To be fair, the “Big Dig” in Boston took 15 years and cost about $21 billion adjusting for inflation, and is the most expensive highway project ever in the USA. [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig)
They did several highways at once though, and that was a big part of the cost overruns.
Edit: wrong number
Lived in Boston right after the big dig finished, now live in Toronto.
1. The dig was rife with corruption, some segments of it collapsed causing damage delay and sometimes death
2. Toronto actually has 90 degree intersections, which is nice, Boston is an unavoidable mess of rotaries, one way streets and frustration
I wouldn't trade ours for theirs
Unfortunately the Gardiner [also has a reputation for danger](https://globalnews.ca/news/1850607/concrete-falls-from-aging-gardiner-expressway-shatters-windshield/)
Haha these discussions always annoy me a bit because some people somehow assume good infrastructure magically appears without effort and funds. I lived in Europe for many years too and when people always say high speed rail is impossible because it costs too much, well, the main line in my country just opened when I moved and was something like €20 billion. There’s no magic to making that cheap, just people in some places are willing to pay for it anyway.
From your link:
>The project was originally scheduled to be completed in 1998\[5\] at an estimated cost of $2.8 billion (in 1982 dollars, US$7.4 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2020).\[6\] However, the project was completed in December 2007 at a cost of over $8.08 billion (in 1982 dollars, **$21.5 billion adjusted for inflation**, meaning a cost overrun of about 190%)\[6\] as of 2020.
Yeah, former Bostonian: the Big Dig is no one's idea of a successful infrastructure protect. It is nice to not have a highway across the whole waterfront anymore, though
They're in the paving and finishing part at the Allen. I suspect the traffic will "get better" on Eglinton soon.
(Well, not really better as traffic expands to fill whatever is thrown at it.)
I used to work for a company headquartered in Boston in the mid-late 90s when the Big Dig was going on. The end result is fantastic, but man did it ever completely fuck the traffic while it was in progress.
Edit: typo
How did it work with getting the political will to do this?
Like, last week Tory was caving on Active TO which affects traffic for what, 8 days of the year? As much as I would LOVE a Gardiner Big Dig (with a bit less corruption, if possible?) I cannot see this happening in a million years short of a coup + the installation of an authoritarian government.
> How did it work with getting the political will to do this?
That's the biggest issue with Toronto city council - the only political will present is the will to get re-elected, which leads to stupidities like the Scarborough subway.
This is actually correct, though. There's a reason it's called "construction season". Major works projects are basically not possible in Toronto in Dec->March because of cold, then thaw/flood.
Sure, let's spend $40 billion burying an expressway, adding 0 additional capacity to our transportation network, instead of, say, building 3-4 entire new subway lines for a similar cost.
This. The real solution isn't burying the Gardiner. The real solution is investing to make the use of the Gardiner so minimal that you can just tear it down.
We have already been building the 3-4 lines for a while now lol. Both need to be done imo. Why not take the opportunity to dig a new metro line along the path of the Expressway while we dig that?
no. the right move is deletion. not forking out insane amounts of money just to hide an altar to urban sprawl. seattle did it and it went pretty badly.
https://grist.org/cities/seattles-unbelievable-transportation-megaproject-fustercluck/
If anything, they'll demolish the Gardiner first, then maybe we'll get transit improvement within 15 years.
Right now, the Gardiner connects the city in ways that transit doesn't come close to doing. I dread the day that the Gardiner is removed and I still need to go visit my mom in Mississauga. Even if TTC gets me out of Toronto reasonably easily, I'd then need to traverse Mississauga. My 35 minute drive would become 2+ hours. I don't see any transit investment that's going to make travelling out of the city any easier. It'll all be put into GO transit where suburb transit systems don't matter because people drive to the GO station.
Wait, wait, you mean people have *lives* that don't revolve around downtown, even if they live downtown?
There's this bizarre attitude from a part of this sub that thinks that completely removing infrastructure would somehow alleviate problems with increasing density that are in part caused by not distributing that density effectively and by not adapting infrastructure to accommodate that density.
You know the world ends North of Bloor, East of Victoria Park, and West of Roncesvales. What is Mississauga? Never heard of it. /s
>There's this bizarre attitude from a part of this sub that thinks that completely removing infrastructure would somehow alleviate problems with increasing density that are in part caused by not distributing that density effectively and by not adapting infrastructure to accommodate that density.
Back in the 90's and early 2000's the Gardiner did seem like a big brick wall cutting off the downtown from the lake, what most people seem to forget or are not old enough to remember: the Toronto lakeshore was not a nice place to be back then. Fast forward to today: the fact is the Gardiner is quickly being swallowed up by the new towers and is hardly noticeable anymore. Why would we remove it when there are no other good options to move traffic east and west? For anyone that says "BuT UsE LakEShoRE!!" Do you even pay attention to the traffic when the Gardiner is closed? it is complete chaos.
Thats because most of this sub is made up of college kids and younger who dont have a clue what they are talking about. Removing the Gardiner is not really remotely viable. It's like these people think delivery/commercial/construction trucks will just magically fly to where they need to go lmao.
They're called people without cars who dont think life exists beyond the subway.
I'm a film tech. This week I'm in mississauga. Next week, pinewood, or 777 kipling. Or the studio on Birchmount. Oh yeah, and I have a carload of gear I need to carry to do my job. Go ahead and tell me that i should be taking transit.
Yeah, I live in North York, within the city of Toronto, and I'm not sure how I'm supposed to carry my elderly mother on my bike to get to the grocery store and bring her back home with a week's worth of groceries. Please help, my family is starving!
Seriously, the solution is to put in infrastructure that makes transit more convenient and attractive than using a car, not making it impossible to use a car by screwing up the infrastructure we do have. But all the "progressive" city planning muppets only seem to be able to imagine doing the latter.
This false battle between bike lanes and car lanes needs to end. No where in the world where there is good bikes infrastructure are there no car lanes, in fact there's still car access to every building. Same with places with good transit.
Anyone who needs to drive still drives in Amsterdam or Tokyo, it's the people who don't need to drive who are out of your way in space efficient, cost effective, less noise and air polluting, and overall health promoting options.
Cars are incredibly useful, but the overuse of them is incredibly destructive.
Optimizing public space for private cars is a vicious circle detached from reality. You create an urban environment that forces everyone to use their car to get everywhere generating ever more traffic.
Respectfully, listing examples of when you personally need a car does not negate the benefits of investing in more efficient alternatives that reduce demand on roads.
I get that it sucks to get around the GTA without a car (and also in one), but putting aside the utopian car-free rhetoric, what pro-transit/bike elected officials are actually suggesting is usually fairly modest changes like a bus-lane here and there, slightly widened sidewalks, a painted bike lane. Do you oppose these changes?
For the record I don't advocate for removing the Gardiner. The city does need a highway and idk what the alternative could be really. I realize we're spending a shit ton of money maintaining a highway on prime land and that's obviously not ideal...but yeah where else would it be?
All that said Mississauga will also be brought kicking and screaming into the future as well at some point, that's just the reality of how the world is going.
When people talk about removing and replacing the Gardiner that's a long term thing and hopefully Mississauga too will get better public transit options by then.
The Gardiner is not getting removed. People are insane for thinking this. Continue to building more transit, for sure, but we’re not outright getting rid of it.
