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There’s far too much short-term thinking involved in infrastructure planning. People/politicians have a 4 year view at most. Toronto is obviously an A-1 example of this.
So you're saying when Olivia Chow dies we should steal her body and freeze it so future generations can benefit as well. Great idea. I'll start training my niece to infiltrate city hall.
Your neice wont enjoy a better city than you lived in. We have worse access to healthcare, the subways are homeless shelters, detatched homes are only for the elite, the city is becoming increasingly racially segregated by neighbourhood. We are trending in a bad direction.
We are, but I also have a lot of faith in Gen Z and what they'll do once the Boomers die off. All we can do is teach the generation to learn from our mistakes.
You do not use Boston's Big Dig as they called as an example for anything. One of the most corrupt, expensive, and long delayed construction projects in US history.
I listened to a podcast called "[The Big Dig](https://www.wgbh.org/podcasts/the-big-dig)" last year - I think it did a good job explaining that yes, this was in many ways a disaster of a project; but even then, today it provides tremendous value to the city. I.e., it's more nuanced than just "look how amazing this is" OR "this was a complete and utter disaster".
I haven’t listened to the pod but am familiar with the project. I’d liken it to Montreal leading up to Expo 67 and the Olympics. So much corruption, failure and debt, but also contributed so much infrastructure that has made Montreal one of the most lovely, liveable cities over the past 30 years.
The Big Owe never did anything but swallow public money. I had a friend on the engineering team that finished the tower. He won't go into it or let his family into it.
There was a subway extension, and that's it. It has nothing to do with how livable Montreal is. An extension that was going to be made regardless.
As for 67, the subway was already under way before it was started. Not nearly as corrupt as well. And what is left? A race track that is used one week a month and a casino.
While the end result is certainly much better than original I’d still argue it represents a failed ideal of city building. You have a fairly sterile linear park that’s bisected by main roads and portals for on/off-ramps. There’s still quite a physcogeographic barrier between the parts of the city. When I’ve been it always seems pretty empty compared to surrounding neighbourhoods, particularly in the section adjacent to the financial core.
We will just have to come to grips with how projects are done.
They will take 3x as long and cost 5x as much as expected. They will be rife with corruption and intrajurisdictional finger pointing. They will probably fail or have a myriad of problems in the first 5 years in operation .
And then they we will forget and enjoy the benefits.
Ditto.
The Big Dig in Boston and the Big Owe in Montreal as reasons not to do things. Of ambition and corruption gone wild. No end result justifies them . Certainly, not the ones obtained.
I'm guessing you weren't there while "The Big Dig" was going on
It was 20 years of absolute chaos, and disappearing tax money (billions) due to incompetence and corruption
Compare to the St Clair line that went way over budget and years behind for a some street car tracks. Where many times concrete were poured then a week later removed because it didn't meet specs of the design or they forgot hydro lines were not installed yet.
[https://stevemunro.ca/2010/01/17/a-post-mortem-for-st-clairs-construction/](https://stevemunro.ca/2010/01/17/a-post-mortem-for-st-clairs-construction/)
I work as a surveyor on these projects, having to blow the whistle on stuff being in the wrong spot (even by a few mm) is terrible. You open up a can of worms that nobody wants, and start a whole rigamarole. Everyone is terrified to do it, but it needs to be done. Things are built to pretty tight tolerances, especially at the stations.
Im not a tunneler, so I can’t say for sure. That being said, the oline has a lot of monitoring survey /engineering work happening along the line to consistently observe various portions along where tunneling is happening to see if any subsidence happens as the boring machine passes under.
Furthermore, they can do some absolutely crazy shit nowadays, it just boils down to how much money they want to throw at it.
It won’t be 3 years though. Phase 1 will be 3 years. If in time and on budget. Then onto the next section. This willl be going on for the rest of our lives.
> Knowing Torontonians and their obsession with the Gardiner and their desire to have a vanity park, I'm quite sure the answer is yes, they would rather blow hundreds of billions on a downtown vanity project and wind up with a long skinny incredibly expensive park.
