Keesmaat: Tear Down This Wall

[james t kirk]

If you want to knock down the Gardiner, I'm fine with that.

But you need to replace it with a free flowing tunnel.

Anything else is abject stupidity.

And frankly there are better things to spend taxpayer money on (like a Queen Street subway) than a Gardiner Expressway tunnel.

Besides, they'd knock it down and just infill it with more banal boxes which are worse than the fucking Gardiner.

 

[oldjones]

Wanna see what it will be like?

Just put up some stop lights on the Gardiner at the locations where you'd have stop lights and sit back and watch the chaos unfold. (I know that can't happen, but it would be utter chaos)

I'll put the stoplights on the Gardiner when you've built the intersections for them up there. The chaos is already up there, if chaos is cars idling with frustrated drivers going nowhere.

For a very few hours in daylight, limited access highways in the City actually get you places fast, but only because everyone but you is indoors doing stuff. As soon as any number of folks leave to get somewhere else, they clog that highway beyond the capacity of its limited exits and it crawls. Where I live in south of O'Connor, it's even-steven whether Bayview is closer to get to than the DVP, but almost every time, Bayview and all its stop-lights reliably gets me further north faster than the Parkway, whether I clock myself, or pace with friends. Running similar comparisons in the decades that I drove for work taught me: City streets can't trap you in traffic for more than one block. Limited access highways trap you for miles.

 

[Frankfooter]

Nonsense again.

The time to build a brand new road will probably be 3 times what it will take to repair the damn thing. The geometry and more importantly the infrastructure is already in place to support the existing Expressway. A new road will require you to completely reconstruct every single utility to suit the new construction. That means every fucking sanitary sewer, storm sewer, water main, water service, gas main, hydro (high voltage), hydro service, natural gas, Bell, Rogers, Telus, street lighting, FTMS, abandoned utilities in the way, drive ways, access roads, you fucking name it. None of which can be seen because it's all fucking buried. All the existing infrastructure will be wrong, in the wrong place and will need to be reconstructed. It will end up costing multiples more of what the original budget ever was dreamed up.

You have no idea when you post such naivety.

And all the while you're doing this, you have to maintain all service and all access for the public. The public that will be just screaming day in and day out about dust and noise and construction and inconvenience and the media will get in on the game and the politicians will get in front of the cameras and bray away about being outraged.

Don't believe me?

Just google "Toronto Saint Clair street car utilities budget" and see for yourself. And that was just 2 lanes. Imagine fucking 10 and demolishing the Gardiner on top of it all.

Sorry, captain, but I beg to differ.

Tory's present plan is to tear down part of the Gardiner and then replace it in different location.
Its not a repair vs tear down comparison, its a tear down vs tear down + rebuild comparison.

I suggest you google 'toronto city council gardiner' and look at the present plan, and its present $1 billion over budget estimate.

 

[james t kirk]

Sorry, captain, but I beg to differ.

Tory's present plan is to tear down part of the Gardiner and then replace it in different location.
Its not a repair vs tear down comparison, its a tear down vs tear down + rebuild comparison.

I suggest you google 'toronto city council gardiner' and look at the present plan, and its present $1 billion over budget estimate.

I'm well aware of the proposed plan. Trust me.

He's not building a 10 lane road in place of the damn thing.

 

[oldjones]

I'm well aware of the proposed plan. Trust me.

He's not building a 10 lane road in place of the damn thing.

Although if he did, it might cope with the new demand it would create. For at least a couple of years.

 

[Anbarandy]

Nonsense.

Engineering consultants are the worst whores out there. They will say whatever their clients want them to say and they will manipulate their analysis to come up with their client's desired outcome. Traffic modelling software that churn out these magic numbers which the gullible believe require many variables to be "assumed" . The engineer running the software already knows this. His client tells him, "look, your study needs to show that if we tear down the Gardiner the result will be no more than a 60 second delay" and the consulting engineer, being the whore that he is, already knows exactly which assumption or assumptions he can massaged a bit to spit out the desired result and churn out the pretty output with lots of colourful charts (that no-one reads anyway) to simply print out and fatten up his worthless report and submit his invoice to the city.

