Why the Gardiner East decision, whatever it is, won’t be “evidence based”
Pity the 5,200 souls who drive the eastern stretch of the Gardiner during morning rush hour. They are getting a good whipping in the name of evidence-based policy. Nearly every argument in favour of the teardown points a finger at them. Architect Paul Raff, writing in the Toronto Star, claims that the issue of the Gardiner East’s future is one “of reality versus misinformation,” then cites the 5,200 drivers as an example of “reality.” These drivers are also getting a thorough public shaming of the kind only Twitter can deliver, the crime being their excessive hoarding of tax dollars for their aging infrastructure pet. (At least they each have 5,199 pairs of shoulders to lean upon, to help cope with the mortification.)
No one has taken these 5,200 drivers to greater task for their claim upon the public purse than councillor Josh Matlow, who, in an open statement to his constituents about his decision to support the teardown, explained that “the facts got in the way” of his feelings about the Gardiner. First among those facts: 5,200. Matlow then goes down the costing rabbit hole to demonstrate the burden all taxpayers will have to bear to keep 5,200 people arriving at work on time: by his reckoning, $6.43 per minute of delay for the next 30 years.
I’m not sure I can crank up the twisty elastics of suspense on this topic any further, so now is probably the time to let the propellers fly. It turns out the figure we’re all so fixated on—these 5,200 Gardiner East vehicles at rush hour—substantially underestimates the actual amount of traffic on the Gardiner East. As evidence goes, it’s almost completely unhelpful to the Gardiner debate.
When I inquired about the source of the number with Waterfront Toronto, I was told the 5,200 figure is actually an estimate of one average hour’s worth of vehicle traffic during the morning rush. The morning peak period is three hours long; a more realistic figure, then, would be 15,600. Moreover, it counts only westbound vehicles, since they are the ones most likely to experience delays on the way downtown. When I inquired about the total daily traffic volumes on the Gardiner in both directions, Waterfront Toronto pointed me to figure 3 on page 18 of this document. The Gardiner East carries about 115,000 cars per day. The graph clearly shows a three-hour morning peak period averaging roughly 8,000 vehicles per hour, for a total nearly five times the 5,200 figure everyone keeps citing.
To say nothing of the four-hour evening peak averaging 7,000 vehicles per hour. According to Waterfront Toronto spokesperson Andrew Hilton, the Gardiner East traffic studies modeled only the morning rush hour. The rationale was that, since the morning rush has higher vehicle counts, it is the one that will yield the worst-case scenarios for traffic delays. Given the lower intensity of afternoon peak travel, Hilton says that a useful rule of thumb would be to expect afternoon delays equal to 80 per cent of the morning delays. This logic doesn’t necessarily jibe with the lived experience of many motorists. The evening rush equals the morning rush plus the additional hordes who came into town between 9:30 a.m. and 1 p.m., which explains why its total volume is larger than the morning rush. But we don’t have any traffic-model projections for the afternoon eastbound delays, so we don’t even have an official number to quibble over.
At this point I would expect everyone who professes fealty to evidence-based policymaking to insist that we put a stop to this entire debate until city staff can report back on afternoon rush hour, except that I don’t believe, when it comes to this issue, that anyone truly possesses any such fealty. Councillor Matlow’s position paper offers a useful test case. After making so much hay on the backs of 5,200 commuters, he could perhaps adjust his calculations for the 52,000 actual ones who ride the Gardiner in both directions during both peak periods. He’s such a good sport he may even take the time to do it. But I predict he won’t change his mind as a result, proving that his math was just for show.
Which is fine. I don’t begrudge Matlow a decision based on something other than traffic counts. I begrudge him only the charade of pretending otherwise. In the end, the fate of the Gardiner East is an intensely emotional issue, and I think the entire city and region would do well to recognize that our clashing ambitions for the city’s future are clouding our perceptions of the available evidence. I offer up the first mea culpa: having already argued in favour of the Hybrid option, and also in favour of tolling the Gardiner, I’ve spent most of this column pounding the table over a bit of data I find spurious, as though it were the only number that mattered.
The Gardiner East issue has always been larger than the sum of all its evidence, and its future lies beyond the churnings of any traffic-modelling program. This debate loudly echoes the city’s myths of origin, especially for those who hold those myths dear and have taken their lessons to heart. Torontonians once stopped the construction of a highway, in order to save neighbourhoods. Now they perceive a chance to tear down a highway, in order to build neighbourhoods. A new generation is determined to have its Spadina Expressway moment.
