Taking Congestion Seriously - A Plan to Accelerate Construction of the Gardiner Expressway - by Councillor Brad Bradford, seconded by Councillor Jon Burnside

It's time City Hall took the impacts of traffic congestion more seriously. The purpose of this motion is to request that Transportation Services bring forward a comprehensive action plan to accelerate construction of the Gardiner Expressway and alleviate the traffic impacts that have brought our city to a grinding halt and hurt our economy. This includes an evaluation of the feasibility of undertaking 24/7 construction with the primary focus of completing the rehabilitation project sooner and ensuring there is no idling on this critical infrastructure project. It also means looking at whether additional phases of work can utilize pre-fabrication approaches to build and assemble components off-site to save time. This motion also asks that City staff undertake an evaluation of all upcoming road work and other state of good repair projects along traffic corridors adjacent to the Gardiner Expressway, in an effort to minimize congestion on parallel routes. That includes streets such as Lakeshore Boulevard, King Street, Adelaide Street and Queen Street, which are all currently subject to at least one other major City-led construction project. All these projects should be revisited through the lens of congestion management. It's unreasonable to expect people to sit in standstill, gridlock traffic and for Toronto's economy to suffer for the next 3 plus years when more can be done to alleviate this congestion today. Let's get on with it.

an evaluation of the feasibility of increasing the utilization of pre-fabrication technologies and/or building and assembling components off-site; and c. an evaluation of all upcoming road work and other state of good repair projects along traffic corridors adjacent to the Gardiner Expressway, in an effort to minimize congestion on parallel routes.