# A petition to Toronto City Council to remove the Gardiner Expressway East

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2015-05-16

architect-this-city, atc, athiscity, change, change-org, chief-planner, city-council, city-of-toronto, development, east-bayfront, elevated-expressway, elevated-highway, expressway, freeway, gardiner, gardiner-east, gardiner-expressway, gardinereast, highway, jane-jacobs, john-tory, mayor-john-tory, paul-bedford, petition, toronto, toronto-city-council, uncategorized, waterfront

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![image](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/f21db336cd0e1a38fd7241078040a716.png)

**_“If the decision ultimately of the council is to support the hybrid I think frankly it’ll be a major step backwards and you’re going to miss a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I’ll be very frank, we’ll be the laughingstock of the world.”_** 

**_\-Paul Bedford, former chief planner of Toronto_**

As many of you I’m sure know, I have been a vocal and passionate supporter of removing the eastern portion of the elevated Gardiner Expressway in downtown Toronto. I have written about it so many times that a lot of you are probably sick of hearing about it.

I’m sorry if that’s the case. But it’s a hot and important topic in Toronto right now. We’re just over 3 weeks away from City Council finally making a decision. That is scheduled to happen on June 9th and/or 10th. 

For the most part though, I was pretty confident that we would ultimately make what many of us believe is the right decision. But then this past week [Mayor John Tory went public in his support for the “hybrid” option](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/mayor-tory-takes-a-stand-against-removing-part-of-gardiner-expressway/article24430139/), which is basically to rebuild the elevated expressway in a slightly different configuration. And that really upset me.

Here’s what that looks like (versus the remove option shown at the top of this post):

![image](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/6ef68b55edea11b097865bf9d6503e6b.png)

Have we learned nothing from our past city building mistakes?

Since that announcement, I went on Twitter every night this week to check out the discussions that were happening around [#GardinerEast](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23GardinerEast&src=typd&vertical=default). And every night it got me so worked up that I then had trouble falling asleep. I have since stopped reading about the Gardiner East before bed.

But rather than just get frustrated, my friend (a fellow city builder named Stephen Job) and I decided to do something about it and create a petition using Change.org.

It is a petition that we will ultimately be sending to Toronto’s entire City Council prior to their June 9 meeting and we hope that you will consider signing it and sharing it with your network – regardless of whether or not you happen to live in Toronto. (Although it’ll certainly help if you’re a taxpayer and voter in the City of Toronto.)

We just finished getting it up and you can check it out and sign it by [**clicking here**](https://www.change.org/p/toronto-city-council-remove-the-gardiner-expressway-east).

_Images:_ [_Toronto Star_](http://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2015/05/13/committee-leaves-gardiner-expressway-choice-with-city-council.html)

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/a-petition-to-toronto-city-council-to-remove-the-gardiner-expressway-east)*