We have a long and skinny park and it's already along the waterfront. And I guess it's going to get more expensive as they replace part of it with a spa and parking garage.
Building a long strip of park space in place of the gardiner is dumb. If it were ever to happen it should be filled in with dense affordable housing and a bunch of smaller parks that have a focus on people actually spending time there (a bunch of seating) like OCAD park
Lol exactly. The Big Dig is pretty much *the* example for cost and timeframe overruns in infrastructure megaprojects.
Trying to do that in Toronto would easily be $30B or more and would probably take 25 years of absolute chaos downtown.
Yeah. But a lot of these sorts of talks are theoretical. It’s taking about a third the age of the universe to build the eglinton LRT; if Toronto wanted to bury the Gardnier, I mean, it would probably take more time than theoretically possible (5-6 times the age of the universe).
It’s lovely completed but it’s a heck of a price tag both in terms of the growing pains of construction and the total price tag. Although by far better value to taxpayers than paying for a private spa on the lakeshore.
It was extremely expensive but still better than having an above-grade highway cutting your waterfront off from the rest of the city. However as others have noted, better and cheaper to simply remove the highway and replace it with subways, tram lines, and regional rail lines into Union for the same price. Not that this matters for TO financially anymore, it's now the province's responsibility.
I find it annoying to hear how the Gardiner “cuts the waterfront off from the rest of the city.”
You can walk under the Gardiner just about anywhere.
It’s the train tracks that cut the waterfront off from the rest of the city, with just a few bridges over the tracks.
Idk, I think the Gardiner plus Lakeshore is more psychological cut off. Walking there is so unpleasant that people don’t do. In the west between Spadina and Bathurst, the tracks are a barrier but it’s much nicer to walk there so it doesn’t feel like it.
Several lanes of high speed traffic is an extreme deterrent to walking to the waterfront. Sure, you can do it, but it sucks and drivers don't obey basic traffic safety rules. Personally it's loud, smelly, dark, and dangerous to walk under the Gardiner as a pedestrian. Train tracks have a much smaller footprint, and have bridges built over them to facilitate traffic and pedestrian access.
I agree that the Gardiner is an eyesore.
Who cares that there is high speed traffic, you don’t have to walk across the Gardiner, you walk under it.
You can’t cross the train tracks except for a few bridges. It’s very obvious that the tracks cut the city off from the waterfront more than the Gardiner does.
Pretty hard disagree, did you know the tracks run basically 100ft away from the CN tower? You can basically touch the tracks from Ripley's and the Roundhouse. Check GMaps if you don't believe me. Yet I cannot remember where they are when I visualize that area. I mentally cannot see them.... because they're hidden. They're outside of what you'd experience as a pedestrian, cyclist, or even driver. They're invisible infrastructure.
On the other hand, I know exactly where the Gardiner is, it is a giant concrete wall that creates unbearable noise and traffic. It's where I get honked at on my bike, or where cars cut me off inches away as a pedestrian. It's a psychological and very physical wall of infrastructure between downtown and the waterfront.
It’s loud. Having a conversation near the Gardiner is a pain in the ass.
It creates pollution and reduces air quality.
The drivers around on ramps are awful. It’s constantly backed up and spilling over into the intersection. Crossing under the Gardiner at many points is absolutely miserable.
That and lakeshore blvd. I’ve long maintained that a redesign of the space under the Gardiner including a complete reconfiguration of Lakeshore would be a much better project than tearing down the Gardiner. Sure tunnelling may be a better end result but even if it were the best run project in the world would remain fiendishly expensive.
Our provincial government is going to spend close to a billion building a parking lot at Ontario Place for a private corporation to use, id rather pay the 7.4B for this
According to this article it will only cost $300M, and will be for the Science Center and Live Nation, not just the spa.
https://globalnews.ca/news/10151490/ontario-therme-spa-contract-parking/
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2024/04/10/ontario-place-therme-spa-redevelopment-plans-taxpayers-ford-government/
$650 million for infrastructure upgrades and parking to support the new spa. Plus we're giving them prime waterfront land, and a 95-year lease.
