Putting the $1B Gardiner East project in reverse may not save money: city staff

Changing course on the Gardiner East project may not save money and could inflate costs to rehabilitate the elevated expressway, a new briefing note from Toronto city staff says. 

The note in response to questions from Deputy Mayor Jennifer McKelvie was provided less than a week after council pushed the issue onto a key committee agenda. It will effectively re-open debate on the controversial project, which is aimed at re-routing the easternmost section of the aging elevated expressway farther north.

In the note, Barbara Gray, the city's general manager of transportation, outlines the possible impacts of changing course on the $1-billion project given the go-ahead by council more than six years ago.

"Any deviation from the currently approved … option would require new design work," she said in the document.

"Given this, we are not able to say if any funds would be saved by reverting to the "Remove" option, or if any funds would be available for reallocating that would not impact the delivery of the necessary state-of-good repair work."

Gray says that nearly $500 million has been spent, or committed in contracts, on the project. She warns that a number of factors, including the need for an amended environmental assessment (EA), could add costs and delays if the plans were altered.

"If an EA amendment is required, based on the original Gardiner East EA experience, we could expect … [it to] take up to three years."

In 2016, councillors decided to spend just over $1 billion on the "hybrid" option, which retains the eastern portion of the expressway, moving it farther north while tearing down a ramp over Logan Avenue. The choice was made instead of tearing down a 1.7-kilometre section of the Gardiner east of Jarvis Street and replacing it with a surface-level boulevard for less than half the cost. 

But the project was, and remains, controversial and represents approximately 14 per cent of the city's overall 10-year capital plan, according to staff.

For that reason, some city councillors would like to see the plan re-examined. Coun. Josh Matlow says the briefing note hasn't changed his view that the project needs another deeper look. Council made a mistake when it chose not to tear down the aging expressway and create the boulevard, he said.

At the city's budget meeting last week, Matlow attempted to persuade councillors to spend $600,000 on a full-examination and updating of costs on the project, including a re-examination of the boulevard option. That was voted down.

"No matter where you are, your road where you live … is going to be falling into disrepair, is going to crumble because of this budget-sucker ... which is going against what cities around the world are doing these days," he said.

A week before, Matlow successfully moved a motion to have the project put under the microscope, something that could happen as soon as the next Infrastructure Committee meeting in March. He said he's still focused on getting answers at that meeting, he said.

"Toronto has a chronic budget shortfall of hundreds of millions of dollars that needs to be addressed," he said.