When the Gardiner gets demolished and wait times are more like an hour, it will be too late because the damn thing got torn down and it's not going to go back. The public will scream and yell and the city bureaucrats will just say, "well we hired this Engineering consultant see and he is supposed to be the expert in his field, blah blah blah and what do you want me to do about it?"

The whore engineering consultant will just claim that the data he was given was wrong, or the model didn't take into account this or that and that is not his fault etc etc etc. The scrutiny will abate and the same consultant will keep working for the city on new projects regardless because he did what he was told. Everyone is happy. (Except the schmos stuck in traffic.)

If you are so dumb to believe any engineering study like this, I have an Expressway for sale I'd like you to look at.

Well in this case the whores as you labelled them did not say what their client John Tory wanted them to say. That being, that removing the eastern end of the Gardiner would cause traffic chaos and mayhem.

But as we have seen with other Tory decisions, it's damn the evidence and consequences.

 

[Anbarandy]

I'm well aware of the proposed plan. Trust me.

He's not building a 10 lane road in place of the damn thing.

You had me fooled because in all of your posts prior to this one not one mention was made by you of removing the current and realigning and reconstructing a future DVP/Gardiner connection, just numerous comments about repairing it.

 

[james t kirk]

You had me fooled because in all of your posts prior to this one not one mention was made by you of removing the current and realigning and reconstructing a future DVP/Gardiner connection, just numerous comments about repairing it.

The overall design essentially calls for the elevated portion of the Gardiner as it approaches the Don River (Lakeshore Ramp) to drop to grade sooner than it currently does. Right now, at Don Roadway for example, the elevated Gardiner is still there and both the DVP and Lakeshore ramps are together as one deck 4 lanes wide. (If you want to exit on Lakeshore, you keep to the right and you hit grade just before Carlaw. (If you recall, 20 years ago or so, they demolished that part of the Lakeshore ramp that used to run all the way east of Leslie (it was going to connect to "the Scarbrorough Expressway", which was going to run in the hydro corridor right through the Beaches (yikes) and right on out to Scarborough. It never got built, but the ramp from the Gardiner to it was built in the 1960's.) Right now, if you want to go to the DVP, you keep to the left and if you want Lakeshore, you keep to the right and if you keep to the right, the elevated Gardiner drops down to grade around Logan / Carlaw (??).

This is the socalled "hybrid" design where you still have free flowing traffic to and from the DVP, but you are going to eliminate that portion of the elevated portion that currently leads to Lakeshore (as you are going eastbound). The portion to and from the DVP will remain elevated and free flowing, though the design calls for the ramp to the DVP to be moved to the north.

But the elevated portion of the Gardiner between Spadina and Cherry Street is to remain in its current configuration. (The tear down the Gardiner crowd wants to demolish the elevated portion from Spadina right on through.)

2 years ago, the City redecked the elevated portion of the Gardiner Expressway in the west from Dufferin (more or less) east to Spadina (more or less)

Then last year, the City reconstructed the York / Bay /Yonge off ramp from the eastbound Gardiner.

So all of that work is done.

In May of 2018, the City tendered a contract to replace the existing superstructure of the Gardiner from Jarvis to Cherry Street.

Here you go:

https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2018/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-115753.pdf

Flip to Page 19. Note that the contract has been tendered and AECON is the lucky bidder (they built the damn thing back when, though back then they were known as the Foundation Company of Canada, or just Foundation). Note how much money they left on the table compared to Dufferin.)

I can only assume that the City will then let a separate contact once the above work is done to remove and replace the Lakeshore / DVP Ramp.

But the Gardiner remains as a free flowing highway with an elevated structure. The only substantial change is eliminating the off ramp to Lakeshore east around Don Roadway.