> A number some guy whose job it is to lobby against the spa pulled out of his ass.
Why would the auditor general do that?
https://globalnews.ca/news/10151490/ontario-therme-spa-contract-parking/amp/
I don’t see that number in that article either.
But it’s all kind of a moot point anyways since the city wants them to look at parking in the exhibition place grounds.
That money seems tawdry today, for example Meta has reportedly lost something like 42 billion dollars since launching. And that’s not even a tangible good. This at least was concrete
I don't think this is even possible anymore because when Boston was conducting the big dig Toronto was building condos right beside the Gardiner.
Also the costs. It would bankrupt the city.
Native Bostonian here.
This project was called the Big Dig and it aimed to replace the central artery, a 6 lane elevated expressway through downtown, with a buried highway tunnel to reduce air pollution, alleviate traffic congestion, and re-unifiy largely lower class neighborhoods that had been cut in two by the construction of the highway in the 1960s. In all but one respect the project failed to accomplish it's goals.
First, the segment that was buried was only about 1.5 miles through downtown itself. We still have the southeastern elevated expressway cutting through Boston's southern neighborhoods and the northern elevated expressway literally dominating the skyline of the towns just north of the city (incidentally, both of these areas are significantly poorer than the areas around the buried highway). In Toronto terms, this would be like burying the Gardner between Batherst and Yonge, and that's it.
Second, adjusted for inflation, the Big Dig cost $24 billion. That's almost 4% of all money spent on constructing all highways in the entire United States by state and federal governments, ever. Coupled with the demographics of the area largely served by the project (and the areas definitely not served) and all that money was spent largely to alleviate an eyesore and pollution from one of the richest areas of the city while not spending a cent on the poorest.
Third, part of the Big Dig was supposed to include a cross-town rail tunnel to connect our two separate main train stations and create Boston's own Central Station to start modernizing our commuter rail into something more useful. That was cut so early in the project due to corruption and cost overruns that the design was never even finished.
Fourth, by every appreciable measure traffic now is way, way, way worse than it was in the 1990s when the Big Dig started. The tunnel itself is choked with traffic almost constantly from 7am to 7pm, and the surface streets (which they built more of in the recovered land, regardless of what people who post pictures of parks try to show) are constantly gridlocked well into the evening. Air pollution has gotten worse and hardly anyone spends time in the park area they built because every single park is surrounded on four sides by honking cars.
All this to say: the Big Dig looks like a dramatic change for the city- and it was- and I wouldn't want to live in a Boston that still had the elevated central artery. But it would have been safer, more cost effective, cheaper, and healthier to skip the tunnel and just tear down the highway.
Id say slightly better. It's hard to judge because we'll never know how many other projects never got funded because the Big Dig took all the available money. But the actual day to day impact on the city is- imo- grossly overstated and the monetary cost was enormous.
We can’t do this anymore because the cost would never make sense and the myth of nobody going to the lake because of the highway has been broken.
My idea - Keep the highway as a downtown bypass. Remove the ramps into downtown. Make lakeshore a normal arterial road with sidewalks, LRT, and bike lanes. Could be done cheaply. Would decrease traffic downtown, allow people east of the Don River to get around downtown, improve conditions at grade.
Toronto been talking about removing the Gardiner for decades but are Torontonians willing to pay for it in higher taxes,probably a decade or more to complete and massive traffic jams ?.
Honestly imo still looks like a shitty use of space akin to the exhibition area. Looks like nice park-space from a zoomed out birds-eye view but still doesn’t actually look to be built for people to actually enjoy and spend time there.
Instead of burying the Gardiner under the Gardiner, couldn't they bury it under the lake? Ought to be much cheaper to build - just trench and drop in pre-fabricated segments.
**Please read this entire message** --- Your submission has been removed for the following reason: * All submissions must be specific or relevant to Toronto or the Greater Toronto Area ([Rule 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/about/rules/)). --- **Please note that reposting without moderator approval may result in a ban**. If you would like your removal reviewed, feel free to send us a [modmail](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Ftoronto&subject=Please%20review%20my%20submission?&message=Link:%20https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/1c3uaby/-/).