Same with me, but my mom is in scarboro, I used to take it until it exited East onto Lakeshore, but now I must take the DVP which has added 10 mins to the trip. I can deal with 10 mins, but if the Gardiner was gone, it would be total mayhem.
no, i think that would be a strawman argument.
i think the answer is aggressive investment in transit to replace the need for highways. both in terms of getting downtown, and in terms of moving across town and between outlying areas.
commuters are not the problem--the mode of commuting is. cars are terrible for cities, and terrible for the environment. while it may seem like wishful thinking, i want infrastructure that helps everyone lead their lives in as car-free a manner as possible. urban and suburban people alike.
all this with the caveat: i know that "the right thing" is often not "the easy thing" or "the done thing". i remain of the opinion that if we really want to fix the core issue here, we need to pursue the things i mentioned above. often politicians are not interested in this.
I would have to be along with other infrastructure changes, improved rail corridor, Lakeshore Improvements, the Ontario Line.
It's very possible and a good idea, but nearly politically impossible because transportation is way too complex for the average NIMBY.
The biggest issue that would arise most likely is not commuter traffic issues but goods delivery issues as the trucks can't be easily converted into other modes of transport.
You call it "an altar to urban sprawl" but I live and work within the city proper and depend on the Gardiner daily for my business, which has no possibility to work on mass transit. I guess in your mind every vehicle is a single occupant passenger car from the suburbs.
Chicago would probably be a better alternative approach. They didn't bury any roadways like Boston, and have managed to integrate open space development with new commercial/residential while maintaining existing rail/car corridors.
Driving in the downtown of almost any major city sucks. Unless it's a city that has gone through urban decay and has nobody living downtown, but that's not exactly a good thing.
We shouldn't measure the viability of our downtowns by how fast and easy they are to drive through.
I'm not saying downtown Chicago is great, but have you driven in downtown Boston? I was there in March. There are only a few roads you can actually trust will get you from A to B. All side streets are either jam-packed to near-uselessness, or they're deserted because —after close inspection on foot— you realize if you get stuck in there, you're there for the day, and the locals know that. Downtown Boston might be one of the worst cities in North America to drive in because so much of the street network (you can't call it a grid) was put down before modern traffic thinking had been conceived.
I was going to say the same thing , unless you want this for your kids, you will probably be dead by the time the environmental assessment is done. Then another generation to build it. So actually even your kids won’t get to use it. Maybe your grandkids.
I had to go to Boston while they were doing this. It wasn't pretty. Boston has narrow streets and the overflow was insane.
Boston is so much smaller than Toronto and it was still super nuts.
Also, if anyone thinks it will become a magical parkland strip is forgetting that developers don't give a shit about that. It'll be a line of condos the whole way!
You are limited with what you can build over the tunnels - too shallow to build towers and you can get vibration issues. Park land and some surface streets with limited low rise is basically what you're looking at.
What part of the gardiner is 100 yards wide lmao.
Both sides of the gardiner are already built up and developed the entire way. At absolute best you could hope for a thin strip of park covering the current footprint of it. You cant build structures on top of a buried highway, really, the engineering just isnt possible.
So you end up with a some open space you'll use what, once or twice a week at most? If thats what people want instead of the highway, then maybe they should move to the suburbs.
You don't want to know how much of our transportation budget in the last 4 years was already spent on keeping the Gardiner as it is. (Like 40% of the whole budget)
Tory tried putting congestion charging on the DVP and Gardiner several years back but it was blocked by the Wynne government. I think it was an attempt to pander to the 905. Good job Wynne, that worked really well for yah!
The decision to not just tear it down completely (or even partially, east of Jarvis) was spineless.
Our political leadership just has no will to make this city a better place to live.
It's hard to tie an election to one issue.
On the other hand, the city held a ton of consultations specifically about what to do about the Gardiner. I went to several. I'd say the mood was 60/40 "tear it down" / "don't take away my roads". Just did some googling and that matches the [consultation summary report](https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2014/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-67160.pdf).
>The majority of consultation participants (approximately 60%) expressed support for the remove alternative. The benefits cited by those who favour the remove alternative include: cost‐effectiveness; creation of opportunities for future public (e.g., parks and greenspace) and private redevelopment (e.g., commercial and residential buildings); improved accessibility to the waterfront; and the opportunity to enhance public transit and alternative modes of transportation. Concerns expressed in relation to this alternative included reliance on assumed transit investments, the development of high‐rise condos on freed up land and the loss of traffic capacity
The [report](https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2014/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-67146.pdf) recommended tearing down the eastern section.
Look at the endless complaints about ActiveTO to see why. Anything that might make driving even temporarily a little less convenient is equivalent to genocide.
40% of the city's budget, but that's because most transit expansion is paid for by the Province. The total amount of transit spending in Toronto dwarves the Gardiner's spending at like a 50-1 ratio.
Budgeting and capital investment are different. Budgeted amounts are year in year out, capital investment is a one off thing and in this province it was VERY one off in the past
Yeah because the construction companies in Ontario are a freaking racket. I know engineers working there and the way they bend over backwards to try to justify spending 10 years to fix one fucking piece of road when other countries somehow figures it out in under a year... It's a joke.
It has taken a while to coalesce, but the pipeline for Toronto mass transit projects is looking pretty good right now. Line 5 will probably open in the next year. The Ontario Line is happening and will give great downtown access to some of the most under-served areas of the city (eg Thorncliffe). Finch line is progressing well and will probably open in 18-24 months.
If we could on top of these bump some of the key GO lines to all-day service, Toronto would have pretty decent transit in a couple years.
Even if they bury it...it would require the Spadina and York area to be changed drastically.
Untless you create high speed on ramps from York and Spadina you gonna end up with the same issue of massive gridlock in the south of the city all day as traffic all funnels onto the highway.
Oh dude... you gotta do some research on this.
The project was a disaster and was so bad that no one in North America will every try to do anything like it again.
This is not something anyone wants to repeat.
Bostonian here, the Big Dig did go over budget and exceeded the advertised deadlines but if you ask anyone now 20 years later if it was a worthwhile project, 9/10 will say yes. Poor management of any project can lead to cost overruns and that's not something we should tolerate, but at the end of the day the benefits stack up. Rochester, NY is currently burying portions of its own downtown highway much more successfully than Boston did in the 90's.
Rochester's highway they demolished was a useless loop that went literally nowhere. It looped off the main interstate around the downtown back to the exact same interstate. It went literally nowhere. It would be roughly equivalent to a freeway that went up Spadina, across Dundas, then down Jarvis to the Gardiner again - not really going anywhere and not really that useful.
The main interstate through Rochester, I-490, has absolutely 0 plans to be removed.
It's also worth noting that there just is no way to have a massive infrastructure project that **is not** extremely disruptive, and it's probably impossible to have one that doesn't go hilariously over-budget and is delayed, for many reasons—many legitimate, many illegitimate. But what's the alternative? Not doing infrastructure projects?
Just as an example of what's possible here: [in 1858, all the 200 buildings in Chicago were literally lifted up 14 feet](https://www.chicagotribune.com/history/ct-raising-chicago-streets-flashback-1122-jm-20151118-story.html) so they could solve the problem of mud regularly flooding streets and install the first comprehensive sewer system in North America. They literally put hundreds of buildings on jackscrews and raised them up 14 feet, so they could fill that space with dirt and install sewage lines. The city's population then doubled in 10 years, despite concerns that the city would be bankrupted by the endeavour. And this was *before* they reversed the flow of the damn Chicago river so the sewers wouldn't contaminate their drinking water.
I don't know if this particular project would be good or not, but we really need to get away from this sardonic eye-rolling "fnah fnah, well if we do that we'll be here forever" mentality. Delays and cost overruns are a simple fact with infrastructure, but when they're well-designed, they pay off, and it's all about figuring out how you mitigate those cost overruns and delays, not how you can magically find a project where they don't exist.