But there is a crucial distinction to be made between then and now. Those who fought against the Spadina Expressway stood up to the development industry, which wanted the highway built to open up far-flung greenfields for low-density tracts of detached family homes. They built those tracts anyway and left commuters and governments to deal with the traffic chaos. Today those who want to tear down the Gardiner stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a development industry—or at the very least, a large and vocal subset of that industry—which wants land opened up for condo towers, developments that come with their own set of excesses and pitfalls.
The biggest charade of the debate so far has been the coalition of developers that calls itself CityBuilders. These people have not suddenly converted to the light of New Urbanism; they just recognize where their profit is to be had. This is the same industry that brought you Vaughan. They are the same people who are rebuilding downtown for a vertical lifestyle, complete with a dearth of transit service and green space, both of which are lacking because city hall failed to plan for the growth. They are going to sell their Expressway District condos before the neighbourhood is ever built. By the time the city figures out whether or not it’s got another development-induced traffic disaster on its hands they’ll be long gone. Developers are experts at marketing utopias. They have yet to build one.
The idea of tearing down the Gardiner is now more than 20 years old, a relic of a recession-starved 1990s Toronto that was desperate for a visionary idea. In the interim, with the Gardiner standing, Toronto has become the envy of the world, a magnet for global talent and investment and construction cranes. The biggest drawback has been the gridlock. Travel capacity of every kind has become the city’s scarcest commodity, and in this regard the Gardiner has yet to outlive its usefulness. The Gardiner is also a genuinely amazing piece of infrastructure, one that would offer city builders the poetic challenge of crafting beauty, improving function and finding opportunity within existing constraints, rather than razing themselves a blank canvas. It’s the hybrid option, not the teardown, that presents the greater and more interesting challenge for Toronto’s future development. Provided, of course, that the city is prepared to take it up.
no do not tear it down for a waterfront
“with the Gardiner standing, Toronto has become the envy of the world, a magnet for global talent and investment and construction cranes.”
Toronto is great + Toronto has the Gardiner = The Gardiner is great. Grade school syllogism in line with the rest of the poorly reasoned articles this guy’s written about the Gardiner.
REALITY = The Gardiner East is mostly EMPTY during morning Rush-Hour…and is a WASTE of money to re-build as “Hybrid”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBYjp_sFrCQ
But it’s very full in evening rush hour. You need both sides for the highway to work properly. At $200 million additional cost spread out over decades, that cost is very sensible.
So at the end of the day the fact is that this stretch of the Gardiner has low traffic volume which is what the evidence shows.
It isn’t FULL in evening Rush-Hour, there are some slow-downs at Carlaw ramp – but those are mostly related to construction at Leslie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aSxZRQ3tgQ
Never seen backed up traffic there in 40 years. I actually like that section as it has light traffic. Still, I would tear it down for the greater good.
It isn’t stopped I’ll grant that, but it is near capacity. And this city is not getting smaller
I would keep it up for the greater good. It’s an essential route through the heart of the city for people and goods. I’m not advocating building any more roads in, but this one should be kept. Move it north to open up the waterfront sure, but you can’t clog the Lakeshore by taking it down. Lakeshore is already a disaster as it is.
“…Toronto has become the envy of the world, a magnet for global talent and investment and construction cranes. The biggest drawback has been the gridlock.”
Really? THAT’S the biggest drawback? Not the woefully small transit network? Not the brutalized waterfront?
If we’re to reduce gridlock AND produce the city we want, we’re better off reverting to one of your own earlier suggestions: toll the Gardiner.
The key is not to provide car based options (demand is elastic), but to build non-car options. We cannot build enough lanes to satisfy the induced demand.
Talk to me about the “load” that Lakeshore now handles. It’s gridlocked. Try getting onto the Gardiner to get out of town heading west. The Jarvis + York (ramps) intersections are traffic knots and a nightmare. Ask the city’s Traffic Management division.
The most damning fact is how the “numbers” were produced to justify the position of demolishing the Gardiner. Anyone handing in a first year paper of any kind who fabricated numbers like those would be failed. The analysis is clearly a lie/deceit/fail
This is a part of a larger ‘global’ issue and demolishing the Gardiner will only exacerbate the situation.
http://www.canadianbusiness.com/economy/the-end-of-gridlock/
Lake Shore East is only what it is because of the construction around Leslie, which won’t last forever. Perspective.
Lake Shore East can’t handle a “load” right now due to the construction around Leslie, which will end. If we’re talking about honesty, you failed in your first sentence.