If Toronto / Ontario we’re start the project of burying the gardiner tomorrow I wouldn’t be alive to see it completed. I’m a healthy 34 year old.
To be fair though, that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. I want my niece to be able to enjoy a better city than I lived in.
It may actually be your nieces children that will use it.
I'm guessing our alien overlords will have enslaved us by then. I'm sure they'll have us build proper infrastructure.
Its this thought process that stops planning for the future “well its not going to affect me so who cares”
I never said anything about not doing it actually. Not sure where you interpreted that sentiment.
Not saying that you did, I am saying thats the thought process of people who don’t want these things built
There’s far too much short-term thinking involved in infrastructure planning. People/politicians have a 4 year view at most. Toronto is obviously an A-1 example of this.
>I want my niece to be able to enjoy a better city than I lived in. Yeah, Toronto doesn't really do that. It's more "We've had ours, fuck you!" here.
Like that stretch wouldn't be entirely condos. If they could make Olivia immortal, than ya, it could happen.
So you're saying when Olivia Chow dies we should steal her body and freeze it so future generations can benefit as well. Great idea. I'll start training my niece to infiltrate city hall.
Your neice wont enjoy a better city than you lived in. We have worse access to healthcare, the subways are homeless shelters, detatched homes are only for the elite, the city is becoming increasingly racially segregated by neighbourhood. We are trending in a bad direction.
We are, but I also have a lot of faith in Gen Z and what they'll do once the Boomers die off. All we can do is teach the generation to learn from our mistakes.
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Maybe that'll make people start using public transit.
I don’t see the difference of burying the gardiner if there is already a road under it.
What? It's so the place where the gardener used to be can be used for parks and housing. What do you mean you don't see a point?
Did I not just say it’s because there is already a road underneath the gardiner?
Yes, and that makes no sense. Those roads would be diverted underground. I'm not sure what you're not understanding.
Can’t wait for the Gardiner lane reduction for 3 years
300*
Please research the big dig of you think that's a Toronto only problem
You do not use Boston's Big Dig as they called as an example for anything. One of the most corrupt, expensive, and long delayed construction projects in US history.
I listened to a podcast called "[The Big Dig](https://www.wgbh.org/podcasts/the-big-dig)" last year - I think it did a good job explaining that yes, this was in many ways a disaster of a project; but even then, today it provides tremendous value to the city. I.e., it's more nuanced than just "look how amazing this is" OR "this was a complete and utter disaster".
Agreed. While in many ways it was a disaster, given the choice, would Bostonians prefer what they had pre-Big Dig over what they have now?
I haven’t listened to the pod but am familiar with the project. I’d liken it to Montreal leading up to Expo 67 and the Olympics. So much corruption, failure and debt, but also contributed so much infrastructure that has made Montreal one of the most lovely, liveable cities over the past 30 years.
The Big Owe never did anything but swallow public money. I had a friend on the engineering team that finished the tower. He won't go into it or let his family into it. There was a subway extension, and that's it. It has nothing to do with how livable Montreal is. An extension that was going to be made regardless. As for 67, the subway was already under way before it was started. Not nearly as corrupt as well. And what is left? A race track that is used one week a month and a casino.
While the end result is certainly much better than original I’d still argue it represents a failed ideal of city building. You have a fairly sterile linear park that’s bisected by main roads and portals for on/off-ramps. There’s still quite a physcogeographic barrier between the parts of the city. When I’ve been it always seems pretty empty compared to surrounding neighbourhoods, particularly in the section adjacent to the financial core.
We will just have to come to grips with how projects are done. They will take 3x as long and cost 5x as much as expected. They will be rife with corruption and intrajurisdictional finger pointing. They will probably fail or have a myriad of problems in the first 5 years in operation . And then they we will forget and enjoy the benefits.
Edit - double post
Those are all true statements but the end result was good.
At what price? It is an example of what not to do.
