TheBulletin.ca Journal of Downtown Toronto
By Braz Menezes & Ulla Colgrass of the YQNA executive –
York Quay Neighbourhood Association wrote to Toronto Star columnist Glen Murray with comments and questions about the Gardiner Expressway, which was his topic on Dec. 3, 2006.
It’s always interesting to hear new ideas on the Gardiner Expressway that runs through our neighbourhood. On the waterfront, most of us cross under the Gardiner every day to and from work, and some see the traffic flow below their condo windows.
You are recommending that the Gardiner be removed, just as other planners and politicians are hoping to get rid of “that ugly thing.” YQNA’s Planning and Development Committee has a few questions that we would like answered before steps to demolish the Gardiner, or endless procrastination to do the same, will stall our waterfront developments.
Given the high cost of maintenance of the Gardiner, it is natural that our traffic planners and politicians focus on this elevated expressway as an obstacle. Actually, the Lake Shore Boulevard is much more of an obstacle with heavy traffic and myriad lanes. That’s where we need planning efforts to help thousands of people walking north-south.
Residents on the waterfront are more than open to improvements, and we are especially in need of improved pedestrian connections to the city. We take our lives in our hands on York Street, crossing 10 lanes of traffic at Lake Shore underneath the hideous Gardiner. This is the preferred crossing, and it will be even busier when the south exit is built to Union Station.
Few people here drive, but prefer to walk or take TTC. Revitalization of the central waterfront is attracting ever more visitors from the GTA. The majority arrive at Union Station, and their 4-minute walk to the waterfront is especially hazardous with children, baby buggies and picnic baskets in tow.
As you noted, the successes of removing elevated expressways in Milwaukee and London were achieved through good planning, especially in the design of civic spaces around them. We are still waiting for that.
Milwaukee is no comparison to Toronto. Taking down the Gardiner along the designated stretch on the central waterfront is estimated to cost over $700 million—not $25 million as in Milwaukee. A recently released study suggests that the actual cost of taking down and replacing the Gardiner will be anywhere between $1 billion and $2 billion, and it would take between seven to 10 years to complete. That makes it an unattainable luxury in Toronto’s current fiscal situation. There has been no indication to date that higher levels of government would be in funding such a project.
We have seen Van Nostrand’s plans for an east-west enclosed mall under the Gardiner of the kind you saw in London. We have also seen pictures of the 8- to 10-lane boulevard that our friends at Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation want to build to replace the Gardiner. Both seem to create a different kind of barrier between the city and the waterfront—prettier and very expensive.
As opposed to Milwaukee and other waterfronts, we have good property values on the waterfront. Condo towers are popping up like mushrooms; they are selling well and are visually obscuring the Gardiner. It now runs as a ribbon of traffic below, and only the few who bought condos facing the Gardiner are bothered by it. We live in a highly desirable neighbourhood, and it will be even more so with the transformation of Queens Quay and extensive Waterfront Revitalization plans.
York Quay Neighbourhood Association runs along the waterfront from Rogers Centre to Bay Street. We have 10,000 residents and have 14 million visitors a year to Harbourfront Centre and the Islands. We take a global view of the welfare of the city when we ask the following questions:
What will happen when more than 200,000 cars a day cannot enter or leave Downtown Toronto during many years of closing the Gardiner and Lake Shore while new roadways are being built?
What will happen to Downtown businesses when people find it too difficult to get to Rogers Centre, Air Canada Centre, the opera, theatres, restaurants, clubs, shopping, friends and festivals?
How would years of closing the Gardiner and Lake Shore affect the flight of business from Downtown to the suburbs?
How can we get a decision on the Gardiner ASAP, so Mayor Miller doesn’t have to pass this problem to his successor in four years?
How can we get the necessary north-south pedestrian linkages at ground level and below, between Front Street and Queens Quay.
We hope our questions will be part of the equation before major decisions are made about the Gardiner. We are not in love the Gardiner, but we do love Toronto and want to keep and improve a vibrant Downtown. Our questions need answers.
For the moment, YQNA works steadily towards improving connections to the city by a covered walkway along York Street, with a PATH way under the Lake Shore. Bringing more visitors from the GTA to the waterfront will improve the economic situation for our businesses.
Many residents here favour tolls on both the Gardiner and Don Valley Parkway. That could pay for many improvements and regular maintenance to our main waterfront barriers: Lake Shore Boulevard, the Gardiner and the train tracks, as well as improve the coverage and quality of our citywide transit system.