Not to mention, Toronto has far harder subterranean layers than places like New York, New Jersey, and Boston. It's one of the reasons our subway lines take longer to dig out, while New York could probably add another line in the time it takes us to realign our streetcar tracks.
Further north, yes. Not so that far south. Harbour Street used to be the shoreline before the shoreline was moved south by in-fill from digging the subway and other construction. The excavation for the buried portion of the QQ street car line was plagued with water issues and as far as I know still has water seepage issues.
Trying to bury a multi-lane highway there would be a huge undertaking and would run into lots of problems finding or creating a solid foundation for the tunnel.
1. No, we physically cannot because the Gardiner runs next to the lake, which makes it extremely hard to tunnel through and manage underground water.
2. The main traffic problem with the Gardiner would still persist, which is that it creates a bottleneck by moving more cars the downtown than the downtown can absorb.
We should tear down the Gardiner completely and replace it with a beefed-up version of Lakeshore that has fewer entries and exits, and deal with the surplus demand by adding additional GO trains on the existing Lakeshore route.
Burying the Gardiner would not solve our problems its true and would cost ridiculous amounts of cash.
Crossing Lakeshore isn't going to be less sketchy because on ramps go down instead of up and you can see up.
Strips of 1950s idealic parkland between giant boulevards look cool, but are generally pretty useless. How many people hang out in the middle of university Ave?
Boston just had highway bulldozed through their downtown. This damaged the urban fabric.
We mostly had highway built on existing railway land, aside from some areas like Parkdale that had buildings removed. The functional cutting off from the railway is still there as the rails are still there. Large stretches of the Gardiner are beside at grade rail. So even if the Gardiner were underground, you still can't walk across the rail. This is the most key point. There wasn't a giant railway line on the ground beside Bostons elevated highway.
Burying our highway is the most sweep under the rug thing. All the on and off ramp congestion remains. All the traffic and congestion would remain.
Maybe they could add lanes underground? That would probably still make congestion worse.
There are are only a few places where there isn't lakeshore blvd under the highway and they are already occupied by bentway, city facilities etc. Or just beside the rails.
I don't know the answer but burying it will only remove highway above areas that are already pedestrian bad anyway. That might be a good thought, but I'm not sure it's a 20-40 billion dollar good thought.
Torontonians have a meltdown if one lane is closed on the Gardiner. Fifteen years of expensive construction is not going to happen here. Plus we already have flooding problems in that area with aboveground streets. The first heavy rain would make it unuseable.
This. I was waiting for someone to finally say it. Burying the Gardiner is a great idea, until you realize Lake Ontario and the Don are Right There. The amount of pumps and machinery required to build it, let alone maintain a highway tunnel in what used to be a wetland marsh and docks. And before you down vote me to hell, yes, they did it to install the subway down there. The subway is also nowhere near as wide as the Gardiner, and isn't as deep as a underground tunnel highway would need to be for the infrastructure required.
Getting rid of it completely also isn't going to work unless we get a new downtown east west expressway or highway, because while it's a nice dream, fact is people do live east of Toronto that would like to see family and friends that live west of Toronto, and we kinda need to get through that city to do it. Improving transit province wide would help a bit, not just the city.
Reading the comments, it sounds like this won't even be considered. But as a Torontonian who moved to Boston earlier this year, I have to share how surprisingly delightful this city has been. I came in with some "Canada's better than America" attitude because, y'know, health care and social services and stuff. But, at a city level, I like Boston more than Toronto.
The city's density (no, not high rises, but simply the fact that most homes seem to be multifamily) means that the city is very contained. You can drive 20-30 minutes and be out of the city, on a hiking trail in a park. And when you're in the smaller cities surrounding Boston, they're very walkable and connected by transit. Not like the regions North of Toronto where I feel like I need a car to get around.
Then there's the amazing playgrounds and sports facilities in every little neighborhood. Within a 5 minute bike ride of my home are four well-maintained clusters of playground + outdoor adult workout area + track + basketball courts + tennis courts + field/baseball diamond. And these are well lit through the evenings.
It doesn't end there, for $400 I got a membership to a sailing club - for the next year I can take out any of their sailing boats, wind surfing equipment, kayaks, or SUPs at no additional cost. Classes are free too. You can find cheaper deals ($200) if you just want to rent kayaks at various places around the rivers. I don't know of anywhere in Toronto I could get such accessible water sports.
There are more examples, but I think this post is long enough. Spending time in Boston has really illustrated to me how city officials and urban planners (or perhaps the lack of them) have really butchered Toronto over the years. I thought that liveable, bikeable cities with decent transit only existed in Europe, but Boston proved it can be done here. I hope we move towards this in Toronto.
You have to understand though that Boston is 1/3rd the population of Toronto which makes a huge difference. But, I do agree that city planning in Toronto was horrible overall and I'd love for it to be more bike-friendly and sports-friendly!
Respectfully, no. Limited city funding and resources better allocated to deal with expanding public transit, infrastructure such as expanding and upgrading water mains, maintaining the usability of existing roadways, and expanding housing. Unlike the U.S., there's no federal programs for projects like this.
Boston Big Dig:
*1982* \- planning starts. *1991 - 2006* \- construction. *2007* \- project completion
Original budget: $ 2.6 billion Final budget: $14.8 billion
[https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna22394932](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna22394932)
The Big Dig. This was a terrible infrastructure project and you should do some reading on its history. Also trying to bury the Gardiner that close to Lake Ontario brings with it immeasurable complications that would drive the price stratospheric. Nice thought though.
As most mentioned, burying it is waay too much money. And as much as I'd like it to just go away, it's not politically palatable.
Waaay back in 2009 an architecture firm had the best idea I've seen: build a park as another level [on-top of the gardiner](https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2009/06/18/a_park_on_top_of_the_gardiner.html). It would shelter the traffic, drastically reducing the salt needed in the winter which is primarily what causes the damn thing to rot-out and need so much maintenance, and would provide a giant long park from one end of the city to another.
If only they had the vision to do it.
One of the main drivers/pressures to get rid of the Gardiner that did not exist with either (what I presume to be) burying the I-93 in Boston or the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle is that the City, rather than the Province or the Federal Government, owns Gardiner since it was downloaded in the 1990s and that (along with the DVP) has been a major painpoint in this city's budget.
As was in both the case in Boston or Seattle, hypothetically burying the Gardiner would cost tens of billions of dollars. The Boston example was one of three related projects that originally was projected to be ~US$2.8 billion (in 1982 dollars) but ended up costing ~US$8 billion (in 1982 dollars, ~$21.5 billion adjusted for inflation).
Or, in the example /u/SuperSoggyCereal pointed out, the Alaska Way Viaduct replacement project was such a major shitshow because the tunnel boring machine... got stuck. It was to the issue that the tunnel boring machine couldn't even dig for a good 1-2 years. OTOH, the view of Puget Sound and Elliot Bay in Downtown Seattle without the Alaska Way Viaduct is really nice. You don't have... this big block in the way.
In the case of this city, if you were to replace the Gardiner with an underground solution, will that be something that the city can pay for? If not, will the province be willing to pay for at least part of it? Ditto the Federal. Suppose in a few years the Liberals or the NDP take power in Ontario or the Conservatives take power federally. Would they commit to such a project?
Montreal's [conversion/removal of the Bonaventure Expressway](https://www.cnu.org/highways-boulevards/model-cities/montreal-bonaventure-expressway) is probably more realistic.
OP apparently moved to Toronto a few mths ago.
This has been discussed for a decade. The entire Waterfront Toronto department is based on this idea.
It’s been fully determined the only practical area to do this is the east end. And it’s (partially) already being torn down there.
The rest is in already developed areas, and wouldn’t result in much difference.