 

[james t kirk]

Well in this case the whores as you labelled them did not say what their client John Tory wanted them to say. That being, that removing the eastern end of the Gardiner would cause traffic chaos and mayhem.

But as we have seen with other Tory decisions, it's damn the evidence and consequences.

The whores would have been directed by Toronto Planning, not Tory. Staff commissions and oversees these kinds of reports / issues.

And at the time, who was in charge of Planning at the City of Toronto?

Hmmm, let me see if I recall correctly..........

Yeah, that's right. Jennifer Keesmaat. Imagine that.

 

[james t kirk]

FYI, I like Jennifer Keesmaat and all for the most part. She's a dreamer and I tend to like dreamers and builders.

But she's wrong about the Gardiner is all.

As previously stated, I'm all for tearing down the Gardiner, but building a 10 lane road is definitely not the answer. If you want to tear down the Gardiner, great. But you need to replace it with a tunnel. (But I feel that that would be a waste of money (better to spend that money on mass transit).

Building a stop and go roadway 10 lanes wide will generate huge amounts of noise and pollution, far worse than it is now as vehicles must brake and accelerate. (If you know anything about cars, you know that when a car is operating in its top gear at constant speed, it is most fuel efficient and all of its pollution control systems are online. When a car accelerates from rest, cars are allowed to bypass their pollution control systems and use maximum gasoline and generate maximum engine noise.)

 

[Anbarandy]

The whores would have been directed by Toronto Planning, not Tory. Staff commissions and oversees these kinds of reports / issues.

And at the time, who was in charge of Planning at the City of Toronto?

Hmmm, let me see if I recall correctly..........

Yeah, that's right. Jennifer Keesmaat. Imagine that.

The whole process of determining the fate of the eastern end of the Gardiner predated Keesmaat as it was launched in 2009.

The agency or corporation responsible for the studies from 2009 was WaterfronToronto not the Corporation of The City of Toronto.

WaterfronToronto is a trilateral agency.

So to suggest that Keesmaat's paw prints are all over the studies and that she somehow shaped the data is ludicrous.

The WaterfronToronto findings were presented to John Tory and then to full council. John Tory and his coalition as usual decided to override what the 6 years of studies and analysis concluded.

 

[oldjones]

The overall design essentially calls for the elevated portion of the Gardiner as it approaches the Don River (Lakeshore Ramp) to drop to grade sooner than it currently does. Right now, at Don Roadway for example, the elevated Gardiner is still there and both the DVP and Lakeshore ramps are together as one deck 4 lanes wide. (If you want to exit on Lakeshore, you keep to the right and you hit grade just before Carlaw. (If you recall, 20 years ago or so, they demolished that part of the Lakeshore ramp that used to run all the way east of Leslie (it was going to connect to "the Scarbrorough Expressway", which was going to run in the hydro corridor right through the Beaches (yikes) and right on out to Scarborough. It never got built, but the ramp from the Gardiner to it was built in the 1960's.) Right now, if you want to go to the DVP, you keep to the left and if you want Lakeshore, you keep to the right and if you keep to the right, the elevated Gardiner drops down to grade around Logan / Carlaw (??).

This is the socalled "hybrid" design where you still have free flowing traffic to and from the DVP, but you are going to eliminate that portion of the elevated portion that currently leads to Lakeshore (as you are going eastbound). The portion to and from the DVP will remain elevated and free flowing, though the design calls for the ramp to the DVP to be moved to the north.

But the elevated portion of the Gardiner between Spadina and Cherry Street is to remain in its current configuration. (The tear down the Gardiner crowd wants to demolish the elevated portion from Spadina right on through.)

2 years ago, the City redecked the elevated portion of the Gardiner Expressway in the west from Dufferin (more or less) east to Spadina (more or less)

Then last year, the City reconstructed the York / Bay /Yonge off ramp from the eastbound Gardiner.

