Allen Rd. may save Crosstown time
Closing part of expressway for about two years could speed up LRT construction
A partial closure of northbound Allen Rd. for nearly two years could shave three or four months of pain off some Eglinton Ave. commutes by allowing Metrolinx to finish some of its work on the $5.3-billion Crosstown LRT a little faster.
But it will be up to the city to decide if it wants to rip off the bandage by closing Allen Rd. between Eglinton and Lawrence Aves., or continue the ongoing string of warnings to motorists to avoid the area if possible.
Closing Allen Rd. would leave more room for construction staging, and eliminate the need for 150 trucks a day hauling fill from the Crosstown tunnel to turn on Eglinton Ave.
Shutting Allen Rd. was rejected by the city once. It is being reconsidered because residents south of Eglinton Ave. are objecting to motorists using side streets to access the expressway where Eglinton Ave. is down to a single lane of traffic in each direction.
That’s where crews are building an extraction shaft on the west side of the Eglinton West subway station. The first of two giant tunnel-boring machines will be pulled out of the ground at that spot in January, before they’re relaunched from a shaft on the east side toward Yonge St.
Metrolinx vice-president Jack Collins said closing Allen Rd. would offer area motorists and residents a longer reprieve before Crosstown station construction begins there in 2016. That is expected to last until 2020, when the light rail line opens.
“If we can get out of here faster, all the better in terms of disruption from traffic,” Collins said Wednesday. So Metrolinx is compiling data about the potential effects on side streets and thoroughfares like Bathurst St. of closing Allen Rd. It hopes to put a decision to council in July. Eglinton-Lawrence MPP Mike Colle said warnings to stay off that stretch of Eglinton have reduced traffic. “People are willing to take the aggravation of dealing with this construction because they want to see this finally built,” he said at the site, where the Conservative government of 1995 filled in a hole for the Eglinton subway it had cancelled. Councillor Josh Colle, whose Eglinton-Lawrence ward neighbours the area, said he would prefer not to close Allen Rd. “At the same time, I understand the sheer logistical and engineering feat of the construction project . . . I can totally appreciate the challenge,” he said. “My biggest concern is what would be the impact on Lawrence, which is already a pretty strained intersection. What would diverting potentially all that traffic do to the Lawrence intersection and also to Marlee and Bathurst and Dufferin, which are all in my ward,” said Colle. “There’s no getting around the fact that building a major piece of infrastructure in a built-up area will mean a certain level of disruption,” said Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig. Borers are tunnelling 24/7 on the 11 kilometres of the line that will run underground. The LRT will cut the Eglinton commute by 20 minutes, he said. “That is a big enough reduction in travel time to get more people out of their cars and onto the rapid transit,” said Transportation Minister Glen Murray. “We have to get transit fast enough that people will actually make a different decision.”