Faced with the question of what to do with the crumbling expressway that is the Gardiner, Toronto must make a choice, one that will define the city for decades ahead.

No city removes a major piece of infrastructure lightly, of course, but Toronto has not only been unable to reach a decision, it hasn’t managed to have an honest debate.

The next opportunity for that will come at 7 p.m. Monday, when the West Don Lands Committee holds a public meeting at St. Lawrence Hall.

Just last year, city staff announced that keeping Gardiner standing east of Jarvis wasn’t worth the $864-million price-tag. It recommended instead that the east end of the raised highway be taken down. Though it presented a series of options — everything from demolition to repairing it as is — removal was the city’s preferred alternative.

Then a “hybrid” option surfaced, promoted by the developer who owns the Unilever lands at the foot of Broadview Ave., east of the Don River. This “solution” entails leaving the Gardiner pretty much as-is, realigning the looping east end north to hug the railway tracks while removing a couple of ramps, adding others and extending Lake Shore Blvd. The estimated cost is $919 million.

Because it would leave things essentially unchanged, it is everyone’s favorite scheme. Naturally, Deputy-Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong (open Denzil Minnan-Wong's policard) prefers it, and so does his boss, Mayor John Tory (open John Tory's policard).

“I will not support any solution that extends people’s commute times,” His Worship declared last year. “And every single one of the solutions presented so far, every one — including tearing down the Gardiner in particular — extend or make longer people’s commute times. I am not supporting any solution that does that.”

With friends like these, the city could do with a few enemies.

To argue that the fate of even this short section of the Gardiner has anything to do with congestion is to confuse ends with means, mobility with auto-mobility. Access is the goal; the Gardiner is the way, or was thought to be 60 years ago. Since then, much has been learned about how urban highways actually cause congestion and hinder mobility.

The list of cities that have taken down raised highways grows longer every year. From New York to Seoul to Chicago and Paris, urban centres have discovered that life thrives post-freeway.

Despite the outcry from commuters who see no farther than the car ahead, getting rid of expressways reduces congestion. There are several reasons: more commuters take transit, people drive less often and choose different routes and means when they do.

“Successful highways-to-boulevards conversions reconnect neighborhoods, improve access to key resources such as waterfronts and put underperforming land to use,” former mayor of Milwaukee and head of the Congress for the New Urbanism, John Norquist, said in a 2013 interview. “Highway-to-boulevard conversions in cities such as San Francisco, Portland, Milwaukee and Seoul, South Korea, have all raised property values, enhanced quality of life, improved traffic distribution and proven to be frugal investments that add value and vitality to the city.”

None of that means much when you’re stuck in traffic. But implementing the hybrid will no more alleviate congestion than partial removal will make it worse.

The hybrid is little more than a costly do-nothing option dressed up as forward-looking compromise. That’s nonsense. Adopting it would put Toronto — known globally for such regressive moves as closing bike lanes and pedestrian scrambles — deeper in the rearguard.

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Despite what politicians, academics and editorialists say, the car has taken us as far as it can; the Gardiner is a mistake the city can’t afford to repeat. The issue isn’t how much should stay, but how much can go.

Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca

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