Toronto City Council Should Support the Boulevard Option and Remove the Gardiner East

For the past year, we've focused on firming up a commitment from City Council to build a city-wide Minimum Grid of protected bike lanes & bicycle boulevards to unlock cycling for more Torontonians. To build a world-class cycling city, we need to boost investment in cycling infrastructure. 

Where can we find that money?

There are many places, but one of which is for Toronto City Council to support the boulevard option and remove the Gardiner East.

Instead of rebuilding an elevated highway, council should instead build a University Ave - like boulevard. While traffic times are estimated to increase by up to 2–3 minutes if the boulevard option is chosen, this affects only 3% of the people who travel to the downtown core (about 5,200 of the 157,200 people) during the peak time of the weekday morning commute. GO & TTC ridership make up 68% of people who travel to the downtown core

We teamed up with TTC Riders and believe City Council should save the $458 million by removing the Gardiner and invest it to improve transit for the TTC's 1.8 million riders and build a city-wide network of protected bicycle lanes to extend more options for Toronto's 1.5 million cyclists. 

Quotes

“Now is the time to take the Gardiner down" - David Crombie, Former Mayor of Toronto

"Economically, environmentally and civically, tearing down the Gardiner Expressway is the right thing to do." - Paul Bedford, Former Chief Planner of Toronto & Ken Greenberg, Greenberg Consultants

"This is an opportunity for us to create a grand boulevard that weaves together the waterfront with the rest of the city, and opens up new development parcels, allowing us to create complete communities within walking distance of the downtown core.” Jennifer Keesmaat, Chief Planner of Toronto