Next phase of Gardiner construction begins March 25
The City of Toronto is kicking off the next phase of construction work on the Gardiner Expressway.
The second of a six-phase project to rehabilitate the downtown roadway starts on March 25. It sees work start on the road between Dufferin Street and Strachan Avenue.
Preparatory work began in November 2023 and construction is expected to continue until mid-2027. The scope of work includes replacing 700 metres of the elevated bridge surface on the expressway, rehabilitating the structures underneath that support the elevated expressway, and adding a new traffic management system and streetlights.
The city says the rehabilitation of this stretch is complex as the roadway is elevated, very narrow and busy.
“This construction is urgently needed to keep traffic flowing and keep our communities connected,” said Mayor Olivia Chow. “The city is committed to completing this section of work to ensure a state of good repair for generations to come as we focus on getting Toronto back on track.”
The Gardiner Expressway is more than 60 years old and is reaching the end of its service life due to the effects of age, heavy daily use, weather and salt.
Between 2014 and 2016, Toronto City Council approved the Gardiner Expressway Strategic Rehabilitation Plan, which divides all the needed repair work into six sections.
The first section, from Jarvis to Cherry Streets, was completed in 2021. Accelerated bridge construction was used to replace the steel girders and concrete deck with pre-fabricated sections.
The third section of work, from Highway 427 to the Humber River, will reconstruct 6.5 kilometres of at-grade expressway, including the rehabilitation of 11 overpass bridges (including Mimico Creek) and four underpass bridges (Kipling Avenue, Islington Avenue, Royal York Road and Grand Avenue). Planning for this section of the project is underway to determine scope, phasing, staging and the construction schedule.
The fourth section will replace 2.2 kilometers of the elevated section of the expressway from Grand Magazine Boulevard to York Street.
The fifth will reconstruct the elevated expressway from Cherry Street to the Don Valley Parkway according to the Hybrid Design as approved in the Gardiner East Environmental Assessment.
The alignment of both the Expressway and Lake Shore Boulevard will shift slightly to the north of the current location. Some initial work as part of this transformation has already been completed, such as removing the Logan Street on/off ramps, in order to allow construction of a longer and wider bridge for Lake Shore Boulevard over the Don River.
The project is being coordinated with several other major projects in the area including Metrolinx’s Ontario Line, the Port Lands Flood Protection Project, Waterfront East LRT, the East Harbour development and the Waterfront Toronto redevelopment of the area.
Finally, the scope of the sixth section of work, from Humber River to Dufferin Street, is pending an engineering evaluation.