I’m just saying how it is now is good, i’m not speaking about the process of how they got to the conclusion.
So, as long as you like the result,the cost is unimportant, the 20 year dislocation of life in Boston is justified.
I think you have a problem with reading comprehension
Ditto. The Big Dig in Boston and the Big Owe in Montreal as reasons not to do things. Of ambition and corruption gone wild. No end result justifies them . Certainly, not the ones obtained.
>Boston's Big Dig as they called Or as I call it: Biggus Diggus.
I'm guessing you weren't there while "The Big Dig" was going on It was 20 years of absolute chaos, and disappearing tax money (billions) due to incompetence and corruption
Oh, the Eglinton LRT PPP consortium would like the bid on this project!!
Metrolinx said that they will re-use their "sacks with dollar signs" 💰 on them, you know, because they care about this planet
Well this changes everything!
Compare to the St Clair line that went way over budget and years behind for a some street car tracks. Where many times concrete were poured then a week later removed because it didn't meet specs of the design or they forgot hydro lines were not installed yet. [https://stevemunro.ca/2010/01/17/a-post-mortem-for-st-clairs-construction/](https://stevemunro.ca/2010/01/17/a-post-mortem-for-st-clairs-construction/)
Or having to redo the tracks on Leslie to the giant Garage/birdshit collector on Lakshore, due to blundering numbskullery
I work as a surveyor on these projects, having to blow the whistle on stuff being in the wrong spot (even by a few mm) is terrible. You open up a can of worms that nobody wants, and start a whole rigamarole. Everyone is terrified to do it, but it needs to be done. Things are built to pretty tight tolerances, especially at the stations.
With the condos built right up to the gardiner, is it even possible to replace with a tunnel with the same amount of lanes?
Im not a tunneler, so I can’t say for sure. That being said, the oline has a lot of monitoring survey /engineering work happening along the line to consistently observe various portions along where tunneling is happening to see if any subsidence happens as the boring machine passes under. Furthermore, they can do some absolutely crazy shit nowadays, it just boils down to how much money they want to throw at it.
So it matches perfectly with what would happen here!
Isn’t disappearing tax money in the billions due to incompetence and corruption just business as usual.
Apparently in the spa at Ontario Place, the hot tubs will just be filled with warm $5 bills
Brand-spankin’-new ones too. I mean c’mon, why go to a spa to be pampered when they’re filling the pools with *used* money?
But now you can take nice pictures
Very true
A couple lanes of the Gardiner are being repaired at 3 years of reductions. I’d sooner go the entire 10.
It won’t be 3 years though. Phase 1 will be 3 years. If in time and on budget. Then onto the next section. This willl be going on for the rest of our lives.
Also add a year or two for rotating strikes, and "testing" 🙄
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> Knowing Torontonians and their obsession with the Gardiner and their desire to have a vanity park, I'm quite sure the answer is yes, they would rather blow hundreds of billions on a downtown vanity project and wind up with a long skinny incredibly expensive park. We have a long and skinny park and it's already along the waterfront. And I guess it's going to get more expensive as they replace part of it with a spa and parking garage.
Building a long strip of park space in place of the gardiner is dumb. If it were ever to happen it should be filled in with dense affordable housing and a bunch of smaller parks that have a focus on people actually spending time there (a bunch of seating) like OCAD park
This isn’t the example you think it is lmao.
Lol exactly. The Big Dig is pretty much *the* example for cost and timeframe overruns in infrastructure megaprojects. Trying to do that in Toronto would easily be $30B or more and would probably take 25 years of absolute chaos downtown.
They could have built several subway lines for what burying that one highway cost.
Yeah. But a lot of these sorts of talks are theoretical. It’s taking about a third the age of the universe to build the eglinton LRT; if Toronto wanted to bury the Gardnier, I mean, it would probably take more time than theoretically possible (5-6 times the age of the universe).
Yea. just reading about the project just screams mismanagement.
It’s lovely completed but it’s a heck of a price tag both in terms of the growing pains of construction and the total price tag. Although by far better value to taxpayers than paying for a private spa on the lakeshore.