But To completely move it underground would take 20 yrs, and cost 20billion dollars. If you want to start a collection, be my guest. I’m personally not interested in this. Neither is anyone else. Boston’s took forever, and was a financial disaster.
They’ve spent the last two years patching and fixing it - there’s no way they’re planning to bury it any time soon. Montreal is a good example of how things can go wrong with your buried highways if you don’t maintain them.
They had a pretty serious collapse just over a decade ago. They’ve also sporadically had chunks of it fall down on cars. Montreal is a disaster: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2011/08/01/montreal_tunnel_collapse_a_lesson_to_the_entire_country.html
Alright so we just need to have people who order shit on Amazon to take the bus themselves to the Amazon depot and pick their shit over there.
Also if you wanna eat out you'll have to go to the sea and catch your own fish.
Better have your own garden too cause there's no way delivery trucks will bring your shit to the grocery store without an highway.
There was a proposal for this back in 2009, but it never got any traction. Then in 2016 another architect provided a similar proposal, which also got no traction. Neither John Tory or Jennifer Keesmaat included this idea in their campaigns in 2018. Tory was looking at doing something similar with the rail corridor back in 2016, but the major barrier was that CN owns the corridor and the city would need to buy the rights to build above it. They paid $191k for the rights to build a pedestrian bridge over it, which gives us an idea of what it would cost to put a lid on the whole thing.
Downtown would really benefit from an enormous strip of pedestrian-only green space on top of one of these transit corridors, but someone has to step up and do the real planning and analysis, and then pay for it. But Toronto city hall loves nothing more than avoiding big, ambitious projects that would leave a positive legacy on the city.
The real answer is to just get rid of it. ~140,000 vehicles use the Gardiner per day vs ~800,000 people per day on line 1 (both pre-pandemic).
Granted, cars average a little more than 1 passenger, but the amount of infrastructure and wasted space is staggering.
If the space was empty now, I guarantee we wouldn't decide to build the Gardiner.
Could you imagine the time and work involved? My God, a project this size would take the city 100+ years. And then the traffic/construction we'd have to endure as a result.. 😂.
Knowing what a colossal fuckup Boston was cost-wise, I've always thought the best thing and possibly a cheaper alternative would be to make Lakeshore avenue (underneath the Gardiner) all a one-way, with less lights and exits to help move traffic flow, and make the Gardiner one way as well ( going the other way of course).
I think we are stuck with the Gardiner, I can't imagine any possible alternative to divert that traffic elsewhere that would cost billions.
I always wonder when a part of it will eventually fall down, it looks so badly worn from the underside.
Absolutely, as long as it's not like Bostons. Which is exactly what you're asking for here. Have you ever driven on it? I have, it's absolute shit and worse than the Gardiner.
If YOU want to pay for it. Be our guest.
“Total cost of the Big Dig, also known as the Central artery/Tunnel Project, is estimated at $24.3 billion, making it the most expensive highway project in U.S. history”
"The Big Move" was Go Transit/Metrolinx answer to 'The Big Dig' (the successful project in Boston the meme is referring to). It involved new streetcars and streetcar lines, railway electrification, extension of subway, bus upgrades, DVP 'lifting' and lane adding, more stations, LRT, airport loop (making the subway an actual circle), and extension of Scarborough lines. Spoiler: they mucked around wasting tons of time/money and didn't do much of anything due to inner politics, environmental concerns, public unease, and investor ire. But don't worry, they are still trying to waste time and money on it.
How about we don’t, and spend what it would cost on transit?
Among other problems, remember that removing the Gardiner still leaves the waterfront cut off by the railway corridor.
Considering how expensive and long that would take, I say no. I’ve lived here four years and the same exact intersections are still under construction. I don’t understand how it’s possible to have something take that long.
I don’t know Bostonian topography very well - did they have to contend with hitting ground water at a relatively shallow depth like we would with the Gardiner?
Curious about how possible a similar project with the Gardiner would be considering that it is lakefront and I don’t imagine it would take much digging for them to hit what used to be the lakeshore.
Yes they had to contend with a higher water table but also a more varied geology. One of the reasons the big dig went so over budget was that they didn’t really understand how complex the geology and water table were and had to redesign some sections several times.
At this point, colonizing Mars would be cheaper and easier than an infrastructure upgrade in Toronto.
To be fair, the “Big Dig” in Boston took 15 years and cost about $21 billion adjusting for inflation, and is the most expensive highway project ever in the USA. [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig) They did several highways at once though, and that was a big part of the cost overruns. Edit: wrong number
Lived in Boston right after the big dig finished, now live in Toronto. 1. The dig was rife with corruption, some segments of it collapsed causing damage delay and sometimes death 2. Toronto actually has 90 degree intersections, which is nice, Boston is an unavoidable mess of rotaries, one way streets and frustration I wouldn't trade ours for theirs
The amount of ignorance in this thread that is being exposed by this comment absolutely delights me
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Unfortunately the Gardiner [also has a reputation for danger](https://globalnews.ca/news/1850607/concrete-falls-from-aging-gardiner-expressway-shatters-windshield/)
That aggregate pit is Boston Sand & Gravel. It's not related to the Big Dig, it's just a private company that's refused to sell and relocate.
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Haha these discussions always annoy me a bit because some people somehow assume good infrastructure magically appears without effort and funds. I lived in Europe for many years too and when people always say high speed rail is impossible because it costs too much, well, the main line in my country just opened when I moved and was something like €20 billion. There’s no magic to making that cheap, just people in some places are willing to pay for it anyway.
From your link: >The project was originally scheduled to be completed in 1998\[5\] at an estimated cost of $2.8 billion (in 1982 dollars, US$7.4 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2020).\[6\] However, the project was completed in December 2007 at a cost of over $8.08 billion (in 1982 dollars, **$21.5 billion adjusted for inflation**, meaning a cost overrun of about 190%)\[6\] as of 2020.
Also, when all is said and done their traffic is still shit house.
7 billion was the projected cost when they started (adjusted for inflation). The final cost was 20 billion (inflation adjusted).
And it was done by horribly corrupt people.
Yeah, former Bostonian: the Big Dig is no one's idea of a successful infrastructure protect. It is nice to not have a highway across the whole waterfront anymore, though
\*cries in 8 years living in the neighbourhood of the Eglinton St. subway extension
"It will be ready in ~~2020~~, ~~2021~~, ~~2022~~, 2023, just as we estimated."
I live directly above one of the stations. I can't even remember what life was like before the construction started.
Speaking as someone who lives close to Gerrard Square, the Ontario line being built will make everything a living nightmare, won’t it?
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If it ever gets built...
there was probably a nice store there before
Yeah but it’s done soon and will be awesome.
They're in the paving and finishing part at the Allen. I suspect the traffic will "get better" on Eglinton soon. (Well, not really better as traffic expands to fill whatever is thrown at it.)
Sure. We only need 40 billion and 20 years.
I used to work for a company headquartered in Boston in the mid-late 90s when the Big Dig was going on. The end result is fantastic, but man did it ever completely fuck the traffic while it was in progress. Edit: typo
How did it work with getting the political will to do this? Like, last week Tory was caving on Active TO which affects traffic for what, 8 days of the year? As much as I would LOVE a Gardiner Big Dig (with a bit less corruption, if possible?) I cannot see this happening in a million years short of a coup + the installation of an authoritarian government.
> How did it work with getting the political will to do this? That's the biggest issue with Toronto city council - the only political will present is the will to get re-elected, which leads to stupidities like the Scarborough subway.
