No win

Toronto's City Council's acrimonious debate over the fate of the Gardiner Expressway seems one of utter futility. They are about to render a decision. It is the ultimate no win.

At the moment, the whole council seems completely split right down the middle. Both sides really don't know what they are talking about. Personal agendas flow into the scene. The vote took place during the writing.

The Gardiner Expressway was called the mistake by the lake when it was constructed. In high school, one teacher gave us a study in urban planning. His assessment about its construction was that once used it was going to be like an urban planning Heroin. It does what it was designed to do. Once employed it became an addiction hard to kick.

Challenging most logic, if one carefully leafs through the various projects, one finds that they are all valid. Another commonality infused in each advocacy seems laced with the blissful ignorance of winter conditions. A flaw in both sides was in the limited view these people had of the highway. One would naturally think that the highway existed for the sole convenience of the suburban commuter. Another problem is the speed of which it is constructed. The City engineers seem to believe that the structure will eventually become dangerous about the year 2020. For a major project this is not all that far off.

A lot of political capital was expended by each side. The boulevard advocates abandoned cited magical studies and polling reports. They used every euphemism for the word stupid referring to their opponents. They had studies. There were studies supporting a highway teardown, There was an equal number of myths. For many politicians of both sides, if not all, this debate will come to haunt them in the future.

For the observer this debate seemed a real life example of the no win scenario. Truly the Gardiner Expressway debate can be called the Kobayashi Maru of city politics. There were four choices. Keep it. Tear it down. Or merge the highway projects into something called a Hybrid. Each version would work. BUT

No matter the choice, it would be wrong. The people who lost the close vote vowed to continue to vocalize against it. This project isn't really worth the political fight. It was something that had to be dealt with. The losing councillors and over social media vowed to keep up the fight. The whole debate was a red herring argument.

The same people that want to tear down are also in a severe fight to prevent the island airport to expand to  accommodate jet aircraft. They have proven very poor advocates of any position. Here is a proposal that would have a far greater impact on the city than that intersection. Some of the City Mayor's Executive came out for tearing it down completely.

Basically these councillors were voting against the boss. This can only happen so many times without being forced out of their perk laden cushy appointments. Now the airport vote will be another very close vote with many of the same people sitting on the fence. Several key votes are on the Executive Committee. These councillors expended a lot of political capital and may have to hold their votes to support the expansion of the airport.

It is why this was a no win. By fighting this issue so severely, the expansion of the airport will pass because the four votes on the Executive committee will be forced to vote for the expansion. They lost a lot of their political blood on their support of another plan. Many of the councillors also prove themselves to be totally undemocratic vowing to reverse council decision. These same political hacks will not have the same persuasive power because its going to be very difficult after calling other politicians basically thoughtless idiots on this lesser issue.

Regardless, no matter the choice, every choice is wrong. And that is a very rare example of the no win situation.

Drop it I tell ya. Drop it buddy

Its a magnificent struggle for lunacy. Some want the Gardiner East section to be removed. Some, like the furious Mayor, want a hybrid. Sort of a highway mule with no fertility.

Like you, I could really care less. But what is distressing from a third party standpoint is that both sides are trotting out the BS. The advocates for the mule give numbers about time increases. Advocates for removal trot out minimal figures.

Worse still is the fanciful project costs. Everyone on every side seems to be giving rather low estimates of their options. Going on history, City history, I'll betcha dollars to donuts* that those are about one third to one quarter of the final real costs of each project.

Reason. That is  particularly complex topography to build anything since it is also at the mouth of a small, albeit definable river mouth. Worse still, they have to work around existing infrastructure maintaining some traffic flow.

In all the arguments, I don't think people seem to regard that section of the highway as part of the entire highway system from Montreal and Ottawa to Windsor, to Sarnia, to Fort Erie.

The debaters seem to argue about six hours out of a 24 hour period. And the removers seem to say, well everyone will have to start earlier without adding the ever so critical point of saying that people will go from work to home even later. The cherry on this little sundae gem is the fact that they are pointing to public transit the same day that the vaunted TTC subway system collapsed because it seems no one has a cell phone. 

Had all the stations were equipped with cell phone service the supervisors could have bypassed. No. Seems out of all the TTC supervisors on staff none have cell phones or use them. They could ask the customers to use those cells to move trains. Nope.

In off peak, night hours a lot of truck traffic flows down and up the DVP/Gardiner Queen Elizabeth corridor. Not all. But about 1/4 of trans-city traffic to Niagara slides down through. Trucks from up north come down the 400, 404 at night and off peak hours, they choose which way to go.

