TORONTO

City council will consider a $433-million plan that is designed to cut a 20-year rebuild of the crumbling Gardiner Expressway by eight years.

This year’s proposed budget includes a Gardiner construction acceleration plan — an important part of efforts to combat the city’s growing traffic woes, works committee chairman Jaye Robinson says.

“Front and centre is congestion and gridlock,” she said. “That’s why we have to look at every possible measure, tool and option to address it. This is one of many we’re trying to implement.”

Robinson argued the work is essential, as lane restrictions on the Gardiner impose a burden on drivers and the city’s economy.

City officials had estimated the acceleration plan will result in savings of $3 billion worth of lost productivity.

“The Gardiner is a big piece of the grid,” Robinson added. “To clog that up for extra years is not going to help our congestion and gridlock.”

The 18-kilometre expressway — built in sections from 1955 to 1966 — has reached the end of its service life. City council last year adopted a plan to rehabilitate the highway.

But that plan will cause 20 years of traffic headaches unless changes are made, Robinson warned.

“We simply can’t afford to not get our city moving,” she said. “It’s just costing too much in time, frustration and now money. That’s what I’m saying to my colleagues, to the mayor’s office, to city staff. We have to do better.”

Michael D’Andrea, the city’s executive director of engineering and construction services, said that instead of using traditional construction methods for the elevated portion of the Gardiner, a new plan calls for pieces to be built at another location, then installed to replace decaying sections of the expressway.

These “prefabricated” pieces of the Gardiner’s elevated section will be close to 22 metres long and hoisted into place. Workers would use saws to cut apart the Gardiner instead of breaking it apart with jack-hammers.

D’Andrea said the modular design of the Gardiner deck pieces also allows for the work to be done indoors, year-round.

“It would be allowed to cure in quality-controlled conditions, not subject to weather conditions at the time,” he said.

D’Andrea added work on the project will also be co-ordinated to minimize impact on drivers.

The city’s executive committee will review financing options to pay for the plan during the next decade, before city council has final say on the initiative in March.

While the plan currently calls for eight years to be chopped off the 20-year plan, D’Andrea said, additional time could be trimmed from the city’s estimates.

“We think there could be a further acceleration of that once we go out to the market with a final construction plan,” he said. “So, it’s a significant reduction.”

Robinson pledged she will continue to pitch the plan to fellow councillors as another measure to ease congestion on the key artery into the city’s core.

“This is the mothership, it’s the Gardiner,” she insisted. “We have to do this right. We have to be strategic, it’s critical at this point.”

shawn.jeffords@sunmedia.ca