Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Accelerating Toronto's Gardiner Expressway replacement

Toronto traffic is crap, has been for awhile and will be for many more years, maybe for as long as we have cars. Thank goodness that public transit is stepping up and making it easier for people to get into the city on trains and busses, reducing the amount of vehicles required. Of course the two major issues would be road closures and amount of traffic and these are impacted by construction and major events. Nothing lasts forever and roads and bridges need maintenance and replacement while adding new public transit also provides new headaches.

The Eglinton Crosstown LRT project has been going on forever I believe. The almost 16km Ontario Line subway project started impacting the downtown core beginning in late 2021 and will finish in 2031. Hitting hard is the latest phased replacement of the 60 year old Gardiner Expressway, started in March of 2024 and was expected to last 3 years, followed by more phases while a previous phase was completed in 2021 and there are four more phases to go after this one. Traffic in Liberty Village has been making the news lately and not in a good way. Add in a few other road reconstruction projects and a summer full of street festivals and sport events and it all adds up to gridlock.

The Province of Ontario took on the responsibility for the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway (long known for flooding) and has freed up a lot of money (about $1.9 billion) the City can use in other locations, which might be hard to do as the City is pretty stingy on spending money (sarcasm).

On July 24, 2024 the City and the Province announced plans to accelerate this phase of the Gardiner Expressway construction by working longer days (24/7 possible) to bring the completion of this section from 2027 to 2026.

Mayor Olivia Chow says “Together with the provincial government, we can rebuild the Gardiner Expressway more quickly and ease the painful congestion in downtown Toronto. Working together, we can repair our aging infrastructure, ensure that the Gardiner Expressway is safe and help people get around our city easier.”

The original announcement on lane closures starting in 2024 had both highway directions losing lanes. Until I actually looked along the Gardiner I didn't realize that basically they have shifted all traffic to one side of the Gardiner and started tearing down the other half the highway, including the deck and support columns. Then they pour new columns, allow the concrete to cure and then put in new bridge decking, section by section.

Decks gone, ripping out the supporting columns

New columns ready for the new bridge sections
Constructing the new supporting columns

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