Auxiliary Material

The two maps above show my starting and ending points of my attempt to walk along the waterfront; to the left(west) Queens Quay and Lower Jarvis Street; to the right (east) Lakeshore Boulevard and Cherry Street.

I have circled in RED the only points by which one can cross the railway lines. The railway embankment bars access to the waterfront at all but four points in a stretch of about a kilometre. If you go back one page an look at the various photos that show the elevated stretch of The Gardiner Expressway you will see how easy it is to walk (or drive or ride) underneath The Gardiner Expressway at almost any point at all in the same one-kilometre stretch.

Here is a link to the many rants in The Toronto Star. You will find many articles stating that The Gardiner Expressway blocks access to the waterfront. That may be true for Big Business and City hall Cronies, but the truth for the average walking or bicycling tourist, visitor or tax-payer is that the railway lines and development projects are the real problem with access to the waterfront.

In a Toronto Star article on Monday, June 08, 2015 “ For Toronto to rise, Gardiner must fall ” Paul Raff (an architect) writes in part “If you find it hard to believe that the Gardiner disconnects the city from the waterfront ...”.

Truth is, I found it easy to go back and forth through The Gardiner Expressway for the entire one-kilometre stretch.

The four places where I could cross the railway embankment were choke-points for vehicular traffic.

Development projects, many of them apparently abandoned, and huge storage yards for equipment were the main obstacle to this pedestrian being able to enjoy the waterfront on a sunny Sunday.

Make no mistake about this: The Gardiner Expressway does NOT inhibit regular access to the waterfront.

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