So all of that work is done.

In May of 2018, the City tendered a contract to replace the existing superstructure of the Gardiner from Jarvis to Cherry Street.

Here you go:

https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2018/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-115753.pdf

Flip to Page 19. Note that the contract has been tendered and AECON is the lucky bidder (they built the damn thing back when, though back then they were known as the Foundation Company of Canada, or just Foundation). Note how much money they left on the table compared to Dufferin.)

I can only assume that the City will then let a separate contact once the above work is done to remove and replace the Lakeshore / DVP Ramp.

But the Gardiner remains as a free flowing highway with an elevated structure. The only substantial change is eliminating the off ramp to Lakeshore east around Don Roadway.

I'm intimately familiar with the elevated chunk that remains east of the Don. The surface road beyond works fine and carries the traffic as well as the elevated road ever did. The exit ramps from the elevated and the mess of them and Lakeshore eastbound from the Don to Carlaw is a blatant example of inadequate budgets and competing desires making bad design worse by poor execution. But overall it's still a functional improvement over the previous elevated and surface combo form Leslie to the River.

Not that I held that opinion before the demolition. As one of the handful who consistently used the Gardiner to cross the City, I predicted chaos. Instead, to my surprise, I got better flows at all hours. If I must cross town at busy times I'll go as far as taking Pottery Rd, Rosedale Valley, Davenport, Bloor, and pick up the Gardiner at South Kingsway to avoid having to park on the elevated. I know that will be a few minutes longer, but way less frustrating and far more interesting. Life's too short to waste crawling on expressways.

Now if they'd just fix the cheap-ass mess and Detroit-quality paving at Carlaw. I wouldn't say no to a bridge over the Don at Eastern either, but it's likely too late for that now. A footbridge though?

 

[Anbarandy]

FYI, I like Jennifer Keesmaat and all for the most part. She's a dreamer and I tend to like dreamers and builders.

But she's wrong about the Gardiner is all.

As previously stated, I'm all for tearing down the Gardiner, but building a 10 lane road is definitely not the answer. If you want to tear down the Gardiner, great. But you need to replace it with a tunnel. (But I feel that that would be a waste of money (better to spend that money on mass transit).

Building a stop and go roadway 10 lanes wide will generate huge amounts of noise and pollution, far worse than it is now as vehicles must brake and accelerate. (If you know anything about cars, you know that when a car is operating in its top gear at constant speed, it is most fuel efficient and all of its pollution control systems are online. When a car accelerates from rest, cars are allowed to bypass their pollution control systems and use maximum gasoline and generate maximum engine noise.)

The DVP/Gardiner connection will be tightened thus triggering a lower rate of traveling speed and deceleration and acceleration just the same.

The length of the expanded Lakeshore Blvd East that would be affected by a total Gardiner tear down is only about 2km.

 

[james t kirk]

The whole process of determining the fate of the eastern end of the Gardiner predated Keesmaat as it was launched in 2009.

The agency or corporation responsible for the studies from 2009 was WaterfronToronto not the Corporation of The City of Toronto.

WaterfronToronto is a trilateral agency.

So to suggest that Keesmaat's paw prints are all over the studies and that she somehow shaped the data is ludicrous.

The WaterfronToronto findings were presented to John Tory and then to full council. John Tory and his coalition as usual decided to override what the 6 years of studies and analysis concluded.

Prior to Keesmaat was Paul Bedford and David Miller and David Miller was actively pushing to tear down the Gardiner.

You might not believe it, but Engineering consultants will say whatever their client wants them to say.

 

[james t kirk]

The DVP/Gardiner connection will be tightened thus triggering a lower rate of traveling speed and deceleration and acceleration just the same.

The length of the expanded Lakeshore Blvd East that would be affected by a total Gardiner tear down is only about 2km.

Then leave the Gardiner exactly as it is. Problem solved. No argument here.

