Waterfront Toronto says the eastern section of the Gardiner should come down

Waterfront Toronto has endorsed a recommendation from its staff to take down the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway.

The agency’s board decided its position on the issue in a special meeting Thursday and announced it Friday, getting a jump on a city staff report expected next week. That report will reveal the final recommendation of an environmental assessment on the 2.4-kilometre section of the elevated expressway that lies east of Jarvis St.

Waterfront Toronto and the city have been in charge of the assessment, which considered several options, including maintaining the crumbling section of the road, replacing it with a new expressway or removing it in favour of a ground-level boulevard.

“The city needs to make a significant investment in the Gardiner of several hundred million” dollars, board chair Mark Wilson said, referring to the needed funding to keep maintaining the eastern end of the expressway. “The question that the EA needed to answer is: What’s the best use of that money?

“It’s our view that the best overall use, based on the facts the EA has put out there, is to, in fact, remove it,” Wilson said. The economics of tearing it down are better, he said, noting that it’s cheaper to remove the section east of Jarvis and replace the underlying Lake Shore Blvd. E. with a new eight-lane boulevard than to continue maintaining the elevated roadway.

“And it releases a couple of hundred million (dollars) in land value, which is pretty important to the city. It has the best city-building capabilities,” he said.

The final recommendation from staff, as well as a 100-page report from engineering firm Dillon Consulting, goes to the public works committee for consideration March 4.

It’s not known what that recommendation will be, but earlier this month Waterfront Toronto and the city released a joint report that heavily favoured removing the elevated section.

It’s estimated the move could add 10 minutes to the commute in both directions.

During the morning rush hour, about 2,700 cars per hour exit the southbound lanes of the Don Valley Expressway and continue west on that section of the Gardiner, joined by 2,200 vehicles an hour entering from Lake Shore Blvd. E.

Traffic is much less busy going the other way. About 1,200 cars an hour use that section going east during the period.

Wilson says tearing down the expressway will clearly lead to a delay from some rush-hour drivers, but the Waterfront study presented to the board Thursday said it would amount to a significant delay — that is, more than seven minutes — for only 1 per cent of daily trips.

“It does have some modest negative impact on some trips into the city,” Wilson acknowledged. “But in terms of the overall investment and the return on that, it’s the best deal for the city.”

The issue could be before council by April.

Waterfront Toronto was created in 2001 by the federal, provincial and municipal governments and given a 25-year mandate to revitalize 800 hectares of former industrial land on the waterfront.

Related: Tearing down Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway would fuel gridlock: Editorial