What
do you do with a freeway that runs right through your downtown? It’s
a question that Toronto has faced ever since people began to wonder
whether having an elevated highway between the city core and Lake
Ontario was such a grand idea. The Gardiner Expressway is now old,
and while no-one is in a rush to rekindle a debate between downtown
and suburban interests, a decision may be nigh.
Toronto’s
municipal council could delay action, but a major report on the
city’s waterfront is imminent, and the Gardiner’s fate will likely
act as the lightning pole of controversy. Any communal discussion
will expose a schism in priorities -- between traffic capacity and
the desire to create a beautiful urban environment.
The number of
great cities that have rejuvenated their waterfronts is growing. New
York, San Francisco and Seoul are among the places that have pulled
down aging central highways. This usually means a loss in road
space, except for inner Boston where billions have been spent to
bury a heavily used freeway.
Making downtown
an intriguing experience to explore on foot runs right into the need
to provide access by car. This is a familiar tug-of-war for me, as I
try to balance stark transportation requirements with a longing to
spend time in a graceful, inspiring city. One of the first people to
provoke and inspire this love for simply walking along a street was
a high school teacher. Mel Greif, a popular and award-winning
teacher recently retired from educating kids about urban history,
design and other subjects.
I recently
asked him how he felt about the Gardiner, more than 20 years after
he first discussed it in my urban geography class. As usual, he
starts with the past, describing why Torontonians of the 1850s would
allow their waterfront to be invaded by transportation
infrastructure -- in this case miles of train tracks. He says
citizens of the day “were so mesmerized by the wonders of technology
that they actually allowed the railway to come down the main streets
and take over the whole esplanade area.”
A century
later, the locals were again “sucked in” by technical progress, he
says -- this time with a U.S.-style elevated highway. “The Gardiner
[represented] a wonderful piece of new technology, mastery of
road-building, and connections to suburbia. People thought ‘Hot dog,
this is great, we can now leave the rotting city and move out.’”
While the Don
Valley Parkway opened up development to the north of the city, the
Gardiner linked downtown with new subdivisions amid farm fields in
the west. Greif says that extending the Gardiner to the east across
the popular Beaches and Bluffs areas made those living along the
route nervous, and may have kindled early sentiments now known as
“Not I My Back Yard.”
The highway was
never built along the eastern shore of Lake Ontario, as it was
through western neighbourhoods like Parkdale. This still-struggling
area was already separated from the water by rail lines, and 12
lanes of Gardiner and Lake Shore Boulevard severed it entirely.
The former
teacher says that until the 1970s, the highway was “seen as a pretty
good thing because it took all the power brokers home to Etobicoke.”
Those who defined metropolitan politics used the road, and it wasn’t
until the downtown portion “started to rot” from salt and heavy use
that anyone was forced to consider its future.
While it no
longer regularly sheds slabs of broken concrete, the road is going
to need a long term plan to either keep it up, or reconfigure it.
Coming up: Enjoying downtown, versus simply getting to it.
Ed Drass
Email the
Traffic Guru at
edrass@nationalpost.com