[nfitz]

Please if you are going to troll, at least be a little bit less obvious about it.

If I was going to troll, I'd have known he had any involvement with this before we had this discussion.

I'm quite serious - he seemed to be quite keen to bring the Gardiner down when he spoke on the subject months ago. Has his employment situation changed since then?

 

[ssiguy2]

OK kids, here' what you do with the Gardiner................

Move up to near the rail tracks with about a 10 meter stretch between it and the railway. Then you trench {not tunnel} the roadway and build mid-rise condos ABOVE it. They main pillars on each side of the trenched highway and one in the median. The Gardiner would be out of site and out of mind.

The benefits are huge. You would get rid of the Gardiner by the water, you would keep a 4 {not 6} lane freeway connection between the DVP and Gardiner West, you can a nice treed bikeway between the trenched Gardiner and at grade mid-rises for bikes, and the Gardiner is out of sight and out of mind.

Not only is this a more pedestrian and urban friendly plan but would be a hell of a lot cheaper and easier and faster to build. You sell the lands that the Gardiner currently occupies for condos/office etc. The city would receive revenue on an ongoing basis for this but building over a new trenched Gardiner also means that the city would actually get revenue from space right above the Gardiner. The new Gardiner would actually make the city money.

Also it would be incredibly cheap to build. Trenches are far less expensive and easier to build than tunnels but the city could also leverage it's land ownership. The city could GIVE the money to developers where the new trenched highway would be and build their condos on top but with no parking. In exchange for free land, the developer would be required to build 100% of the portion of the Gardiner that is underneath their condo buildings. Probably cheaper for them than having to build three levels of parking.

You get a new invisible Gardiner, sales of the old Gardiner lands, a friendly urban environment, and the developers pick up most of the cost. With good planning and greenery you wouldn't even know the Gardiner was there and instead of being a standard dead weight zone on the city it actually become an invisible piece of infrastructure that actually makes the city money with far reduced construction costs for the city. The Waterfront, pedestrians, developers, commuters, and the city are all winners.

 

[W. K. Lis]

See Western Waterfront Master Plan at this link. As well as this thread: http://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/western-waterfront-master-plan.8554/
The bad news was that the final report was in 2009, and you-know-who came in after.

 

[ponyboy]

The idea in the proposal of covering the gardiner with a green deck is distracting from all of the other good ideas contained. I worry that discussion of the green deck will distract from the merits of the proposal. I think the green deck is not necessary, and we could put in a few land bridges in places.

 

[nfitz]

The idea in the proposal of covering the gardiner with a green deck is distracting from all of the other good ideas contained. I worry that discussion of the green deck will distract from the merits of the proposal. I think the green deck is not necessary, and we could put in a few land bridges in places.

Land bridges? For the herds of migratory raccoons?

 

[W. K. Lis]

I just hope that should they do any realignment, or rebuilding, that they include a breakdown lane, in the design. Other cities also use the breakdown lane for buses only, if there are no breakdowns of course.

 

[howl]

OK kids, here' what you do with the Gardiner................

Move up to near the rail tracks with about a 10 meter stretch between it and the railway. Then you trench {not tunnel} the roadway and build mid-rise condos ABOVE it. They main pillars on each side of the trenched highway and one in the median. The Gardiner would be out of site and out of mind.

The benefits are huge. You would get rid of the Gardiner by the water, you would keep a 4 {not 6} lane freeway connection between the DVP and Gardiner West, you can a nice treed bikeway between the trenched Gardiner and at grade mid-rises for bikes, and the Gardiner is out of sight and out of mind.

Not only is this a more pedestrian and urban friendly plan but would be a hell of a lot cheaper and easier and faster to build. You sell the lands that the Gardiner currently occupies for condos/office etc. The city would receive revenue on an ongoing basis for this but building over a new trenched Gardiner also means that the city would actually get revenue from space right above the Gardiner. The new Gardiner would actually make the city money.

Also it would be incredibly cheap to build. Trenches are far less expensive and easier to build than tunnels but the city could also leverage it's land ownership. The city could GIVE the money to developers where the new trenched highway would be and build their condos on top but with no parking. In exchange for free land, the developer would be required to build 100% of the portion of the Gardiner that is underneath their condo buildings. Probably cheaper for them than having to build three levels of parking.

You get a new invisible Gardiner, sales of the old Gardiner lands, a friendly urban environment, and the developers pick up most of the cost. With good planning and greenery you wouldn't even know the Gardiner was there and instead of being a standard dead weight zone on the city it actually become an invisible piece of infrastructure that actually makes the city money with far reduced construction costs for the city. The Waterfront, pedestrians, developers, commuters, and the city are all winners.

First of all I like this idea very much (in fact I proposed a trenching solution a few months back for the section between Yonge and Parliament), but there are two problems with trenching east of Parliament. One, there is no reason to trench this section since the land-uses within 30m of the railway line are severely restricted by railway safety regulations (e.g. no residential, no office etc.) so you might was well have the expressway on the surface. You could perhaps build parking over it. Two, it doesn't solve the problem of how to connect to the DVP. The south end of the DVP is severely constrained by the Don River and the railway line. You either need to build a ramp over the railway line (expensive and ugly), a tunnel under the river (extraordinarily expensive), or go through the existing railway underpass. An expressway butt up against the railway would need to make a sharp 90 degree turn to get through the existing underpass. You could put in a traffic light with the east and south legs of the intersection connecting to the Portlands, but then you end up with a situation like Eglinton and Allen. Alternately you could put in a huge European style roundabout, but that would take up quite a bit of land (all within the Don floodway).