The 5,200 number doubled (coming back in the evening) is still the same 5,200 that can be absorbed into an expanded Lake Shore, as can the additional traffic during lower peak hours throughout the day. Nothing changes here, the 5,200 number is at the height of rush hour, which traffic cameras have shown all week illustrate a near-empty Gardiner East. Once the construction around Leslie at Lake Shore is finished, that road will be back to its pre-construction days of effective usage.
To say that Toronto’s greatness has anything to do with Gardiner East is ridiculous beyond measure. It is not based on facts, it’s suggesting correlation is causation, which is really quite weird for an adult with a column who supposedly has some education.
Yup, this author is straight up nutty with zero perspective or understanding of what works and why.
What about the 5000+ that drive on the lakeshore right below the gardiner? Add those together and you will have gridlock for sure. Once we tear it down we won’t be able to afford to put it back. It working, leave it alone. Stop fixing what’s working and focus on what’s not working like transit. We don’t need anything new, we need to fix what we have. Next on the cities list, turning yonge street into a pedestrian mall. This was done in the past and it didn’t work and it won’t work now. We have 4 months of pedestrian weather, what happens for the other 8 months. Don’t mess up the Gardiner and don’t mess up Yonge Street. Take every extra penny you can find and build transit.
” The Gardiner is also a genuinely amazing piece of infrastructure” – I walk under it every day to get to school – it ain’t amazing.
Toronto will not be world class til it moves away from the auto economy and onto the knowledge economy.
The really amazing thing is not this ugly infrastructure – it is the opportunity that this land will create. It is an opportunity to bury the ugly, and make good on the greenspace that is in deficit. Lets see if it all becomes condos, causing more deficit.
Until then, we are stuck in the Toronto of Cronenberg’s “Crash”.
Really? never? you must not have driven on it any time in the last six months. Traffic is backed up eastbound from 4-7pm every day.
They are tearing down the Gardiner regardless. The hybrid is a rebuild. Please get your facts straight. Unless you support the ford option
The AM Peak Hour measure was not just chosen at random by Councillor Matlow.The 5,200 drivers figure is the number of cars in the AM Peak Hour, which is a standard ridership measure. That time period is used in the City reports and even the CAA/UofT study. Further, the delay times cited in the City Staff report are specifically for the AM peak period, or the 5,200 drivers cited in Councillor Matlow’s letter.
To bolster his case that Councillor Matlow should have assigned delay values to a wider number of users, Mr. Preville mistakenly states that 80% of the delay experienced in the AM Peak could be expected in the PM rush period. He has confused volume with delay- the two do not have a direct relationship.
To illustrate, let’s say a road had a capacity to move 1,000 cars in an hour. Adding 50 cars to the road in a period when there was, say, 100 drivers would have a negligible effect, as the interval between cars would be too large to affect driving speed/behaviour. However, an increase of 50 cars would have a serious impact on trip times if the number of drivers on this road was increased from 950 to 1000 as the road reached its capacity- drivers would have to slow down, erratic movements made such as a quick lane change would cause more severe backups due to cascading braking, etc.
That’s why Transportation planners measure demand at AM Peak when assessing potential road infrastructure; it is then that the delays caused by insufficient road capacity, or volume, would be most likely to occur. There are certainly delays during other periods but those are generally caused by accidents or construction, not volume.
I don’t fault the author for misunderstanding this topic. Transportation demand modelling is complicated. It is unfortunate, however, that Mr. Preville didn’t consult with a Transportation Planner or at least pick up the phone and call our office before writing this misinformed article. He has further cluttered a debate that, as the author rightly contends, is evidence deficient.
Andrew Athanasiu
Senior Policy Advisor
Office of Councillor Josh Matlow
Ward 22 – St. Paul’s
Lakeshore will be widened by at least one lane in each direction if not two to accomodate the extra cars if we decide to tear it down.
You believe them?
I’m sure New York’s West Side Elevated Highway, San Francisco’s Embarcadero Freeway and Seoul’s Cheonggyecheon freeway were all “genuinely amazing pieces of infrastructure” as well. With those elevated highways in place, each of those cities became “become the envy of the world, a magnet for global talent and investment and construction cranes.” And guess what? They were all torn down when it became clear that they outlived their usefulness. That argument doesn’t fly.
Make no mistake: the so-called “hybrid” option” differs from the dismissed “maintain” option in but one aspect. It is far more expensive, involving as it does the tearing down of the existing structure and the building of a new one in its place. In other words: we’re paying a premium for a piece of infrastructure that will be no better suited to handling congestion than the current one.
@sunnewsisforilliterates… you’ve got an apt name. You wrote “Lake Shore East”, I didn’t. So much for ‘honesty’ there. What’s your point or do you have one?