 

Some confused Ryerson puppies on the Star seem to hate the Gardiner for the most trivial reasoning. One columnist even cited how San Francisco should be the model because it no longer has its harbour expressway. The guy skirted around several things. First different geography SFO is on a peninsula. Second SFO is an end point of the ground transport system, Toronto is the major hub of the highway network in the middle of the highway network. Third, the reporter failed to give equal weight to Edmonton, Regina, Calgary, and Winnipeg which all have ring expressways to facilitate commercial traffic. Toronto has a functioning ring highway under several different names unfortunately. (401,DVP,Gardiner, 427)

Removing that section will move that commercial traffic all the way through Toronto and onto the hard pressed Hwy 427. Plus the advocates of the removal seem to believe that if they remove that part of the Gardiner, that removes all the traffic. Its just going to move it onto other streets where their precious TTC operates.

Neither side seems to stand up to the measure of reality. Its now more political than logical.

Unda Der Vater, Da Deep Dirty Vater

Here's the situation. Aging public works that needs expensive rehabilitation and soon. Toronto's agony seems a lesson best not forgotten. Its all about the Gardiner Expressway. This is a major expressway, built in the 1950's which due to inadequate taxpayer funding regarding ongoing maintenance has aged far faster than the original plan.

Studies state that commuters face a delay of ten minutes on each one way travel during the work week days if the Gardiner disappears. The network of media and political punditicles use the term "Gridlock" to describe the resulting traffic jams. Indeed, one of the biggest vote grabbers for politicians involves the promise of reducing gridlock.

The problem involves the positively obvious fact that there are simply too many automobiles on the city infrastructure. Easily 9 out of 10 rush hour cars carry only a single human. As soon as public works builds a solution such as the Gardiner Expressway, it seems to fill up very fast and just as fast as when there was no solution.

Over the years, various solutions have been tried or encouraged. The first of these seems the most logical is public transit where instead of one person, one vehicle a larger single vehicle carries close to 100 people. Logic dictates that in doing this, one vehicle reduces one hundred. Or in the case of a subway or mass transit train, two thousand or more people which translates into the potential elimination of 1999 cars. In North America, this strategy has been an ongoing failure. The reason is that public transportation is a popular way to travel as long as its the other guy on the system.

The second major strategy to eliminate "gridlock" has been staggered working hours. This is a brilliant concept on paper. Presently people seem to get to work between 0800 and 0930hrs and depart between 1600 and 1800hrs, this puts a large number of people onto the mass transit beyond its capacity. And its not cost effective to build expensive public transit to the ideal rush hour capacity.

The staggered working hours though defy any reality. The reason one goes to work at such a time aims at being working with employees or other companies at work during that time also. Economic activity depends on efficient co-ordinated immediate contact transactions. Trade and commerce is a human activity. Staggering hours looks good on paper but defies simple humanity. Its a pointless commercial gimmick.

Since people maintain an addictive relationship with their cars, any action weaning them is doomed to failure. Each one of those adults votes. Forced removal from their cars, is a form of political suicide in a democracy. Heavens above witness the lack of willingness of political leaders to sacrifice their well paid careers for the self interest of the community or nation.

That's the basic transportation dilemma confronting Toronto City Council. Ironically though the people want to stay in their cars, as taxpayers they don't want to fund it to the point sufficient to maintain that facility.

Coming to how that effects the Gardiner Expressway. Any option is the best solution. Something does have to be done. Recognize one thing. That Expressway serves mostly people who do not pay city taxes, who live outside the borders of Toronto.

Two unnerving facts emerge from this controversy. First, I believe that all the budget estimates for any version of the project are way too low. History has proved that 4 out of 5 city projects have overrun the original budgets.

Read a number, a project estimate that is given, then automatically double it. If the hybrid solution that the present mayor wants suggests that it is going to cost $900M, its really going to cost $1.8B. The Spadina transit way, the St. Clair transit way, the trackage down Leslie to the new streetcar barns, the York University subway extension, Harbourfront rehabilitation, ... without exception all these projects have been grievously afflicted by gargantuan cost overruns.

The second unsettling facet of all the Gardiner, Don Valley Parkway reconstruction projects do not include the redirection of the mouth of the Don River. The sharp diversion of the Don immediately below the interchange lends to flooding in every heavy rain. Straightening out the flow channel or eliminating the ninety degree dogleg with a curving shape. Without including the redirection of the Don channel then the future designs of the Don Valley Parkway will continue to be flooded every heavy rain. Reconstructing the Gardiner, gives the opportunity to solve the traffic flow and the water flow. Ignoring the Don River problem will prove more costly for both projects if they continue to be segregated.