Highway 7 - Kitchener to Guelph

[taylortbb]

Do you think Toronto would be Toronto without the Gardiner?

No, I think Toronto would be so much better without the Gardiner. If you look at the stats for how people arrive into downtown Toronto it's responsible for such a small fraction, but it divides downtown Toronto in two and cuts it off from the waterfront. Downtown Toronto could be so much more walkable if we got rid of the Gardiner.

Only about 25% of commuters into downtown Toronto arrive by car, and the vast majority of them arrive via city streets. The Gardiner may be a highway, but there's only one. There's dozens, probably 100+, lanes of city streets into downtown Toronto. So that means the Gardiner is responsible for what, 5% of trips into downtown Toronto? Probably even less, but I'll give you 5%. Are you seriously suggesting that if those 5% of people couldn't drive on a highway into downtown Toronto that "Toronto wouldn't be Toronto"? I'd like some evidence that there's something so critical about that 5%, nevermind that many of them would just switch to GO rather than not visiting at all.

There's also plenty of counterexamples to your list. San Francisco demolished the Embarcadero Freeway in 1991 (after partial collapse from an earthquake admittedly), and the city has been far better for it. Did San Francisco stop being a desirable city in 1991? Of course not, it became one of the most in-demand cities in the world for the following 30 years (Covid changed things a bit).