City council has voted to move forward with plans for rehabilitating the Gardiner Expressway, backing a staff plan estimated to reduce the ballooning costs of the work by more than $1 billion.

The vote followed the news buried in a staff report published late last month that the cost to both rebuild the Gardiner East and repair the western section of the elevated expressway had increased in price from $2.6 billion to $3.6 billion.

Out of concern some sections of the Gardiner require urgent repair and the increased costs were unacceptable, staff recommended abandoning a public-private partnership plan to pay for the project.

The $2.3 billion that staff say is now required under a new, more conventional approach, is already accounted for in the city’s 10-year capital budget, staff said.

The earlier increase in costs had raised the possibility a group of councilors who backed tearing the eastern section down and building a boulevard for less than half the cost, would try to re-open that debate.

That didn’t come to pass Thursday night.

“I would like nothing more than us to have actually had a vote on the original decision we made two years ago,” Councillor Mike Layton said on the floor of council. He acknowledged the debate was unlikely to have been re-opened under council procedures.

But Layton said re-examination of the project is needed as costs have continued to rise.

“How big of a blank cheque are we going to write for this thing before we finally decide that we need to perhaps have a bit of a mature conversation about it?”

Councillor Gord Perks noted council routinely argues at length about items costing $1 million or $10,000.

“And, yet, here we are just cavalierly — on the third day of council with almost no attention paid — blowing a billion dollars,” he said.

Mayor John Tory, brandishing a chunk of the Gardiner he pulled out from under his desk as a prop, urged council to move forward after he pushed for the more expensive hybrid option.

“The old way of making decisions was that you just kept re-debating and re-studying and re-deciding,” he said. “Building the city is making decisions democratically, looking at them carefully and then deciding . . . .

“We’ve got to move forward.”

Councillor Paula Fletcher, whose ward borders the eastern section of the Gardiner, said she wasn’t willing to delay the project which will also unlock a significant amount of land that can be developed in the Port Lands.

“I am not prepared to set this process back two years,” Fletcher said. “How many times are we going to eat this meal?”

Staff earlier reported that the jump in price stemmed from refinements to the design of the hybrid rebuild in the east, costs for which a consultant has said could vary by as much as 20 per cent, and the additional cost related to financing the project and the assumed risk.

Michael D’Andrea, the city’s executive director of engineering and construction services, told council that staff don’t believe the risk assumed by the province’s Infrastructure Ontario through the public-private partnership (P3) process is accurate.

“We don’t think that the risk is as high as the P3 analysis would suggest . . . , particularly given our successful experience on projects we’ve completed on the Gardiner,” he said.

The more conventional approach to rehabilitating the Gardiner would see the city prioritize rehabilitating the section between Jarvis and Cherry Sts. between 2018 and 2021, while continuing to plan the Gardiner East rebuild

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All rehabilitation is expected to be complete by 2025, and will affect traffic for the seven years of construction.

It remains unknown if the federal government will pay a third of the cost as originally believed. After the Liberal government took power in Ottawa with a new plan to fund infrastructure, the application for $820 million under an earlier Conservative program was put on hold.

On Thursday, city staff said they have received an invitation from the federal government to reapply for infrastructure funding once details of that program are released.

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