Council fixated on unattainable goal.
When city council voted Thursday — with a long and eccentric list of amendments and caveats — to keep the Gardiner Expressway up, they made a mistake. One we’re likely to have to live with (and pay for) for decades to come.
Their reason for doing so is particularly distressing: the key criteria cited by “hybrid” supporters as influencing their decision was concern about congestion. But the fundamental truth is that highways into downtown cores do not fight traffic congestion, they create it. You may not believe that is true. Neither did the mayor or a slim majority of council.
In any event, the choice to maintain this option will limit the potential for redevelopment near the Keating Channel (alongside which the elevated highway will still run). It will cost about $100 million more than the alternative ($250 million or more if you include lost revenue from land). The costs could escalate if private developers whose land is affected sue the city. This will be looked back on in 20 years — or less — as a costly missed opportunity in a city where missed opportunities have become a defining part of the culture.
But, fellow boulevard supporters, let’s take a deep breath. Council was voting on two kilometres of road, not on the disposition of the immortal soul of the city. The redevelopment of the Port Lands will still proceed. The mouth of the Don River will still be renaturalized. The things that make this city a great place to live are not threatened by the rebuilt road — indeed, they exist now beside it.
And there were some elements of the debate that softened the blow, too, for those looking for reassurance. For all the horse manure being shovelled around (which comes with the territory, really), city council actually had a fairly detailed argument about the issue, digging into the actual reports and finding disagreements in them. A genuine debate took place, which is not always or even generally the case.
Among the long list of studies approved by council (most of them passed as pure vote-buying exercises) are a few looking into road tolls. Congestion pricing, or tolls, are the only thing that will actually work in the long term to reduce congestion, and we have too long cowered in fear of them. That a few members of council’s suburban right-wing demanded reports on pricing road space is as good a place as any to start the inevitably long discussion about introducing them, even if the reports themselves are likely to go nowhere.
There was endless talk by hybrid supporters, too, of how transit needs to be built, how if we had built more transit in this city a generation ago, they would now have supported the boulevard option.
There were firm resolutions to actually, really, really, for real get on with building transit, and paying for it. Which may be so much cheap talk, but perhaps those councillors can be reminded of it as transit building returns to the agenda.
Councillor Josh Colle, a hybrid supporter who is actually the chair of the TTC, passed an amendment asking staff to look at ways to expedite the construction of the East Bayfront LRT, an unfunded but much-needed transit line that keeps almost falling off the provincial and municipal agenda.
And while we’re looking on the bright side, we’ll get a break from the endless fighting about the Gardiner, at least for a while. Small blessings.
As for the road itself, the details are not settled. Specific report requests ask for several things, including the absurdity of a tunnelled Gardiner that was the price of Councillor Jim Karygiannis’ support. Staff will have to take another look at Hybrid 1.0 proposed by First Gulf — the one everyone seemed to think was the real win-win option before staff declared it impractical because of a sharp turn that would slow traffic to a crawl.
The design refinement will have to specifically look at a version of this roadway without the ramps and service roads at Cherry St., which would allow some less-bad street design in the Keating Channel district, open up a bit more land for development and significantly reduce the cost.
We’re going to have some kind of expressway link between the Gardiner and the DVP, that’s pretty much decided, but a lot about it can be changed. The detailed design stage that comes next in the process (which, as a reminder, kicked off in 2009, for a road that’s now projected to be finished construction around 2025), allows a fair chance to mitigate some of the most damaging elements of the existing proposal.
If all that is the silver lining — OK, let’s say tinfoil lining — the dark cloud is that city council had a chance to do something really good instead of mitigating damage. And that they didn’t realize that chance because they’re hung up on how to move cars faster, an unattainable goal in the long term.
Still, they’ll pursue it despite steep costs in dollars and city building opportunities. That may be the darkest part of it all. Because that approach to making decisions threatens to do a helluva lot more damage than any two-kilometre stretch of road ever could. Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca. Follow: @thekeenanwire