If he’s elected mayor, Giorgio Mammoliti would close a section of the Gardiner Expressway to all car traffic, replacing it with pedestrians, cyclists, transit and a park. And he would pay for all $1.3-billion of it through a combination of road tolls, parking fees and the proceeds from a floating casino in a cruise ship on the lake.
“It’s ambitious, but I think we can do it,” he said. “We’ve clearly lost sight of how we could potentially be managing [Toronto’s waterfront].”
Mr. Mammoliti’s four-year plan would split several kilometres of what’s now the Gardiner in half, replacing the highway with rapid transit, a park and infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians.
Funds would come from a cruise-ship casino, parking fees from new lots on the west and east ends of the city and from $2 road tolls – on a widened Lakeshore Boulevard and a Front Street extended west from Bathurst to Dufferin.
Technically, the city isn’t allowed to operate its own casino – only the province, aboriginal communities and some charities can do that. But Mr. Mammoliti said he’d appeal to the province to give Toronto the added powers.
An image provided by Giorgio Mammoliti's mayoral campaign shows his proposed changes to the Gardiner Expressway.
The often-gridlocked Gardiner has been the topic of much derision, and Waterfront Toronto is weighing several different fates for the concrete commuter artery. Last year, Les Klein of Quadrangle Architects proposed a “green ribbon” of raised parkway and bike lanes above the Gardiner.
But he said Mr. Mammoliti’s proposed “Skyway” is “unfortunately misguided.”
“I think it misses the point,” he said. “Taking an active highway and turning it into a park just doesn’t quite work.”
It’s not feasible to divert traffic from the Gardiner onto Lakeshore Boulevard, Mr. Klein said: Whereas New York’s lauded “High Line” made use of a former freight railroad to create an elevated park, this plan doesn’t provide enough of an alternative for the drivers who now rely on the Gardiner for their daily commute.
Planners and transit experts have called on governments to look seriously into road tolls as a way to address Toronto’s stifling congestion and pay for transit initiatives, and mayoral candidate Sarah Thomson has also proposed tolls on the Gardiner and Don Valley Parkway, albeit temporary ones.
But transit planners have noted that it does little good to impose tolls on only one or two roads. To actually reduce congestion, they say, tolls have to be added on a regional basis.