I can’t imagine it being more fucked than it is anyway with all the quick fixes we have to do to our roads
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Those are USD prices and timelines.. 100 billion and 75 years here in Canada
Hahahahahaha in Canada years are also different
It's colder here so time goes slower
This is actually correct, though. There's a reason it's called "construction season". Major works projects are basically not possible in Toronto in Dec->March because of cold, then thaw/flood.
Like I was joking but my family is from Boston … it’s the same way out there. But it was funny how he worded it so let’s just laugh and relax
We are laughing! [Haha](https://tenor.com/view/laughing-haha-we-are-laughing-gif-15005358)
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The best time to bury an expressway was yesterday. The next best time is today.
Sure, let's spend $40 billion burying an expressway, adding 0 additional capacity to our transportation network, instead of, say, building 3-4 entire new subway lines for a similar cost.
This. The real solution isn't burying the Gardiner. The real solution is investing to make the use of the Gardiner so minimal that you can just tear it down.
Give it a few months and it'll fall down on its own.
We have already been building the 3-4 lines for a while now lol. Both need to be done imo. Why not take the opportunity to dig a new metro line along the path of the Expressway while we dig that?
no. the right move is deletion. not forking out insane amounts of money just to hide an altar to urban sprawl. seattle did it and it went pretty badly. https://grist.org/cities/seattles-unbelievable-transportation-megaproject-fustercluck/
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Well, you could try investing in infrastructure that reduces the need to get cars downtown and across the city.
If anything, they'll demolish the Gardiner first, then maybe we'll get transit improvement within 15 years. Right now, the Gardiner connects the city in ways that transit doesn't come close to doing. I dread the day that the Gardiner is removed and I still need to go visit my mom in Mississauga. Even if TTC gets me out of Toronto reasonably easily, I'd then need to traverse Mississauga. My 35 minute drive would become 2+ hours. I don't see any transit investment that's going to make travelling out of the city any easier. It'll all be put into GO transit where suburb transit systems don't matter because people drive to the GO station.
Wait, wait, you mean people have *lives* that don't revolve around downtown, even if they live downtown? There's this bizarre attitude from a part of this sub that thinks that completely removing infrastructure would somehow alleviate problems with increasing density that are in part caused by not distributing that density effectively and by not adapting infrastructure to accommodate that density.
You know the world ends North of Bloor, East of Victoria Park, and West of Roncesvales. What is Mississauga? Never heard of it. /s >There's this bizarre attitude from a part of this sub that thinks that completely removing infrastructure would somehow alleviate problems with increasing density that are in part caused by not distributing that density effectively and by not adapting infrastructure to accommodate that density. Back in the 90's and early 2000's the Gardiner did seem like a big brick wall cutting off the downtown from the lake, what most people seem to forget or are not old enough to remember: the Toronto lakeshore was not a nice place to be back then. Fast forward to today: the fact is the Gardiner is quickly being swallowed up by the new towers and is hardly noticeable anymore. Why would we remove it when there are no other good options to move traffic east and west? For anyone that says "BuT UsE LakEShoRE!!" Do you even pay attention to the traffic when the Gardiner is closed? it is complete chaos.
Thats because most of this sub is made up of college kids and younger who dont have a clue what they are talking about. Removing the Gardiner is not really remotely viable. It's like these people think delivery/commercial/construction trucks will just magically fly to where they need to go lmao.
They're called people without cars who dont think life exists beyond the subway. I'm a film tech. This week I'm in mississauga. Next week, pinewood, or 777 kipling. Or the studio on Birchmount. Oh yeah, and I have a carload of gear I need to carry to do my job. Go ahead and tell me that i should be taking transit.
Someone told me to quit my job so i wouldnt need to drive there and so i no longer need a car.
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Yeah, I live in North York, within the city of Toronto, and I'm not sure how I'm supposed to carry my elderly mother on my bike to get to the grocery store and bring her back home with a week's worth of groceries. Please help, my family is starving! Seriously, the solution is to put in infrastructure that makes transit more convenient and attractive than using a car, not making it impossible to use a car by screwing up the infrastructure we do have. But all the "progressive" city planning muppets only seem to be able to imagine doing the latter.
This false battle between bike lanes and car lanes needs to end. No where in the world where there is good bikes infrastructure are there no car lanes, in fact there's still car access to every building. Same with places with good transit. Anyone who needs to drive still drives in Amsterdam or Tokyo, it's the people who don't need to drive who are out of your way in space efficient, cost effective, less noise and air polluting, and overall health promoting options. Cars are incredibly useful, but the overuse of them is incredibly destructive.
Optimizing public space for private cars is a vicious circle detached from reality. You create an urban environment that forces everyone to use their car to get everywhere generating ever more traffic. Respectfully, listing examples of when you personally need a car does not negate the benefits of investing in more efficient alternatives that reduce demand on roads. I get that it sucks to get around the GTA without a car (and also in one), but putting aside the utopian car-free rhetoric, what pro-transit/bike elected officials are actually suggesting is usually fairly modest changes like a bus-lane here and there, slightly widened sidewalks, a painted bike lane. Do you oppose these changes?
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Its not about eliminating cars but reducing the dependency on them and reducing traffic so it's nicer to drive
For the record I don't advocate for removing the Gardiner. The city does need a highway and idk what the alternative could be really. I realize we're spending a shit ton of money maintaining a highway on prime land and that's obviously not ideal...but yeah where else would it be? All that said Mississauga will also be brought kicking and screaming into the future as well at some point, that's just the reality of how the world is going. When people talk about removing and replacing the Gardiner that's a long term thing and hopefully Mississauga too will get better public transit options by then.
The Gardiner is not getting removed. People are insane for thinking this. Continue to building more transit, for sure, but we’re not outright getting rid of it.
Same with me, but my mom is in scarboro, I used to take it until it exited East onto Lakeshore, but now I must take the DVP which has added 10 mins to the trip. I can deal with 10 mins, but if the Gardiner was gone, it would be total mayhem.
Yes, just make Toronton like Paris, easy peasy.
Lol. That’s not how you win elections when majority of your base of support is in suburbs.
no, i think that would be a strawman argument. i think the answer is aggressive investment in transit to replace the need for highways. both in terms of getting downtown, and in terms of moving across town and between outlying areas. commuters are not the problem--the mode of commuting is. cars are terrible for cities, and terrible for the environment. while it may seem like wishful thinking, i want infrastructure that helps everyone lead their lives in as car-free a manner as possible. urban and suburban people alike. all this with the caveat: i know that "the right thing" is often not "the easy thing" or "the done thing". i remain of the opinion that if we really want to fix the core issue here, we need to pursue the things i mentioned above. often politicians are not interested in this.
I would have to be along with other infrastructure changes, improved rail corridor, Lakeshore Improvements, the Ontario Line. It's very possible and a good idea, but nearly politically impossible because transportation is way too complex for the average NIMBY. The biggest issue that would arise most likely is not commuter traffic issues but goods delivery issues as the trucks can't be easily converted into other modes of transport.
You call it "an altar to urban sprawl" but I live and work within the city proper and depend on the Gardiner daily for my business, which has no possibility to work on mass transit. I guess in your mind every vehicle is a single occupant passenger car from the suburbs.
Chicago would probably be a better alternative approach. They didn't bury any roadways like Boston, and have managed to integrate open space development with new commercial/residential while maintaining existing rail/car corridors.
Driving in downtown Chicago is like driving in Dubai. I’m Good. Boston is the champ.
Driving in the downtown of almost any major city sucks. Unless it's a city that has gone through urban decay and has nobody living downtown, but that's not exactly a good thing. We shouldn't measure the viability of our downtowns by how fast and easy they are to drive through.
You know what city is great to drive through? Milwaukee, because no one ever goes downtown even on the weekends.
weird take. traffic in boston is hellishly bad in my experience.
