[URBAN NOTE] "Gardiner Expressway rehab slated to begin this summer"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's Patty Winsa describes the latest iteration of plans to rebuild the Gardiner Expressway.(Torontoist's Jamie Bradburn has his own take.)

The city announced Tuesday in a joint press conference with Waterfront Toronto that about $500 million in major repairs to the aging highway would begin this year and extend into the next decade.

The announcement comes just months after a Star investigation revealed that city engineers believed nearly half of the elevated portion of the expressway is becoming structurally unsafe.

“Portions of the expressway are nearing the end of its service life,” said John Kelly, Toronto’s acting director of design and construction, on Tuesday. “And that’s why we asked for this significant investment in maintenance from council.”

The outside barrier walls east of Jarvis St. are in such poor condition that light poles had to be removed because they were no longer stable at the base. Council approved $505 million for the work, but the cost is now estimated to be closer to $495 million.

This summer, repairs to shore up the section from Jarvis St. east to the Don Roadway will begin. In the fall, steel centre medians from Dufferin St. west to Ellis Ave. — on the at-grade portion of the Gardiner — will be replaced with concrete Jersey barriers.

And in spring of 2014, sections of road base — also called the deck — on the elevated expressway will be stripped right back to the supporting steel girders and replaced. The work will begin at Strachan and move slowly east, finishing at York St. around 2026.

Structural work on bridges west of the Humber River will also begin next year.