 

[ssiguy2]

Appreciate the feedback.

I have to confess thou that I don't see the issue with reduced speed ramp. This is not one freeway but the interchange of 2. Every other ramp in the city require a slow down in speed so what is so precious about this one?

 

[howl]

Appreciate the feedback.

I have to confess thou that I don't see the issue with reduced speed ramp. This is not one freeway but the interchange of 2. Every other ramp in the city require a slow down in speed so what is so precious about this one?

The existing ramp that goes all the way to the channel has a radius of about 300m, which is about the same as the ramp from the 401 westbound to the 400 northbound - easy to take at 100kmph. The smallest radius an expressway-to-expressway ramp can typically get is about 150m, which is like the ramp from the southbound 400 to the westbound 401. This requires cars to slow down and often creates a back up, which can cause accidents. Also when there is not a back up cars may try to take the ramp too quickly also causing accidents. And even with a 150m radius the Gardiner would not be able to hug the railway. The issue, as with all highway design, is trading safety for other benefits. The engineers will say "safety first", the urban designers will say "maximize the land available". The solution will be a compromise somewhere in the middle.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

The benefits are huge. You would get rid of the Gardiner by the water, you would keep a 4 {not 6} lane freeway connection between the DVP and Gardiner West, you can a nice treed bikeway between the trenched Gardiner and at grade mid-rises for bikes, and the Gardiner is out of sight and out of mind.

Not only is this a more pedestrian and urban friendly plan but would be a hell of a lot cheaper and easier and faster to build. You sell the lands that the Gardiner currently occupies for condos/office etc. The city would receive revenue on an ongoing basis for this but building over a new trenched Gardiner also means that the city would actually get revenue from space right above the Gardiner. The new Gardiner would actually make the city money.

Also it would be incredibly cheap to build. Trenches are far less expensive and easier to build than tunnels but the city could also leverage it's land ownership. The city could GIVE the money to developers where the new trenched highway would be and build their condos on top but with no parking. In exchange for free land, the developer would be required to build 100% of the portion of the Gardiner that is underneath their condo buildings. Probably cheaper for them than having to build three levels of parking.

Trenching might be cheap(er), but trenching in a way that will allow a midrise to be built atop (which is basically saying cut and cover) won't be that cheap - and I highly doubt that the amount gained from selling the land as such will come close to covering the cost - particularly if you are only zoning the land for midrises. Someone can work out the economics, but my suspicion is that it won't come close to being a cost-neutral kind of arrangement. That, and don't forget you still need to deal with the connection to the elevated Gardiner and DVP - and it will eat into the amount of redevelopable space (which is also a weakness of the Brook McIlroy plan - the strip of land available for redevelopment close the Don River is so narrow, it might as well not be there.

AoD

 

[skorji]

The idea in the proposal of covering the gardiner with a green deck is distracting from all of the other good ideas contained. I worry that discussion of the green deck will distract from the merits of the proposal. I think the green deck is not necessary, and we could put in a few land bridges in places.

Its intended to be shown as an option. The primary objective is to align the Gardiner and Metrolinx right-of-ways to free up publicly owned land for development. The concept would work with / without the elevated park feature. It could also be implemented in part, incrementally, through future development and where most appropriate (e.g. 45 Bay Street).

 

[smably]

This column from @GraphicMatt is on the money: http://www.metronews.ca/views/toron...at-will-make-gardiner-hybrid-a-good-idea.html

Particularly this bit:

Good compromises can lead to nice moments of political unity and solutions that balance needs.
But none of these newfangled hybrids make for good compromises.

They can’t. Because council already rejected the best Gardiner compromise: removing the small two-kilometre stretch between Jarvis and the DVP and replacing it with a boulevard.

It was both cost-effective and fair. It acknowledged that while, yes, there’s no avoiding spending at least a billion dollars to repair the most-used parts of the Gardiner, the evidence suggests the city can knock down this tiny eastern part and save a lot of cash. All with minimal traffic impact.

The boulevard option was already a compromise. But then somehow the "modified maintain" option, basically the status quo, somehow got framed as the compromise, and now we're here, spending millions more to try to make the no-compromise option for cars palatable.

 

[salsa]

Gardiner tunnel supporter: "we don't see any negatives". Nope, no issues at all folks.

http://m.thestar.com/#/article/news...rfaces-at-toronto-city-hall-on-wednesday.html

 

[Filip]

Gardiner tunnel supporter: "we don't see any negatives". Nope, no issues at all folks.

http://m.thestar.com/#/article/news...rfaces-at-toronto-city-hall-on-wednesday.html

Well maybe we need to put our big city pants on and realize the benefits far outweigh the negatives.

Yes, it's much more expensive, yes it'll take longer to build (I disagree with the 15-year timeline and Boston isn't a good example to use - their scope was far bigger), but we need to future proof our infrastructure and free up valuable ground level for public use.

Toronto is way too timid for my liking... And to think there was a time things were done and dreams were big.. What happened?

 

[jcam]

Really curious to see a presentation that was made by the Aecon/Dragagos/ACS team. Looked through the council material and there wasn't anything there.

With ACS in there, I'm assuming they're pitching this as a - "you give us the money you WOULD'VE spent to repair or replace the Gardiner, PLUS let us monetize it, and we can make it happen." Not a bad play if they have a solid business plan. Probably some revenue sharing for development space too I would imagine.