The theme of the next hard-copy edition of Spacing will be intersections, those places where parts of the city meet, and cross, and where we sometimes come across each other. However, some of the strangest and most compelling intersections are the ones we can’t explore on foot so easily. As I mention in an essay in the upcoming The State of the Arts book (a follow-up to uTOpia), the intersection of the 427 and the 401 out by Pearson was always magical for some of us passing through the city from Windsor, with roads flying 4-5 layers high. Our roads were only two layers, and the nearby Detroit overpasses weren’t “ours” in a nationalistic sort of way, but Toronto’s were.
For a lot of Montrealers, and Canadians in general, the Turcot Interchange — where Quebec Autoroute’s 15 and 20 mash up together in an impossibly modern tangle of roads — was something to be proud of (itself flying above the Canadian National Railway yards below, yet another layer of intersection). Turcot, like Expo ’67, was and maybe still is, wrapped up in our Canadian identity, a concrete marker of when we “came of age” or entered the modern age.
That Turcot is crumbling now, and the CNR sold off the rail yards to the province in 2003 and that the interchange is synonmous with terrible traffic delays (making a running-late cab trip from the Plateau to Pierre Elliot Trudeau airport very expensive one day last year) makes this a strange land to explore. A wonderful blog called Walking Turcot Yards has been exploring the area underneath the roads for some time now. Sometimes contributors look at old tunnels (one is even called Dead Dog Tunnel), document huge billboards being dismantled or muse about urban design and art projects that would work here — other times they find historical documents about the area or post pictures they take of traces of the derelict life down below. It’s a good, psychogeographic approach to a part of Montreal most of us see on the way in and out of the city, but rarely if ever stop and pay attention to. They also link to many other folks who explore Turcot in their own ways.
(Image from this “Advertising Towers” Walking Turcot Yards entry)
5 comments
Looking forward to it!
Will there be anything on the 401/410 interchange? That one has quite a history.
Justin> No 410 — I just used it has a starting point to talk about the suburbs, as the 401/427 interchange represented “Toronto” for me for so many years. 410 didn’t figure into the mythology — i suppose it was just part of the GTA build up that started after the Escarpment.
That said, looking at these interchanges, and highway development in Toronto, is something i’d like to poke around in the future.
And remember too, the 401/427 mythology owes a bit to the Richview Cemetery stranded in the middle of it all…
I think Sean Marshall once wrote a very comprehensive piece on the history of freeways in the GTA on Transit Toronto. It was very well informed.
For better or for worse, Toronto’s coming of age in the 1960s was heralded by the construction of our extensive and very high-capacity freeway system. I remember visiting the Stack in LA and thinking “that’s it?!” because that interchange and the freeway system in LA has become such a part of local lore and, yet, it’s really puny compared to some of the mammoth interchanges in Toronto and less of an engineering marvel than, say, the gargantuan 401. Also, I remember looking at LeCorbusier sketches of “Ville Radieuse” as a kid thinking “Hmmm, that reminds me of the 404 and DVP” where towering cross-shaped apartment blocks ring a
spaghetti interchange.
Transit seems to be more storied in Toronto when, in reality, it’s the freeway that really dominates the city’s landscape. It may not align with the way we want our city to be designed, but we just can’t ignore the impact that freeways have had on the Toronto region. Good work, Spacing, for doing an article on this.
Thanks for the amazing idea of where to explore next time I’m in the 514!
Back to T.O. though…The funny thing though about the 401/427 interchange is that as ginormous as it is, it was under-built and is the principle reason why the 401 can’t have Express Lanes through the western portion of Etobicoke (which often backs-up the 401 for km’s in each direction).