Comments by "UzuMaki NaRuto" (@UzumakiNaruto_) on "How to Remove a Highway" video.

To me, as someone who grew up in Europe it's wild that so-called "engineers" think it's a good idea to build highways through cities dividing neighborhoods. Seriously I don't know why its such a huge deal to build a highway through a city if its needed and if its done right. Not saying its always a good idea to do so, but its not always a bad idea either. Tokyo has TONS of highways and rail lines running throughout its huge city and it doesn't ever seem to be a problem. In fact they build businesses under and right beside highways and have rail lines running in between residential buildings. The point is they're not bothered by having these transportation links running all around their city and saying its 'dividing' or ruining their communities in any way and instead they build under and right up to it and it becomes apart of their city.
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I know alot of people seem to really hate the Gardiner, but it is a vital highway that allows people to get to downtown from the suburbs and also for people to get from east to west and vise versa. Removing it would make traffic in the core even worse rather than better. For me though I'd tear down the existing Gardiner because its old and build a brand new one in its place with modern designs and materials. Not one deck, but THREE DECKS high. The first deck would be the same as now and serve people who want to go to and from downtown from various streets. The second deck would be a true expressway that completely bypasses downtown so that people who want to go east-west and not downtown can do so more easily and would greatly help traffic flow. The third deck at the top could be modeled to be similar to New York's High Line park where people and cyclists could relax, exercise and enjoy the views of the city from an elevated deck and it would immediately become a huge tourist attraction. I know such a project could never be done because our city and government have little imagination and ambition to do so, but I think it would ease some traffic problems while creating a new park for everyone to enjoy.
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@curiousfirely Ontarian here, but not Torontarian. I would love to see a boulevard instead of the Gardiner. I don't understand the attraction of a boulevard over the expressway. Its a bad idea to begin with to put more vehicles on surface streets and it would be even worse if there's no separation between cars and pedestrians and cyclists. That would not only make traffic worse, but place more people in danger. I'm thinking about University Ave but even larger and wondering how in the heck could that be better than keeping the Gardiner? It would be much worse for everyone.
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Its not the cities that are the problem, but the kinds of people who live there. Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai and many countless cities in Asia are VASTLY larger and more densely populated than most western cities and guess what? They still have a tiny fraction of the violence and crime that many western cities and especially US cities have.
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@Zalis116 In most major US cities in the mid-20th century, there would be run-down slum areas mainly inhabited by Blacks and other minorities. Slums are created by the people who live there, not by the location. Interesting how most minority groups can create communities to serve their own population when they first arrive to a foreign nation and yet a couple of other demographics of people turn every place they settle in into violent, criminal areas that force people to move out if they value their lives and their properties. Since these new suburbs didn't want public transit networks giving minorities access to their communities, urban freeways were the solution for connecting suburban residents to jobs in downtown cores. I think generally its less a conspiracy to build less transit to keep minorities out of wealthier suburban areas and more about people who were earning more money preferring to buy vehicles to drive themselves around than use public transit. the white population moved to the new suburbs, fearing crime or "moral decay" or whatever. And guess what? They were proven 100% right in so many cities where a certain demographic of people is consistently turning every area they move into in large numbers into violent and dangerous places to live. But hey if you refuse to live around people who would do you harm YOU'RE the problem and not those criminals and violent people. Heck this isn't even just white people, but plenty of non-white people as well who don't want to have themselves or their families to live in such violent areas with such dangerous people.