 

[Frankfooter]

Then leave the Gardiner exactly as it is. Problem solved. No argument here.

Keesmat says it will save half a billion dollars.
You have any real information that it would be more expensive then tearing down a section and moving it a bit and rebuilding it, as Tory proposed?

 

[explorerzip]

Yes but tearing down the Gardiner will take less time then rebuilding it, so the construction chaos should be shorter then trying to repair it.

How is tearing down an elevated roadway faster than just repairing it? Repairs are disruptive too, but you can close lanes on alternate nights, weekends, etc. If we tear down the Gardiner, then they'll have to completely close Lakeshore between Yonge and Carlaw. In addition, Cherry Street, Sherbourne, Jarvis, Parliament, Queens Quay will also have to be closed where they intersect Lakeshore for God knows how long.

Any vehicles that uses those roads (including transit btw), will be forced onto Front, King, Richmond, Adelaide, etc.

As I already said, the construction doesn't end with removing the bridge deck. You have to remove all of the demolished material, repave Lakeshore where there were bridge supports, redo street lights, etc. And then there's all of the frivolous stuff to make the city planners feel good, but realistically don't do anything to help people or cars move.

 

[oldjones]

How is tearing down an elevated roadway faster than just repairing it? Repairs are disruptive too, but you can close lanes on alternate nights, weekends, etc. If we tear down the Gardiner, then they'll have to completely close Lakeshore between Yonge and Carlaw. In addition, Cherry Street, Sherbourne, Jarvis, Parliament, Queens Quay will also have to be closed where they intersect Lakeshore for God knows how long.

Any vehicles that uses those roads (including transit btw), will be forced onto Front, King, Richmond, Adelaide, etc.

As I already said, the construction doesn't end with removing the bridge deck. You have to remove all of the demolished material, repave Lakeshore where there were bridge supports, redo street lights, etc. And then there's all of the frivolous stuff to make the city planners feel good, but realistically don't do anything to help people or cars move.

All that work was already efficiently accomplished between Leslie and the Don.

Traffic continued to flow north and south through the adjoining neighbourhoods, and in and out of the down town during the work, with no more than the standard inconveniences common to the hundreds of construction projects that are part of City life. Strange but true, the demolition operation didn't disastrously shut down the entire length all at once, but worked progressively and intelligently to minimize disruption. And crazy as it sounds, drivers with time-constraints, found alternate routes, even coping with the scarcity of bridges across the Don, an enormouse issue that the west side demolition won't face. We HogTowners are not so stupid as we'd have to be to make your imagined chaos into reality.

If we can't cope with some inconvenience as we build the big and the small stuff we need, the City will die. And we've already had a successful practice run at this one.

 

[explorerzip]

All that work was already efficiently accomplished between Leslie and the Don.

Traffic continued to flow north and south through the adjoining neighbourhoods, and in and out of the down town during the work, with no more than the standard inconveniences common to the hundreds of construction projects that are part of City life. Strange but true, the demolition operation didn't disastrously shut down the entire length all at once, but worked progressively and intelligently to minimize disruption. And crazy as it sounds, drivers with time-constraints, found alternate routes, even coping with the scarcity of bridges across the Don, an enormouse issue that the west side demolition won't face. We HogTowners are not so stupid as we'd have to be to make your imagined chaos into reality.

If we can't cope with some inconvenience as we build the big and the small stuff we need, the City will die. And we've already had a successful practice run at this one.

Kindly take a look at Google Maps and look at the difference between the area between Leslie and the Don River and the section between Yonge and the Don River.

 

[oldjones]

Kindly take a look at Google Maps and look at the difference between the area between Leslie and the Don River and the section between Yonge and the Don River.

"The river I step in is not the river I stand in". Gosh! Who knew! Every place is a different place from every other. What a world of marvels we inhabit! Thank you for that immense spiritual insight!

Now, it's your turn: Kindly make a point about what you quoted, or at least about the topic.