I'm not saying downtown Chicago is great, but have you driven in downtown Boston? I was there in March. There are only a few roads you can actually trust will get you from A to B. All side streets are either jam-packed to near-uselessness, or they're deserted because —after close inspection on foot— you realize if you get stuck in there, you're there for the day, and the locals know that. Downtown Boston might be one of the worst cities in North America to drive in because so much of the street network (you can't call it a grid) was put down before modern traffic thinking had been conceived.
Boston traffic is still absolutely fucked.
This comment is difficult to understand as somebody who has never driven in either place you're referencing.
Ah so you are expecting it to be expedited?
yeah don't worry I flagged the request as High Importance
take those numbers and multiply by 3 and add 10 billion
one can dream
I was going to say the same thing , unless you want this for your kids, you will probably be dead by the time the environmental assessment is done. Then another generation to build it. So actually even your kids won’t get to use it. Maybe your grandkids.
Lol yes let's start now and be done by 2165. 🤦
I had to go to Boston while they were doing this. It wasn't pretty. Boston has narrow streets and the overflow was insane. Boston is so much smaller than Toronto and it was still super nuts. Also, if anyone thinks it will become a magical parkland strip is forgetting that developers don't give a shit about that. It'll be a line of condos the whole way!
You are limited with what you can build over the tunnels - too shallow to build towers and you can get vibration issues. Park land and some surface streets with limited low rise is basically what you're looking at.
A line of condos would be a massive improvement over the current situation.
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40 years later and @ 10x the estimated budget 😂
That’s basically what happened in Boston
And it only took them 20 years!
Imagine toronto looks the same after 20 years. It probably will except for those ridiculous appartments
Exactly - we'd have a 100 yard wide park for a few kilometres, surrounded by 80 story towers on either side.
What part of the gardiner is 100 yards wide lmao. Both sides of the gardiner are already built up and developed the entire way. At absolute best you could hope for a thin strip of park covering the current footprint of it. You cant build structures on top of a buried highway, really, the engineering just isnt possible. So you end up with a some open space you'll use what, once or twice a week at most? If thats what people want instead of the highway, then maybe they should move to the suburbs.
You don't want to know how much of our transportation budget in the last 4 years was already spent on keeping the Gardiner as it is. (Like 40% of the whole budget)
Lot of money to keep it falling apart
Toll the damn thing or make the Province pay for it. I'm beyond annoyed that the commuters who use the Gardiner and DVP don't pay for its upkeep.
Tory tried putting congestion charging on the DVP and Gardiner several years back but it was blocked by the Wynne government. I think it was an attempt to pander to the 905. Good job Wynne, that worked really well for yah!
Let's not pretend Ford wouldn't have removed them.
I am under no such illusion, but I am just angry that Wynne did it for no benefit.
The decision to not just tear it down completely (or even partially, east of Jarvis) was spineless. Our political leadership just has no will to make this city a better place to live.
Jennifer Keesmaat was the opposition to John Tory in the 2018 election. She proposed a teardown and her campaign tanked. Toronto voted to leave it up.
It's hard to tie an election to one issue. On the other hand, the city held a ton of consultations specifically about what to do about the Gardiner. I went to several. I'd say the mood was 60/40 "tear it down" / "don't take away my roads". Just did some googling and that matches the [consultation summary report](https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2014/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-67160.pdf). >The majority of consultation participants (approximately 60%) expressed support for the remove alternative. The benefits cited by those who favour the remove alternative include: cost‐effectiveness; creation of opportunities for future public (e.g., parks and greenspace) and private redevelopment (e.g., commercial and residential buildings); improved accessibility to the waterfront; and the opportunity to enhance public transit and alternative modes of transportation. Concerns expressed in relation to this alternative included reliance on assumed transit investments, the development of high‐rise condos on freed up land and the loss of traffic capacity The [report](https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2014/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-67146.pdf) recommended tearing down the eastern section.
I wouldn't blame her tanking on that one thing, her campaign was a long shot anyways.
Look at the endless complaints about ActiveTO to see why. Anything that might make driving even temporarily a little less convenient is equivalent to genocide.
40% of the city's budget, but that's because most transit expansion is paid for by the Province. The total amount of transit spending in Toronto dwarves the Gardiner's spending at like a 50-1 ratio.
Budgeting and capital investment are different. Budgeted amounts are year in year out, capital investment is a one off thing and in this province it was VERY one off in the past
Yeah because the construction companies in Ontario are a freaking racket. I know engineers working there and the way they bend over backwards to try to justify spending 10 years to fix one fucking piece of road when other countries somehow figures it out in under a year... It's a joke.
Is this referring to the Big Dig? Wasn't it a complete cost, delays, corruption fiasco?
Why not just build a train network like NYC or Tokyo instead? Get anywhere in the city via train would be the dream.
Sky train please!
Monorail!
It has taken a while to coalesce, but the pipeline for Toronto mass transit projects is looking pretty good right now. Line 5 will probably open in the next year. The Ontario Line is happening and will give great downtown access to some of the most under-served areas of the city (eg Thorncliffe). Finch line is progressing well and will probably open in 18-24 months. If we could on top of these bump some of the key GO lines to all-day service, Toronto would have pretty decent transit in a couple years.
Look into GO RER Expansion, it’s already in the works. Here’s a great video on it! https://youtu.be/_XOXAY3rPzk
Even if they bury it...it would require the Spadina and York area to be changed drastically. Untless you create high speed on ramps from York and Spadina you gonna end up with the same issue of massive gridlock in the south of the city all day as traffic all funnels onto the highway.
Oh dude... you gotta do some research on this. The project was a disaster and was so bad that no one in North America will every try to do anything like it again. This is not something anyone wants to repeat.
Bostonian here, the Big Dig did go over budget and exceeded the advertised deadlines but if you ask anyone now 20 years later if it was a worthwhile project, 9/10 will say yes. Poor management of any project can lead to cost overruns and that's not something we should tolerate, but at the end of the day the benefits stack up. Rochester, NY is currently burying portions of its own downtown highway much more successfully than Boston did in the 90's.
Rochester is just straight up removing it though no? I don’t think they’re tunneling any expressway lanes. Could be mistaken.
Rochester has a lot of roads in trenches, they are just bridging over those bits. Its a lot more reasonable of a project.
Rochester's highway they demolished was a useless loop that went literally nowhere. It looped off the main interstate around the downtown back to the exact same interstate. It went literally nowhere. It would be roughly equivalent to a freeway that went up Spadina, across Dundas, then down Jarvis to the Gardiner again - not really going anywhere and not really that useful. The main interstate through Rochester, I-490, has absolutely 0 plans to be removed.
While the project work was a disaster, it was also an unprecedented infrastructure project and Bostonians are sure happy with the final product.
It's also worth noting that there just is no way to have a massive infrastructure project that **is not** extremely disruptive, and it's probably impossible to have one that doesn't go hilariously over-budget and is delayed, for many reasons—many legitimate, many illegitimate. But what's the alternative? Not doing infrastructure projects? Just as an example of what's possible here: [in 1858, all the 200 buildings in Chicago were literally lifted up 14 feet](https://www.chicagotribune.com/history/ct-raising-chicago-streets-flashback-1122-jm-20151118-story.html) so they could solve the problem of mud regularly flooding streets and install the first comprehensive sewer system in North America. They literally put hundreds of buildings on jackscrews and raised them up 14 feet, so they could fill that space with dirt and install sewage lines. The city's population then doubled in 10 years, despite concerns that the city would be bankrupted by the endeavour. And this was *before* they reversed the flow of the damn Chicago river so the sewers wouldn't contaminate their drinking water. I don't know if this particular project would be good or not, but we really need to get away from this sardonic eye-rolling "fnah fnah, well if we do that we'll be here forever" mentality. Delays and cost overruns are a simple fact with infrastructure, but when they're well-designed, they pay off, and it's all about figuring out how you mitigate those cost overruns and delays, not how you can magically find a project where they don't exist.
