Still holding on tightly to the idea we need to keep the Gardiner east expressway? Mayor Tory evidently does. The sky will fall, raining traffic chaos down upon us! Toronto’s former chief planner begs to differ.
What else could we do with $500 000 000? Let me count the ways… 400 more streetcars or rebuilding a downtown expressway? An entire LRT line, say, along the waterfront or rebuilding a downtown expressway?
The hybrid. Locking in the future. It’s fixed. You can’t make changes to it. For 50-100 years. It is what it is.
At Wednesday’s special Public Works and Infrastructure Committee meeting to discuss the fate of the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway, deputant Jude MacDonald summoned the ghost of CivicAction (“Citizen”) John Tory who talked of leaving the legacy of a livable city for his grandchildren which included removing that section of the Gardiner. Mayor John Tory now seems to think otherwise. Grandchildren be damned! Drivers gotta drive. Politics really does make strange bedfellows, stranger still when that fellow is the very same person.
What exactly did Mayor John Tory do with Citizen John Tory? Smother him with a pillow while he slept? Say it. Say it!
John Tory came into the mayor’s office touting his serious business and private sector credentials, remember? He saw fit to vilify one of his campaign opponents, Olivia Chow, as ‘that NDP candidate’, just another ‘tax-and-spender’ who didn’t understand the value of our hard-earned tax dollars. Tough fiscal times called for someone with prudent fiscal sensibilities. John Tory, he assured us, possessed that in spades.
Yet here we are, having to square this circle. Mayor Tory’s headlong rush into supporting a much more expensive “hybrid” (everybody’s using quotes for that word now) re-build of the 2 kilometres or so of the Gardiner Expressway east of Jarvis Street. It’s an option that puts severe limits on future development (and future revenue for the city) of the waterfront area outside of the Unilever site. It’s an option that leaves an elevated expressway running through the downtown core of the city. It’s an option that caters almost exclusively to some 3% of morning car commuters to the CBD and a recent organization calling itself the Gardiner Industry Coalition (or, as I like to think of them, Drivers Inc.)
It’s an option that makes fundamentally little sense for more than a few reasons but none so pointedly as its fiscal recklessness. Something candidate John Tory assured us he would, could never be. Corporate titan, astute businessman, private sector player, yaddie, yaddie, yaddie.
Clocking in just under 20 minutes during a deputation given to the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee on Wednesday, Alfredo Romano of Castlepoint Numa, the largest private sector landholder of waterfront properties, dismantled each and every argument Mayor Tory and other “hybrid” proponents have made to keep this portion of the Gardiner, save for that tattered flag of, Won’t somebody think of the poor drivers. Watching this [h/t @_JohnTory, no relation], it’s difficult not to conclude that our mayor is less a savvy businessman and more a crass, ham-fisted, self-interested politician.
I especially love this next bit. Mr. Romano points out that the city is also a major property owner down at the waterfront. In his view, maintaining the Gardiner east which essentially the “hybrid” option does, serves to shoot ourselves in the foot. The hybrid option will “take away the value of your own asset”, he told the committee. Reading between those lines, I can’t see any reference to fiscal prudence or sound management practices.
They’re calling this a 100 year decision, laying it on a bit thick, in my opinion. The Gardiner Expressway is barely 60 years old and has been falling apart for a decade or so now. Still, it is a very important decision, one that will affect the future development of the waterfront. Until recently, this city hasn’t been very good at that. So I don’t think it too over-the-top to suggest that how Mayor Tory comes down on this will go a long way to determining how posterity will view his time in office. He’d be wise to reconsider his options on this.
