{"id":46019,"date":"2013-10-21T08:30:33","date_gmt":"2013-10-21T12:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=46019"},"modified":"2013-10-20T23:36:21","modified_gmt":"2013-10-21T03:36:21","slug":"lorinc-gardiners-future-gift-ford-election-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2013\/10\/21\/lorinc-gardiners-future-gift-ford-election-bid\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: Gardiner’s future a gift to Ford election bid"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"feature-lorinc\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to pose an impolite question to the talented officials at Waterfront Toronto (WT) and their dedicated colleagues in the City\u2019s waterfront planning group:<\/p>\n

Are you guys nuts?!?<\/em><\/p>\n

At last week\u2019s open house about the future of Gardiner Expressway\u2019s east end, WT and City officials (and a small army of planning consultants) laid out some of the latest thinking about the various options under consideration<\/a> (\u201cmaintain,\u201d improve,\u201d \u201creplace\u201d, and \u201cremove\u201d), as well as the process for making an inarguably historic decision about Toronto\u2019s monument to 1950s transportation planning.<\/p>\n

While deputy city manager John Livey took care to explain that a final verdict won\u2019t be forthcoming until at least 2015, he did say WT and City officials plan to ask council to weigh in on a \u201crecommended preferred alternative\u201d next spring.<\/p>\n

And yes, they all know there\u2019s going to be an election going on.<\/p>\n

Which brings me back to the aforementioned rude question\u2026.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s little doubt the members of the WT\/City Gardiner East team have been thinking hard and seriously about this issue, which involves significant amounts of public money, extensive consultation, intricate ideas about land use and epic civil engineering challenges. Not content to labour away in an ivory silo, these experts are keenly aware that the Gardiner EA is tethered to the results of a wide range of parallel studies involving the waterfront and its transportation networks.<\/p>\n

So why they\u2019d risk asking the current council to absorb all this higher-order thought is totally beyond me.<\/p>\n

After all, this group \u2014 with a very few notable exceptions \u2014 has displayed an utterly appalling inability to treat serious city-building issues seriously. They\u2019ve flip-flopped on the transit file like a half-dead fish on a dock, and they\u2019ve demonstrated eye-watering inconsistency on the small matter of paying for large capital projects.<\/p>\n

Then, of course, there\u2019s Mayor SubwaySubwaySubway, who has neither the interest nor the intellectual wherewithal to grasp any of officialdom\u2019s fine-grain analysis about the Gardiner\u2019s future. As sure as Tuesday follows Monday, Ford can be counted on to make many public-opinion-swaying grunting sounds about wars on cars and other fictions. Indeed, I\u2019d argue that by aiming to get the Gardiner on council\u2019s agenda in the spring, the WT\/City team will be effectively jamming a stick in that hornet\u2019s nest otherwise known as Ford Nation. As if another one is needed\u2026<\/p>\n

Yes, it is possible that the WT\/City\u2019s preferred option will be a status quo scenario \u2014 repair the rebar, patch the concrete, slap on a fresh coat of paint, etc. \u2014 which meets Ford\u2019s cost threshold and his always nuanced grasp of transportation policy. But if they align around another idea(s), Ford gains yet another phoney target for his invective, and the public conversation becomes that much more debased.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean to suggest that the whole city should cower in the face of Ford\u2019s boundless rhetorical stupidity. But much is riding on this election, whereas the Gardiner is a slow-moving story that just kind of trudges along. At the very least, we don\u2019t need to turn the deliberation over its future into an election issue.<\/p>\n

The reason is that the WT\/City planners have come up with an intriguing \u2014 though certainly not perfect \u2014 approach to rethinking the Gardiner corridor that merits serious technical and political attention.<\/p>\n

As regular readers of this space will know, I\u2019ve never been convinced by the case for removing the Gardiner, simply because the resulting surface road \u2014 an eight-to-ten lane behemoth shoe-horned between the backs of development parcels and the railway embankment \u2014 hardly strikes me as an improvement. The WT\/City presentation, however, claims that removing the Gardiner will produce a significant updraft in property values (the deck estimates about 30%, but no sources are given) as well as an increase in real estate with development potential.<\/p>\n

The WT\/City consultants are also exploring the possibility of stripping the two centre lanes out of the existing Gardiner and then slimming the footprint of\u00a0Lake Shore Boulevard so it doesn\u2019t spill out from underneath the el\u2019 \u2014 the so-called \u201cimprove\u201d option. As was explained last week, the gap would allow sunlight to reach\u00a0Lake Shore and the area just to the north. The slimmed down Lake Shore, in turn, opens up about 500,000 sq.-ft of turf for development or public space.<\/p>\n

Based on the presentation, I can\u2019t yet judge if this approach is realistic from an engineering point of view, or cost effective (i.e., will development on those new parcels off-set the cost of shifting Lake Shore and splicing the Gardiner). It\u2019s also difficult to discern whether the new land created will be desirable. But I want to learn more, which is why I\u2019d prefer that the debate take place outside silly season.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the question of money will inevitably arise, and I\u2019d like to see the WT\/City team present council with a more expansive decision-making framework \u2014 one that takes into account the opportunity costs for other waterfront projects.<\/p>\n

The WT\/City team estimates that the \u201cimprove\u201d option would cost $420-$630 million \u2014 the second most expensive alternative, after replacing the Gardiner with a higher and slimmer highway. (Maintaining it will cost $230 million, while removing the el\u2019 and building a wide boulevard runs from $240 to $360 million).<\/p>\n

From where I sit, the key equation is this: if we add the cost of fixing the Gardiner to the (as-yet-unfunded) $500-$600 million needed to re-build the mouth of the Don as a means of dealing with the floodplain issues on the Portlands, and if then we compare that total outlay to the development\/economic\/quality of life potential of the two projects combined, what is the optimal use of public resources?<\/p>\n

After all, the really big prize in the waterfront is a creative re-purposing of the Portlands, and it\u2019s reasonable to argue that dollars invested in the Gardiner\/Lake Shore corridor are dollars that won\u2019t be used for mouth of the Don.<\/p>\n

Complicated, huh? Lots of interconnected moving parts, right?<\/p>\n

All the more reason not to sacrifice this debate to an election that, I\u2019m afraid, will almost certainly drag Toronto\u2019s public discourse down to new lows.<\/p>\n

photo by Sam Javanrouh<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019d like to pose an impolite question to the talented officials at Waterfront Toronto (WT) and their dedicated colleagues in the City\u2019s waterfront planning group: Are you guys nuts?!? At last week\u2019s open house about the future of Gardiner Expressway\u2019s east end, WT and City officials (and a small army of planning consultants) laid outContinue reading “LORINC: Gardiner’s future a gift to Ford election bid”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":46023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9,20,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-traffic","category-urban-design","category-waterfront"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLORINC: Gardiner's future a gift to Ford election bid - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2013\/10\/21\/lorinc-gardiners-future-gift-ford-election-bid\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LORINC: Gardiner's future a gift to Ford election bid - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019d like to pose an impolite question to the talented officials at Waterfront Toronto (WT) and their dedicated colleagues in the City\u2019s waterfront planning group: Are you guys nuts?!? 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