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@Zalis116 Sometimes locations do create slum conditions, as with NYC's 5 Points neighborhood -- it was on the site of a filled-in lake, which led to buildings sinking, methane leaks, poor drainage, and diseases stemming from standing water and mosquitoes. The condition of an area might create slum conditions, but it doesn't create violent and criminal people. You can live in poverty and NOT turn to violence and crime and turn your neighborhoods into dangerous places to live in addition to being poor. All you have to do is look at the countless poor areas all across Asia where hundreds of millions of people live in far, FAR worse poverty and squalor than anyone in any western city does outside of the homeless and you'll see that poverty didn't make all those people turn to violence and crime. Rather than turning to crime, the vast majority of those people simply want a job that can support their families and makes enough money so that their children can get a proper education. And yet in the west certain demographics of people have education, decent housing and other social services handed to them on a silver platter and still they find a way to screw things up and be largely unable to lift themselves out of poverty and crime. My point is that these perceptions and fears, whether they were true or not, played a major role in the development patterns of US cities and freeways, and that their absence explains why things turned out differently in Europe and other more racially-homogeneous places The thing is in most cases these fears WERE TRUE and the statistics have shown this to be fact. No one like living around violent and criminal people and when your area turns to crap where your family and property is no longer safe, then you leave. Its interesting to me that there's only one or two groups of people who consistently ruin places that they populate in large numbers and then cry about racism when others decide to leave for someplace safer. Well if you don't want people leaving then its simple. STOP BEING SO VIOLENT AND CRIMINAL. We have people from all corners of the earth living in the US, Canada and other western nations and its ALWAYS the same couple of groups who have the most problems living peacefully in any country that they settle in significant numbers. Also with regards to many US cities and how they grew to have so much sprawl while the car certainly aided in that, the real reason is that it all comes down to the huge amounts of space available in North America in comparison to Europe and elsewhere. When you have vast amounts of land to build on, people aren't going to be mindful of not wasting it by building with more density rather than just plowing over new areas of land to build on. Imagine if the US mainland wasn't one single country, but instead where each state was its own individual nation, I guarantee you that almost every one of these new nations would be high density because they're FORCED to be. When you no longer have tons of space to waste, you conserve what you have.
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@Aphrx University Ave. is a lot better than the Gardiner. Hard disagree. Unless you have clear separation between pedestrians/cyclists and vehicles on this new boulevard then it will be much worse for everyone. You can't have people and vehicles mixing and not expect more traffic problems. You also can't have people and vehicles mixing and not expect more chances for accidents. If you want a preview of what a new boulevard would look like then all you need to do is look at under the Gardiner at Lakeshore Blvd. where traffic is bad with traffic lights and also its dangerous for people to cross Lakeshore Blvd because of so many lanes to cross. I'll take the clear separation between people and vehicles over that any day. The only way you could fix this would be to make the boulevard below street level so that you can have bridges for people to cross it at street level. Or else do what Hong Kong does and build elevated walkways so that pedestrians go up and over rather than crossing at street level. Both ways would separate people and cars which is better than having another University Ave.
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The city council did a study that found that it would take a 12 lane boulevard to replace the Gardiner; I believe that they've now been renovating it. A boulevard of that size would be horrible and much worse than keeping the Gardiner or building an entirely new one. I don't know why people ever liked the idea of a boulevard unless vehicles and pedestrians/cyclists were completely separated from each other. Otherwise it would make traffic worse and place people in danger when they're trying to cross. Apparently, a developer had offered to put it under ground if he could develop on top, but city councillors are the dumbest people. Do you have a link for this because that's the first time I've heard of it because it would cost a boatload of money to tunnel under downtown Toronto to build such a underground roadway. Hard to believe that many developers would want to pony up billions to build that tunnel before they spend more billions to build on top of it.
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Unfortunately Toronto is at a low point when it comes to removal of the Gardiner Expressway. The Expressway is crumbling and needs a commitment to either tear it down or repair it. I would tear down the existing Gardiner and build a brand new one with modern materials and design so that it could last decades more. Never understood why people would advocate tearing down the Gardiner to replace it with a boulevard that would both slow down traffic and make things more dangerous for pedestrians/cyclists unless they were complete separated from vehicles.
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Boulevards instead of a highway is dumb in many cases. I don't understand how that works for cars, pedestrians or cyclists when highways at least separate vehicles from the other two. Boulevards just make massive stroads with little benefit to anyone.
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In Toronto we still have the mistake that is the Gardiner, and while a tiny portion of it was removed most of the elevated part through downtown Toronto still exists. It used to be under city jurisdiction and took up half!!! of the total maintenance costs of all roads in the entire city all by itself. This is why I'm in favor of tearing down the old Gardiner and replace it with a brand new one built with modern materials and design so that it can last for many decades rather than trying to repair the existing one.