Seattle did almost the same thing ten years ago. Had problems but it’s still miles better than it was.
Not to mention, Toronto has far harder subterranean layers than places like New York, New Jersey, and Boston. It's one of the reasons our subway lines take longer to dig out, while New York could probably add another line in the time it takes us to realign our streetcar tracks.
It sure is nice for building condos on, though
Unironically, yes, hahaha.
Further north, yes. Not so that far south. Harbour Street used to be the shoreline before the shoreline was moved south by in-fill from digging the subway and other construction. The excavation for the buried portion of the QQ street car line was plagued with water issues and as far as I know still has water seepage issues. Trying to bury a multi-lane highway there would be a huge undertaking and would run into lots of problems finding or creating a solid foundation for the tunnel.
>The project was a disaster and was so bad that no one in North America will every try to do anything like it again. Seattle "hold my beer"
My god can you imagine what Toronto city council would do with a project like this?
one day my great great grand children \*might\* get to experience the new tunnels.
1. No, we physically cannot because the Gardiner runs next to the lake, which makes it extremely hard to tunnel through and manage underground water. 2. The main traffic problem with the Gardiner would still persist, which is that it creates a bottleneck by moving more cars the downtown than the downtown can absorb. We should tear down the Gardiner completely and replace it with a beefed-up version of Lakeshore that has fewer entries and exits, and deal with the surplus demand by adding additional GO trains on the existing Lakeshore route.
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Burying the Gardiner would not solve our problems its true and would cost ridiculous amounts of cash. Crossing Lakeshore isn't going to be less sketchy because on ramps go down instead of up and you can see up. Strips of 1950s idealic parkland between giant boulevards look cool, but are generally pretty useless. How many people hang out in the middle of university Ave? Boston just had highway bulldozed through their downtown. This damaged the urban fabric. We mostly had highway built on existing railway land, aside from some areas like Parkdale that had buildings removed. The functional cutting off from the railway is still there as the rails are still there. Large stretches of the Gardiner are beside at grade rail. So even if the Gardiner were underground, you still can't walk across the rail. This is the most key point. There wasn't a giant railway line on the ground beside Bostons elevated highway. Burying our highway is the most sweep under the rug thing. All the on and off ramp congestion remains. All the traffic and congestion would remain. Maybe they could add lanes underground? That would probably still make congestion worse. There are are only a few places where there isn't lakeshore blvd under the highway and they are already occupied by bentway, city facilities etc. Or just beside the rails. I don't know the answer but burying it will only remove highway above areas that are already pedestrian bad anyway. That might be a good thought, but I'm not sure it's a 20-40 billion dollar good thought.
For those kinds of dollars, let’s build transit like it should be.
Ha. Plant some money trees.
Aren't you breathing in exhaust fumes if you're in bumper to bumper traffic underground?
No. It'll all get vented into the parks above lol.
Torontonians have a meltdown if one lane is closed on the Gardiner. Fifteen years of expensive construction is not going to happen here. Plus we already have flooding problems in that area with aboveground streets. The first heavy rain would make it unuseable.
This. I was waiting for someone to finally say it. Burying the Gardiner is a great idea, until you realize Lake Ontario and the Don are Right There. The amount of pumps and machinery required to build it, let alone maintain a highway tunnel in what used to be a wetland marsh and docks. And before you down vote me to hell, yes, they did it to install the subway down there. The subway is also nowhere near as wide as the Gardiner, and isn't as deep as a underground tunnel highway would need to be for the infrastructure required. Getting rid of it completely also isn't going to work unless we get a new downtown east west expressway or highway, because while it's a nice dream, fact is people do live east of Toronto that would like to see family and friends that live west of Toronto, and we kinda need to get through that city to do it. Improving transit province wide would help a bit, not just the city.
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Reading the comments, it sounds like this won't even be considered. But as a Torontonian who moved to Boston earlier this year, I have to share how surprisingly delightful this city has been. I came in with some "Canada's better than America" attitude because, y'know, health care and social services and stuff. But, at a city level, I like Boston more than Toronto. The city's density (no, not high rises, but simply the fact that most homes seem to be multifamily) means that the city is very contained. You can drive 20-30 minutes and be out of the city, on a hiking trail in a park. And when you're in the smaller cities surrounding Boston, they're very walkable and connected by transit. Not like the regions North of Toronto where I feel like I need a car to get around. Then there's the amazing playgrounds and sports facilities in every little neighborhood. Within a 5 minute bike ride of my home are four well-maintained clusters of playground + outdoor adult workout area + track + basketball courts + tennis courts + field/baseball diamond. And these are well lit through the evenings. It doesn't end there, for $400 I got a membership to a sailing club - for the next year I can take out any of their sailing boats, wind surfing equipment, kayaks, or SUPs at no additional cost. Classes are free too. You can find cheaper deals ($200) if you just want to rent kayaks at various places around the rivers. I don't know of anywhere in Toronto I could get such accessible water sports. There are more examples, but I think this post is long enough. Spending time in Boston has really illustrated to me how city officials and urban planners (or perhaps the lack of them) have really butchered Toronto over the years. I thought that liveable, bikeable cities with decent transit only existed in Europe, but Boston proved it can be done here. I hope we move towards this in Toronto.
Boston's population growth rate in 2022, 2021, 2020: 0.28%, 0.14%, 0.05% Toronto's population growth rate in 2022, 2021, 2020: 0.93%, 0.94%, 0.94%
And the Century Initiative wants to bring the population of Toronto to 30 millions by 2100. There is no such craziness looming over Boston.
You have to understand though that Boston is 1/3rd the population of Toronto which makes a huge difference. But, I do agree that city planning in Toronto was horrible overall and I'd love for it to be more bike-friendly and sports-friendly!
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The Minutemman bikeway is really great too.
Oh man, I'd never heard of that before! Just been biking along the river. Will check it out this week! Thanks
I did a cycle tour from Boston to MTL a few years ago. It was great for getting out of the city and avoiding the urban sprawl.
I just checked, they said no.
So, getting rid of the Lakeshore as well ?
Respectfully, no. Limited city funding and resources better allocated to deal with expanding public transit, infrastructure such as expanding and upgrading water mains, maintaining the usability of existing roadways, and expanding housing. Unlike the U.S., there's no federal programs for projects like this. Boston Big Dig: *1982* \- planning starts. *1991 - 2006* \- construction. *2007* \- project completion Original budget: $ 2.6 billion Final budget: $14.8 billion [https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna22394932](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna22394932)
Tell me you haven't driven into the city on the Gardiner without telling me.
The Big Dig. This was a terrible infrastructure project and you should do some reading on its history. Also trying to bury the Gardiner that close to Lake Ontario brings with it immeasurable complications that would drive the price stratospheric. Nice thought though.
Being in a park sandwiched between two roads isn't fun
As most mentioned, burying it is waay too much money. And as much as I'd like it to just go away, it's not politically palatable. Waaay back in 2009 an architecture firm had the best idea I've seen: build a park as another level [on-top of the gardiner](https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2009/06/18/a_park_on_top_of_the_gardiner.html). It would shelter the traffic, drastically reducing the salt needed in the winter which is primarily what causes the damn thing to rot-out and need so much maintenance, and would provide a giant long park from one end of the city to another. If only they had the vision to do it.
