TORONTO

It turns out $2 million buys a lot of hurrying.

Mayor John Tory lauded the reopening of all the lanes on the Gardiner Expressway on Wednesday — two months ahead of schedule.

Tory announced in December that as part of his push to “hurry things up” at City Hall the city would spend $2 million to complete Phase 1 of the $66.5 million in rehabilitation work on the Gardiner in 14 months rather than 16 months. At the time, he argued the cost was worth it because the city estimated the construction was costing commuters around $1 million per day.

“I said at the outset that I was going to try and do whatever I could to speed things up in terms of construction,” Tory said. “It is not often that people come and commend you for spending any money, anytime in the government but in this case I’ve had people over and over again say it was the right thing to do, it was the smart thing to do, it was the considerate thing to do in terms of the economy of this city and the personal lives of people who drive back and forth.

“We’re just trying to say that people expect us to do better, they want us to hurry up construction.”

But Gardiner users better enjoy the construction-free drive while they can.

The second phase of the Gardiner rehabilitation work will start after the Pan Am Games end and won’t be completed until December 2016. Tory promised the city will continue to look at speeding up work on other major projects.

“The people sent me to City Hall not to defend or promote or explain the traffic and transit status quo, they sent me here to hurry things up, get things going, get the traffic moving, get transit built,” he said.

The mayor and the rest of the executive committee dealt with a variety of issues on Wednesday including: