Cross-posted to Spacing Votes
A report commissioned by the City of Toronto on what to do with the Gardiner Expressway is about to be made public at the end of the week, CBC.ca is reporting.
Councillors voted Monday to approve the release of the report amid building pressure leading up to the November municipal election.
City officials received the report from the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corp. in 2004, but have resisted releasing it, saying the key financial details were not ready.
The report outlines three options for the busy roadway, including tearing it down, leaving it up and dismantling part of it. It also detail how much each option would cost and the length of time it would take to implement the changes.
What will be interesting to read in the report is whether road tolls are part of the solution. Both mayoral candidates have said they do not support road tolls on our highways (Miller has backed away from his 2003 stance). The only way a future city council will support dismantling the expressway is if a viable business solution is part of the equation. Since Toronto is perpetually broke, money coming out of the current budget will never happen. The province and the feds will never fund it. So if we want the Gardiner to come down, drivers are going to have to pay for it (it’s almost like tobacco companies paying health insurance bills for victims of smoking-related illnesses).
While the mayoral candidates may not want this report to become an election issue, the local media, residents, and possibly candidates of waterfront wards may have other ideas. Keep your eyes open for which options candidates end up supporting. This has the potential to be a Toronto-style wedge issue.
– – – – – – – – –
As an aside, whenever I walk down to the lake from my place in Parkdale, I almost always start to dream about how to make access to the waterfront so much more hospitable. The first thing I’d suggest, before taking down the Gardiner, is build parkland over the rail tracks (I believe they did this in Chicago). As the above image illustrates, the barrier to our waterfront starts with the rail lands (left side of image). A long strip of a park over the tracks, stretching out from the downtown core, east and west, would be beautiful and less expensive to construct. It could also be built over the sunken part of the Gardiner west of Bathurst all the way out to Parkdale and possibly to the Humber. It is something that could be done incrementally with little disruption to vehicle and rail traffic.
If anyone wants to base there urban planning thesis on this idea let me know. I’d like to help.
photo from Wikipedia • Looking east from CN Tower
To leave comments visit Spacing Votes
