To place the Gardiner in a tunnel structure has also been proposed for several years. The removal of this elevated “eyesore” would dramatically improve the waterfront aesthetics, however tunneling an expressway inside the existing city fabric is very costly, and involves many years of traffic disruptions during construction. Downtown Toronto simply could not embrace seven to ten years of of disruptions the tunnel construction would cause to city streets.
Additionally, most previous tunneling proposals do not even significantly increase road capacity, thus gridlock is not addressed. Few designs address the inevitable increase of waterfront traffic generated by the “boom” in downtown residential and commercial development.
Tunneling proposal as per the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Task Force. Source: Toronto Star