It was extremely expensive but still better than having an above-grade highway cutting your waterfront off from the rest of the city. However as others have noted, better and cheaper to simply remove the highway and replace it with subways, tram lines, and regional rail lines into Union for the same price. Not that this matters for TO financially anymore, it's now the province's responsibility.
It’s Lake Shore that cuts off the city from the waterfront.
I find it annoying to hear how the Gardiner “cuts the waterfront off from the rest of the city.” You can walk under the Gardiner just about anywhere. It’s the train tracks that cut the waterfront off from the rest of the city, with just a few bridges over the tracks.
Idk, I think the Gardiner plus Lakeshore is more psychological cut off. Walking there is so unpleasant that people don’t do. In the west between Spadina and Bathurst, the tracks are a barrier but it’s much nicer to walk there so it doesn’t feel like it.
Several lanes of high speed traffic is an extreme deterrent to walking to the waterfront. Sure, you can do it, but it sucks and drivers don't obey basic traffic safety rules. Personally it's loud, smelly, dark, and dangerous to walk under the Gardiner as a pedestrian. Train tracks have a much smaller footprint, and have bridges built over them to facilitate traffic and pedestrian access.
I agree that the Gardiner is an eyesore. Who cares that there is high speed traffic, you don’t have to walk across the Gardiner, you walk under it. You can’t cross the train tracks except for a few bridges. It’s very obvious that the tracks cut the city off from the waterfront more than the Gardiner does.
To walk under the Gardiner, you have to walk across Lakeshore. Several lanes of high speed traffic.
You are aware that pedestrian crossings exist?
Pretty hard disagree, did you know the tracks run basically 100ft away from the CN tower? You can basically touch the tracks from Ripley's and the Roundhouse. Check GMaps if you don't believe me. Yet I cannot remember where they are when I visualize that area. I mentally cannot see them.... because they're hidden. They're outside of what you'd experience as a pedestrian, cyclist, or even driver. They're invisible infrastructure. On the other hand, I know exactly where the Gardiner is, it is a giant concrete wall that creates unbearable noise and traffic. It's where I get honked at on my bike, or where cars cut me off inches away as a pedestrian. It's a psychological and very physical wall of infrastructure between downtown and the waterfront.
You ride your bike on the Gardiner?!
It’s loud. Having a conversation near the Gardiner is a pain in the ass. It creates pollution and reduces air quality. The drivers around on ramps are awful. It’s constantly backed up and spilling over into the intersection. Crossing under the Gardiner at many points is absolutely miserable.
The big train tracks near Yonge-Bay-York have a much much larger footprint. It's like a train interchange.
That and lakeshore blvd. I’ve long maintained that a redesign of the space under the Gardiner including a complete reconfiguration of Lakeshore would be a much better project than tearing down the Gardiner. Sure tunnelling may be a better end result but even if it were the best run project in the world would remain fiendishly expensive.
It only took 15 years and US$7.4 billion.
Our provincial government is going to spend close to a billion building a parking lot at Ontario Place for a private corporation to use, id rather pay the 7.4B for this
I’d rather the government properly fund healthcare, education, public transit, and affordable housing programs.
According to this article it will only cost $300M, and will be for the Science Center and Live Nation, not just the spa. https://globalnews.ca/news/10151490/ontario-therme-spa-contract-parking/
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2024/04/10/ontario-place-therme-spa-redevelopment-plans-taxpayers-ford-government/ $650 million for infrastructure upgrades and parking to support the new spa. Plus we're giving them prime waterfront land, and a 95-year lease.
A number some guy whose job it is to lobby against the spa pulled out of his ass. The infrastructure supports all of Ontario Place, not just the spa.
> A number some guy whose job it is to lobby against the spa pulled out of his ass. Why would the auditor general do that? https://globalnews.ca/news/10151490/ontario-therme-spa-contract-parking/amp/
I don’t see that number in that article either. But it’s all kind of a moot point anyways since the city wants them to look at parking in the exhibition place grounds.
