Bury the Gardiner? Idea resurfaces at Toronto City Hall on Wednesday

Proposal comes before city council on Wednesday to bury the expressway, in a plan some consider 'transformational,’ and others dismiss as ‘fanciful’

Thestar.com
Sept. 30, 2015
By Betsy Powell

It’s a big idea that could transform Toronto’s downtown.

Montreal did it, Boston struggled to do it, Seattle is doing it.

It wouldn’t be cheap, it wouldn’t be easy and city staff gives it a thumbs-down - but councillors will on Wednesday consider a proposal to replace the Gardiner Expressway with a tunnel.

“It is a bold idea, and it would be transformational because it would free up all that land,” said Murtaza Haider, an associate professor at Ryerson University’s Ted Rogers School of Management.

The construction consortium behind the plan calls it a visionary solution, although the idea of tunnelling under the Gardiner is as old as the elevated, inner-city roadway itself.

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” said John Beck, executive chairman of Aecon Group, a Canadian infrastructure and construction giant.

Tunnelling would improve connectivity between downtown and the waterfront, lessen commute times for motorists, reduce carbon emissions and could be done with minimal traffic disruption during construction, he said.

Archival photos of the Gardiner Expressway

It would run for 6.5 kilometres, from around Cherry St. in the east to near Jameson St. in the west. Along the way, there would be an entrance at Yonge St. and another around Lower Simcoe and York Sts. South of the Fort York, it would break away from the Gardiner route and follow Lake Shore Blvd. A second tunnel along Front St. would take pressure off the western Gardiner. It would take six years to build.

The consortium estimates it could build a Gardiner and Front St. tunnel for an estimated $5 billion. If the environmental assessment process began soon, the tunnels could be open by 2023, Beck said. Separately, the Gardiner tunnel would cost $4 billion, the Front St. tunnel, $1 billion.

But Haider warns digging down can mean digging deep into your wallet.

“Tunnels are notorious in cost overruns,” he said.

“The Gardiner is so close to the lake, in order to have a stable tunnel you have to dig fairly deep and go into the bedrock, and that increases the cost,” Haider said.

“It becomes political suicide to back up a project that could rack up billions in cost overruns.”

On the plus side, a tunnel would eliminate the Gardiner as a barrier to the waterfront, cut travel times by up to 15 minutes and free up land for development. The Gardiner could also remain in place and in use until the tunnel opened.

On the flip side, city staff say it would cost more to maintain because of the proximity to the lake, would bisect hydro lines, watermains and sewer lines and limit connections to streets that run north/south.

The city spends between $4 million and $8 million annually maintaining the entire expressway. Recently, city staff offered up three plans for rebuilding the eastern section of the Gardiner at costs ranging from $260 million to more than $400 million.

“When you look at financial and technical solutions (of a tunnel,) it’s a no-brainer. We don’t see any negatives. We just think we have a better solution,” Beck said.

But city staff disagrees.

They say while attractive, it’s impractical, exorbitantly expensive and estimate it would take between 10 and 15 years to gain the necessary city and provincial permits and approvals. Staff says an environmental assessment itself would take 10 years. Beck considers that overstated.

Last week, members of the city’s executive committee voted to stick with the previously approved F.G. Gardiner Expressway Strategic Rehabilitation Plan, a multi-year project to resurface the highway and repair the deteriorating elevated sections.

“I’ve picked my lane, and the lane is to fix the Gardiner Expressway,” Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong told the committee. He described the tunnel as an “imaginative” and “fanciful” idea.

Mayor John Tory said while he can see the benefits of a tunnel, pursuing that option could delay badly needed repairs, putting the safety of users at risk.

The idea of tunnelling beneath the Gardiner has been discussed - and dismissed - by council seven previous times since 1955.

Also on the city council agenda this week is the contentious staff recommended proposal to regulate Uber, the California company that owns the popular UberX ride-sharing service.