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The Garden-er Expressway – Metro US

The Garden-er Expressway

Call it the ultimate “green roof.”

The Gardiner Expressway — the city’s key commuter route into downtown — could simultaneously become a swooping centrepiece park with the addition of a plant-covered upper deck as envisioned by a Toronto architect.

Similar to westside Manhattan’s scenic — and instantly popular — High Line Park, which opened this month along the path of an old railway track three storeys above street level, Toronto’s elevated expressway could offer a unique enhancement to the city’s downtown, says Les Klein, founding principal at Quadrangle Architect.

“I’ve been appalled at the sheer folly of taking down the Gardiner,” Klein told the Toronto Star in advance of yesterday’s speech at the ideaCity event, where he unveiled his dream. “It’s about thinking innovatively, keeping it, adding on to it, renovating it, and renewing it
“That’s the fundamental part of the organic growth of cities.”

His idea, dubbed the Green Ribbon, calls for the addition of a new level about eight metres above the highway’s elevated section, from Dufferin Street to the Don Valley Parkway. Columns would be added to the side to anchor the new level, which would become a linear park stretching for seven kilometres.

Estimated costs range from $500 million to $600 million. Over the years, various ideas have been floated for the expressway. None of those proposals have gathered steam