[dunkalunk]

Thread Resuscitation Time!

Here's my idea of how a front street extension should look.

One major difference that should be noted is that Front Street and Wellington Street have been configured to operate as opposing one-way streets. This would help replace some of the road capacity lost through the demolition of the Gardiner and take some stress off Lakeshore Boulevard. The Front Street Extension and the portion of Front between Bathurst and Spadina would also be built to 6 lanes to accomodate this additional capacity.

I've also shortened the Front Street Extension to meet up directly with the Gardiner at Strachan rather than continue to Dufferin. This shortening and the lack of tunneling should cut down on some costs. It would also help keep some unwanted traffic out of Liberty Village.

I also can only see the Front Street Extension ever being built if the central portion Gardiner is torn down, so I modeled my concept around that idea. The interchange at Strachan Road would work with either a tunneled portion of the Gardiner north of Fort York or if the Gardiner were removed altogether. The ramp configuration also gives the Gardiner easy access to Lakeshore.

And of course, except for emergency repairs, I would not touch the Gardiner at all until we have built the full-length DRL and increased GO capacity enough to handle peak traffic.

 

[adma]

Does the Pantalone mayoralty bid partly explain this thread resucitation, or pure coincidence?

 

[dunkalunk]

^It was actually in response to Rossi's insane tunneling proposal which got me thinking what else the money could be spent on that at least made some sense. If we're going to spend money on roads, spend it where its needed.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Dunkalunk, that's a really great idea. Probably one of the best I've seen on the forum in a long while.

 

[nfitz]

It's a nice discussion, but they have revived the Front Street Extension, sort of.

However, the previous project was essentially an expressway on-ramp which was name "Front Street Extension" to sound less scary. Now that it is simply a minor road from near Bathurst to Dufferin it's got some innocuous name ... which I can't quite recall right now. Someone should link to that project - do we have a thread for it?

 

[Towered]

This is a convoluted idea. Front street will be a local road (as it should be) simply extending from Bathurst to Dufferin along the south edge of Liberty Village. Full stop.

 

[dunkalunk]

There's no reason why liberty village still can't have their local road between Strachan and Dufferin, but what exactly could you be able to build in that wedge of land between the two rail corridors apart from manufacturing? Why not put all the noisy NIMBYs in one place? There is no way the Gardiner will be torn down in the west unless some sort of at least semi-arterial front extension is built.

 

[leopetr]

There's no reason why liberty village still can't have their local road between Strachan and Dufferin, but what exactly could you be able to build in that wedge of land between the two rail corridors apart from manufacturing? Why not put all the noisy NIMBYs in one place? There is no way the Gardiner will be torn down in the west unless some sort of at least semi-arterial front extension is built.

A semi-arterial Front extension is incompatible with the pedestrian crowds on Front between University and Bay.

The solution to traffic on the Gardiner is to make those crowds more numerous, not less. People take up a lot less space than cars do.