • Raymond Cho
  • Ron Moeser
NO RESPONSE (4 votes)

  • Mark Grimes
  • Josh Colle
  • John Filion
  • David Shiner
MAINTAIN (1 vote)

  • Rob Ford
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No surprise with the lone wolf, Rob Ford.
 
City council is nuts to even consider demolishing a major highway and replacing it with severe traffic congestion on Lake Shore, for not very much cost savings (compared to the cost of GO expansion, the downtown relief line and new streetcar lines which is required to achieve the claimed levels of delay in the study, which would cost orders of magnitude more).

Does city council realize that there are hundreds of GO buses a day that use the Gardiner to go into downtown Toronto? Even those which come from the west and do not use the eastern section of the Gardiner will be negatively affected by this, thanks to the massive traffic jam we are likely to see on eastbound Gardiner before Jarvis and southbound DVP before Lake Shore at newly installed traffic lights. Metrolinx will not be at all happy about this proposal.
 
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