Any plan to fix the Gardiner is prohibitively expensive—so what’s the city supposed to do?
Here, a few of the various plans that have been proposed to improve the Gardiner over the years, courtesy of the CBC. One designer suggested enclosing the elevated stretch of the Gardiner in a glass tube (a move that would have lowered maintenance costs), while another proposal supported building a garden roof over the highway. Yet another adopted a more utilitarian approach and said the city should simply to bury the thing. Of course, the problem with any attempt to fix the Gardiner is money (just Google “The Big Dig” for a quick comparison). Any improvement plan—and even the regular maintenance to keep the highway from crumbling—is prohibitively expensive. Also, in case you’re wondering, one of the CBC’s sources said road tolls and new gas taxes are going to be necessary. Read the entire story [CBC] »
The real problem is there aren’t enough roads for me to drive vroom vroom whenever I want to go downtown. If we build a new lane onto the Gardiner every year, we might be able to keep pace with new traffic. Since our governments do everything they can to get people to buy cars and stop using transit or cycling (cutbacks to transit and bike lanes are helping to END THE WAR ON CARS!!) all we have to do is build a new lane, and when new traffic fills that lane, we’ll build a new lane, and when new traffic fills that lane, we’ll build a new lane. By my calculations the Gardiner will stretch from the waterfront to Sheppard by the year 2075, and will cover the entire city of Toronto, which will then become populated by anti-Rob Ford mole people.
Sounds about right.