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How does a highway 'section off areas' when you have plenty of bridges connecting areas over highways? Anytime you see an urban highway there's ALWAYS bridges above to connect one side to the other or if its an elevated highway then you have roads or tunnels beneath it for people and vehicles to cross.
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@jamesbell739 The video explains how highways cut off neighborhoods. That's the exact reason why they are trying to take some of them down. If you need a lesson you can look up urban renewal and redlining, on your own time. I've watched plenty of videos that people have made about how highways 'cut off neighborhoods' and how that may supposedly negatively affect different areas I don't agree with them. If what they said were actually true then Tokyo should be one of the worst affected by this because their entire city has both highways and rail lines cutting through their whole city all over the place. However do you know what the Japanese do about this? Rather than calling it 'blight', they build RIGHT UP to these elevated rail lines and highways and often even build right UNDER these places. Namely you have an elevated rail line above and then a bunch of businesses right beneath them so as not to waste valuable real estate. The point is the Japanese didn't look at their highways running through their city as being ugly and a detriment to their city, they simply adapted and integrated it into their cityscape.
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@jamesbell739 The point is. THIS ISN'T JAPAN..... And the reasoning behind how and why decisions were made is not the same.... You bring up the rail line. Look up the origins of the term "Other side of the tracks" Rail lines were also used to separate residential communities. Only in the US do we have people thinking a physical piece of infrastructure so profoundly affects people's mental state that it completely prevents them from improving the area that they live in rather than letting it turn to crap, rundown and becoming a dangerous place to live. Its like there's no such thing as PERSONAL ACCOUNTABLY where people can collectively choose to let an area turn bad or put in some work and improve the community they live in so that the people on 'The other side of the tracks' actually want to visit or even move to YOUR neighborhood instead of vise versa. Isn't that why there's so many Chinatowns, Koreatowns, Little Japans etc. that spring up in many western cities? Because many of these Asian immigrants who first arrived to western nations to make it their new homes were often not very wealthy and sometimes discriminated against and so they went out and created their own businesses run by their own people to serve their own communities. Eventually people from outside those communities discovered that you could get cheap stuff and services and good food from these immigrants and those areas became prosperous. I wonder if any of these immigrants ever thought to themselves 'Wow this highway or rail line running through or near my area makes it impossible for me to make my neighborhood better, safer and successful!' Yeah probably not. Why not just acknowledge that some groups of people are able to adapt to whatever circumstances they're placed in and make things work while other groups are not capable of doing the same and would rather complain about their poor conditions than put in any hard work to make things better? That's a much more logical and reasonable answer than blaming a highway or road or rail line as to why some communities are so poor and others are successful.
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The reason to get rid of the Gardiner is completely opposite: It's entirely too small for Toronto, and there is physically no room for a larger highway. It's also incredibly expensive since it's elevated. I know it would never happen because of political and financial reasons as well as some public pushback although others would be in favor of it, but I'd tear down this Gardiner and build a brand new one with modern materials and design so that it could last decades and make it THREE DECKS. Now hear me out. The first deck would serve the existing purpose of moving cars into and out of downtown as it does now. The new second deck above it would be a true expressway completely bypassing downtown so that those people who want to go straight through the city east-west can do so without getting mixed with traffic trying to go downtown. The top deck would be a new park similar to New York's High Line park where people, cyclists, small e-vehicles etc. can relax, enjoy the views of the waterfront and city from an elevated position that would immediately because a huge tourist attraction as well as a place for Torontonians to use to get around town with in a direct path from east to west. I know plenty of condo people and others wouldn't like it, but I just think it'd be so awesome to see Toronto from several stories up and have such a park right in the heart of the city.
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@JamilLynch Zoning laws in Japan permit that. Zoning laws in the states prohibit that. Do you mean building structures near a highway or something else?
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@thespanishinquisiton8306 Most people on the Gardiner drive to or from downtown Toronto, not through the city, butmost people in downtown Toronto arrive by transit. I disagree. There's quite a few people who drive straight through downtown and use the Gardiner to go east-west. I don't know why people would ever think replacing the Gardiner with a boulevard wouldn't be much worse unless vehicles and pedestrians and cyclists were completely separated from each other.
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