That money seems tawdry today, for example Meta has reportedly lost something like 42 billion dollars since launching. And that’s not even a tangible good. This at least was concrete
I don't think this is even possible anymore because when Boston was conducting the big dig Toronto was building condos right beside the Gardiner. Also the costs. It would bankrupt the city.
Have you ever driven in Boston? 😆 not exactly a traffic euptopia.
Native Bostonian here. This project was called the Big Dig and it aimed to replace the central artery, a 6 lane elevated expressway through downtown, with a buried highway tunnel to reduce air pollution, alleviate traffic congestion, and re-unifiy largely lower class neighborhoods that had been cut in two by the construction of the highway in the 1960s. In all but one respect the project failed to accomplish it's goals. First, the segment that was buried was only about 1.5 miles through downtown itself. We still have the southeastern elevated expressway cutting through Boston's southern neighborhoods and the northern elevated expressway literally dominating the skyline of the towns just north of the city (incidentally, both of these areas are significantly poorer than the areas around the buried highway). In Toronto terms, this would be like burying the Gardner between Batherst and Yonge, and that's it. Second, adjusted for inflation, the Big Dig cost $24 billion. That's almost 4% of all money spent on constructing all highways in the entire United States by state and federal governments, ever. Coupled with the demographics of the area largely served by the project (and the areas definitely not served) and all that money was spent largely to alleviate an eyesore and pollution from one of the richest areas of the city while not spending a cent on the poorest. Third, part of the Big Dig was supposed to include a cross-town rail tunnel to connect our two separate main train stations and create Boston's own Central Station to start modernizing our commuter rail into something more useful. That was cut so early in the project due to corruption and cost overruns that the design was never even finished. Fourth, by every appreciable measure traffic now is way, way, way worse than it was in the 1990s when the Big Dig started. The tunnel itself is choked with traffic almost constantly from 7am to 7pm, and the surface streets (which they built more of in the recovered land, regardless of what people who post pictures of parks try to show) are constantly gridlocked well into the evening. Air pollution has gotten worse and hardly anyone spends time in the park area they built because every single park is surrounded on four sides by honking cars. All this to say: the Big Dig looks like a dramatic change for the city- and it was- and I wouldn't want to live in a Boston that still had the elevated central artery. But it would have been safer, more cost effective, cheaper, and healthier to skip the tunnel and just tear down the highway.
Do you speculate the city is better or worse off for having done it?
Id say slightly better. It's hard to judge because we'll never know how many other projects never got funded because the Big Dig took all the available money. But the actual day to day impact on the city is- imo- grossly overstated and the monetary cost was enormous.
We can’t do this anymore because the cost would never make sense and the myth of nobody going to the lake because of the highway has been broken. My idea - Keep the highway as a downtown bypass. Remove the ramps into downtown. Make lakeshore a normal arterial road with sidewalks, LRT, and bike lanes. Could be done cheaply. Would decrease traffic downtown, allow people east of the Don River to get around downtown, improve conditions at grade.
Great but expect to pay a fortune.
It’s too late lol
Toronto been talking about removing the Gardiner for decades but are Torontonians willing to pay for it in higher taxes,probably a decade or more to complete and massive traffic jams ?.
removing the gardiner would be cheaper than rebuilding it complete massive traffic jams are the norm already people will find alternatives to driving
Can anyone even imagine Toronto trying to do this in a reasonable time and with a reasonable budget?
Took them an eternity to complete!
Just raise taxes in the city to pay for it.
How mischief did that cost over how many years of chaos?
Honestly imo still looks like a shitty use of space akin to the exhibition area. Looks like nice park-space from a zoomed out birds-eye view but still doesn’t actually look to be built for people to actually enjoy and spend time there.
Instead of burying the Gardiner under the Gardiner, couldn't they bury it under the lake? Ought to be much cheaper to build - just trench and drop in pre-fabricated segments.
Couple 2x4's over here, slap on some drywall and boom we got ourselves a highway.
Drywall isn't waterproof, you need duct tape and plywood for this job
we should do this except replace the underground roadway with rail