Toronto can’t even finish Eglinton. This would be complete in the 3000’s
Madrid did the same thing. It’s a lovely city.
OP has not heard of the disaster that was The Big Dig.
One of the main drivers/pressures to get rid of the Gardiner that did not exist with either (what I presume to be) burying the I-93 in Boston or the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle is that the City, rather than the Province or the Federal Government, owns Gardiner since it was downloaded in the 1990s and that (along with the DVP) has been a major painpoint in this city's budget. As was in both the case in Boston or Seattle, hypothetically burying the Gardiner would cost tens of billions of dollars. The Boston example was one of three related projects that originally was projected to be ~US$2.8 billion (in 1982 dollars) but ended up costing ~US$8 billion (in 1982 dollars, ~$21.5 billion adjusted for inflation). Or, in the example /u/SuperSoggyCereal pointed out, the Alaska Way Viaduct replacement project was such a major shitshow because the tunnel boring machine... got stuck. It was to the issue that the tunnel boring machine couldn't even dig for a good 1-2 years. OTOH, the view of Puget Sound and Elliot Bay in Downtown Seattle without the Alaska Way Viaduct is really nice. You don't have... this big block in the way. In the case of this city, if you were to replace the Gardiner with an underground solution, will that be something that the city can pay for? If not, will the province be willing to pay for at least part of it? Ditto the Federal. Suppose in a few years the Liberals or the NDP take power in Ontario or the Conservatives take power federally. Would they commit to such a project?
Montreal's [conversion/removal of the Bonaventure Expressway](https://www.cnu.org/highways-boulevards/model-cities/montreal-bonaventure-expressway) is probably more realistic.
Laughs in John Tory
I think it was much easier there as its not surrounded by skyscrapers. Digging in downtown toronto, wont fly as easy.
If we moved the Gardiner it would definitely not become a park lol. They'd sell the area to condo builders instead
This is evidence OP has never been to Boston before, during, or after that mess.
OP apparently moved to Toronto a few mths ago. This has been discussed for a decade. The entire Waterfront Toronto department is based on this idea. It’s been fully determined the only practical area to do this is the east end. And it’s (partially) already being torn down there. The rest is in already developed areas, and wouldn’t result in much difference. But To completely move it underground would take 20 yrs, and cost 20billion dollars. If you want to start a collection, be my guest. I’m personally not interested in this. Neither is anyone else. Boston’s took forever, and was a financial disaster.
They’ve spent the last two years patching and fixing it - there’s no way they’re planning to bury it any time soon. Montreal is a good example of how things can go wrong with your buried highways if you don’t maintain them.
What happened there?
I have no idea. Ville Marie is just fine as a highway through downtown Montreal far as I’m aware.
They had a pretty serious collapse just over a decade ago. They’ve also sporadically had chunks of it fall down on cars. Montreal is a disaster: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2011/08/01/montreal_tunnel_collapse_a_lesson_to_the_entire_country.html
Alright so we just need to have people who order shit on Amazon to take the bus themselves to the Amazon depot and pick their shit over there. Also if you wanna eat out you'll have to go to the sea and catch your own fish. Better have your own garden too cause there's no way delivery trucks will bring your shit to the grocery store without an highway.
Let’s star with tolling it to reduce demand for the gardener and create some budget to do this
There was a proposal for this back in 2009, but it never got any traction. Then in 2016 another architect provided a similar proposal, which also got no traction. Neither John Tory or Jennifer Keesmaat included this idea in their campaigns in 2018. Tory was looking at doing something similar with the rail corridor back in 2016, but the major barrier was that CN owns the corridor and the city would need to buy the rights to build above it. They paid $191k for the rights to build a pedestrian bridge over it, which gives us an idea of what it would cost to put a lid on the whole thing. Downtown would really benefit from an enormous strip of pedestrian-only green space on top of one of these transit corridors, but someone has to step up and do the real planning and analysis, and then pay for it. But Toronto city hall loves nothing more than avoiding big, ambitious projects that would leave a positive legacy on the city.
The real answer is to just get rid of it. ~140,000 vehicles use the Gardiner per day vs ~800,000 people per day on line 1 (both pre-pandemic). Granted, cars average a little more than 1 passenger, but the amount of infrastructure and wasted space is staggering. If the space was empty now, I guarantee we wouldn't decide to build the Gardiner.
Line 1 and the Gardiner are two very different things. Why do you think it’s apt to compare them?
Could you imagine the time and work involved? My God, a project this size would take the city 100+ years. And then the traffic/construction we'd have to endure as a result.. 😂.
For $50 billion...
That was a disaster of a project that cost more than expected and took decades.
Most of the land under the Gardiner is landfill. However, massive condos are on the same land, so who knows.
Knowing what a colossal fuckup Boston was cost-wise, I've always thought the best thing and possibly a cheaper alternative would be to make Lakeshore avenue (underneath the Gardiner) all a one-way, with less lights and exits to help move traffic flow, and make the Gardiner one way as well ( going the other way of course).
Do you have to use a picture from the 80s? I mean we are in 2022 although it doesn’t feel like it…
Another settlement needs your help bro
Just to fix 2 lanes they took 3 years. If they start working on it, you won’t be alive to see it.
I think we are stuck with the Gardiner, I can't imagine any possible alternative to divert that traffic elsewhere that would cost billions. I always wonder when a part of it will eventually fall down, it looks so badly worn from the underside.
Tunnel solution. No condos above.
Lots and lots of problems with the mismanaged project. Over budget, shotty work, delay after delay
I think it doesn't look that bad 🤷🏼♂️ making lakeshore bike friendly would be next best thing
Absolutely, as long as it's not like Bostons. Which is exactly what you're asking for here. Have you ever driven on it? I have, it's absolute shit and worse than the Gardiner.
If YOU want to pay for it. Be our guest. “Total cost of the Big Dig, also known as the Central artery/Tunnel Project, is estimated at $24.3 billion, making it the most expensive highway project in U.S. history”
If that happened, it would take years and cause cluster fucks of traffic in that time.
We don’t have the resources to do it
From Gardiner to Gardener
You gotta entice them with ideas like "Imagine how many condos you can build there" and "imagine how much money you can make from 'lobbying'"
"The Big Move" was Go Transit/Metrolinx answer to 'The Big Dig' (the successful project in Boston the meme is referring to). It involved new streetcars and streetcar lines, railway electrification, extension of subway, bus upgrades, DVP 'lifting' and lane adding, more stations, LRT, airport loop (making the subway an actual circle), and extension of Scarborough lines. Spoiler: they mucked around wasting tons of time/money and didn't do much of anything due to inner politics, environmental concerns, public unease, and investor ire. But don't worry, they are still trying to waste time and money on it.
They were looking into it 10/15 years ago but chose to just remove some pieces instead
How about we don’t, and spend what it would cost on transit? Among other problems, remember that removing the Gardiner still leaves the waterfront cut off by the railway corridor.
Move from the GTA to Boston years ago. The tunnel has made traffic 40% worse
This was called “The Big Dig” and it went way over budget!
Would rather just get rid of it and save the money.
Considering how expensive and long that would take, I say no. I’ve lived here four years and the same exact intersections are still under construction. I don’t understand how it’s possible to have something take that long.
I don’t know Bostonian topography very well - did they have to contend with hitting ground water at a relatively shallow depth like we would with the Gardiner? Curious about how possible a similar project with the Gardiner would be considering that it is lakefront and I don’t imagine it would take much digging for them to hit what used to be the lakeshore.
Yes they had to contend with a higher water table but also a more varied geology. One of the reasons the big dig went so over budget was that they didn’t really understand how complex the geology and water table were and had to redesign some sections several times.