Brandon Donnelly

Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

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Tag: elevated expressway

  • Hybrid 1-2-3

    For those of you who have been reading this blog since last summer, you’ll know that I’m particularly passionate about the Gardiner Expressway East here in Toronto.

    Last night a public meeting was held to discuss the 3 alternative designs for what has become known as the “hybrid” option. If you’d like a visual summary of the options, click here.

    But essentially as you go from hybrid 1 to hybrid 3, the elevated Gardiner Expressway just gets pushed further north, away from the water. So as you go from 1 to 3, the hybrid option becomes less offensive to the waterfront and its associated public realm, and it opens up more land for development. However, it also becomes more expensive.

    Here’s a graphical summary of the costs, which my friend Gil Meslin tweeted out last night:

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    Notice that the boulevard (remove) option, which City Council rejected last summer, remains by far the most cost effective option. At a time when the city is searching for cash, I am surprised that nobody is looking here.

    I am also surprised to read that some are commenting on which of the above hybrid options will be the easiest to tear down should we want to remove the Gardiner East in the future. If that’s the lens we are applying, why rebuild it in the first place?

    But enough from me. What do you think? Here’s a Twitter poll I created this morning:

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

    image

    “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, 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

    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. 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.

    Images: Toronto Star

  • Recommendation to remove the elevated Gardiner Expressway

    I’ve written a lot lately about the Gardiner Expressway East. First to argue that I think it should be torn down and, second, to provide a counter argument as to why some people think North America’s urban freeways are here to stay. I wanted to avoid confirmation bias.

    Well a recommendation has been made to City Council and it is, indeed, to remove the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway. They are now asking Council to approve it. The item will first go to the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee on March 4, 2014 and, subject to the results of that meeting, will then go to City Council on April 1, 2014. 

    The recommendation to Council identified the following 4 key features of the preferred “remove” option:

    1. Widening of Lake Shore Boulevard east of Jarvis Street by two lanes into an eight-lane landscaped at-grade boulevard;
    2. The lowest overall public investment at $240 million net present value (NPV) because of significantly lower lifecycle costs despite a higher upfront capital cost than Maintain;
    3. Public land disposition proceeds of approximately $80 to 90 million NPV from the release of about 4 hectares of land (which could support 260,000 square metres of development)
    4. Highest compatibility with Official Plan and Central Waterfront Secondary Plan principles and objectives as well as approved plans, such as the Don Mouth Naturalization and Flood Protection EA, Lower Don Lands Framework Plan, Keating Channel Precinct Plan and the Port Lands Acceleration Initiative.

    If you’d like to read more about what’s going to Public Works and City Council, click here.

    One thing I didn’t mention in my previous posts is the land disposition piece (item #3 above). By removing the Gardiner East, roughly 10 acres of public land will be freed up which, according to their estimates, could allow for 2.8 million square feet of new development. That’s roughly the size of our 72-storey First Canadian Place.

    I’ve been crystal clear about my position on the Gardiner East and so I’m delighted to see it seemingly move forward in that direction. I know a lot of people are concerned that the removal option could result in some commute times being 5 to 10 minutes longer by 2031, but I think we’ll have even bigger problems by 2031 if we continue with the status quo.

    Urban theorist Richard Florida has argued many times before that when cities get to around 5-6 million people they come to a point where they have to make tough decisions about the way they’re going to continue to grow and prosper. Toronto is at that moment. Our car dependent ways are already crippling productivity levels.

    What kind of city do we want to be by 2031? I don’t think that we can afford to just “maintain.”

  • Revisiting the Gardiner East debate

    Last week I argued that the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway (Jarvis Street over to the Don Valley Expressway) should be torn down and replaced by an enlarged Lake Shore Boulevard.

    To quickly summarize, here’s why I support removing the Gardiner East:

    • Now is the time to do it (before we develop the surrounding area and it becomes both more expensive and more difficult to do it).
    • It would go a long way to stitching our disconnected downtown back to the lake and realizing our ambitions for the revitalization of the waterfront.
    • Unlocking the full potential of our waterfront is hugely important.
    • In my opinion, the only way to build a big, well functioning city, is on the backbone of public transportation. And this—the tearing down of the Gardiner East—could represent that paradigm shift.
    • It is a portion of the Expressway that has relatively low traffic volumes.
    • It’s the cheapest option on the table.

    Somewhat surprisingly though, a lot of people disagreed with me. They told me that adding anything to our already long commutes would be simply unconscionable and that they would not support it, no matter how much it improved our waterfront.

    So in the spirit of avoiding confirmation bias (that is, only seeking out things that reinforce an already established belief), I thought I would share the following article: “Like It or Not, Most Urban Freeways Are Here to Stay.” It’s from Atlantic Cities and there are 3 key take-aways that I’d like to point out.

    First, I thought it was interesting that the interstate system in the United States was, from the onset, always conceived of as a solution to urban congestion. I always thought it was about connecting the country, but that, apparently, was a secondary goal.

    Second, cities all across North America are engaging in the same debate about what to do with their aging highways. Detroit is debating. New Orleans is debating. And so is Syracuse. Toronto is not alone. But we could be alone in taking the lead on this issue.

    Third, the author basically acknowledges that, while not ideal, we’re stuck for the time being with all these freeways and that the better solution is going to be a really tough slog:

    “This is not an easy assignment, seeing as how cars are purchases we make with our hearts, more than our heads. Logic won’t convince Americans to change their ways. What will? Maybe, over time, prohibitive fuel prices and withering tolls, and, most importantly, investment in useful and convenient public transit. Only when the carrot is irresistible, and the stick stings too sharply to bear, will the shift begin, and it will take years to play out.”

    And while I would agree that it’s not going to be easy, that’s par for the course with anything truly worthwhile. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. But they’re not. And that’s why there are leaders and there are followers.

    People in Toronto like to talk about how our City sometimes lacks vision. Well, here’s our chance. I’m not worrying about what the commute is going to be like tomorrow, because I know there’s an even better solution for that problem. I’m worried about something even bigger. I’m worried about the kind of city we’re all going to leave behind to our children.