ACCOZZAGLIA

Original article by Douglas Bell, “The price of ambition”, appeared 13 April 2011 in the Toronto Standard.

Douglas, if I may say this, both as a former resident of Seattle and as a Torontonian, your comparative analysis of the Alaskan Way Viaduct against the Gardiner is short-sighted and indicative of your lack of experience of having lived in both cities for a spell. The question I present to you is whether you’ve ever lived in Seattle — and if so, within any time during the last decade. Even the New York Times article from which you spring-boarded your story misses the crux of why the Alaskan Way Viaduct case is distinct from the Gardiner:

Loma Prieta.

The 1989 earthquake in the Bay Area took down a dual-level, elevated expressway known as the I-880 Cypress Street Viaduct in Oakland which, if you remember the news video and photos then, was a ghastly affair. The quake pulled down several elevated expressways, but nothing like the sandwich effect of this one. The Alaskan Way Viaduct, built in the 1950s around the same time as Oakland’s Cypress Street Viaduct and using the exact same design, is crumbling. The 2001 Nisqually quake in the Puget Sound forced the Alaskan Way Viaduct into closure and structural inspection before it was re-opened with a warning from engineers. Also, the adjacent salt water of Elliott Bay has corroded the rebar and concrete.

In short, the imperative to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct now (if not yesterday) stems from avoiding another Cypress Street Viaduct catastrophe. The debate in Seattle concentrated on how to move that western-tier traffic (the I-5 handles the eastern tier on the other side of the central business district). The tunnel option, which is what was ultimately chosen, is fraught with geological pitfalls as the largest boring tunnels in history are to go through less stable layers that could collapse and create massive sinkholes.

The Gardiner, for all its faults (and there are many), is not faced with collapse, and it is not likely to crumble soon, either. While views to Lake Ontario are obstructed by both the elevated Gardiner and the under-regulated development of condo towers, our real obstacle to accessing our waterfront is the at-grade, semi-expressway barrier known as Lakeshore Boulevard. Crossing it is reserved for only the most fit and the most courageous. Incidentally, one of the replacement options for the Alaskan Way Viaduct was to convert Alaskan Way (the pier-side street below) into a Lakeshore-like expressway-boulevard, but this was considered a barrier no more palatable than keeping an elevated option.

One last thing about this comparison: the Alaskan Way Viaduct is not a visual barrier in the way our Gardiner is. This is because, unlike Toronto’s almost-imperceptible slope into the lake from the Iroquois shoreline (along Davenport Road), the slope from Elliott Bay is remarkably steep — so much so that just five blocks inland from the Viaduct, one has climbed about 12 storeys (this photo is from four streets back; in the background, down the slope, you can just barely see the Viaduct).

Let’s confront our Gardiner, much as we dislike it, in holistic terms, by factoring Lakeshore Boulevard, upkeep costs, overall safety, and by harmonizing our transportation planning approach between the municipal and provincial (400-series) level expressways.

And yes, I’d like to see the Gardiner come down, too. I’m also a pragmatist.

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About Astrid Idlewild: Astrid (@accozzaglia) is an urban design candidate from the School of Urban Planning at McGill University. She completed her HBA in Canadian and urban studies at the University of Toronto in 2009. She is a film photographer, bike courier, creator of the TTC subway shirts, and researcher for the Kodachrome Toronto: 1935–2010 project.