Don Valley ‘Parking Lot’ hits milestone

Ian Harvey

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

Fifty years ago, on Aug. 31, 1961, a modest ceremony marked the opening of Toronto’s newest expressway, the Don Valley Parkway.

It was immediately followed by the most venerable of modern city traditions: a traffic jam.

Love it or hate it, the 15-kilometre stretch of asphalt is the backbone connecting north to south and, by extension, east to west. For all its faults — rush-hour congestion, lack of shoulder space, annoying blind curves and swooping grades that trigger concertina-style tailbacks — the Parkway also marked the city’s coming of age.

Spurred by the postwar economic boom, a flood of European immigrants and the automobile, the DVP cut a swath to the north and opened up the suburbs to allow the city to grow beyond its natural geographic barriers.

It was a different time, perhaps a more innocent age when a house in the ’burbs could be had for $15,000 and a new car for a mere $2,500.

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Indeed, it was the push to build the DVP — which opened in sections, first to Eglinton Ave. East and then north — that allowed the creation of east-west bridges across Eglinton Ave., Lawrence Ave., York Mills and Finch.

In those days, recalls former Metro Toronto roads and traffic commissioner Sam Cass, you either drove over the valley at Bloor or you had to go all the way to Steeles to get across.

Designed for some 60,000 cars a day, it now carries about 95,000 vehicles a day in both directions, connecting the Frederick G. Gardiner Expressway, which opened in 1955, to Highways 401 and 404.

“Of course, the Parkway was supposed to be part of a network of roads,” says Cass, now 88. “But they never got built.”

It was a good plan, he insists: Build a network of roads connecting the 13 “municipalities” making up Toronto (this was before Metro became five jurisdictions, Toronto, East York, Scarborough, York and Etobicoke, and long before they all amalgamated into one city).

“In Europe and the U.S. they were building expressways in a radial system with hubs and spokes like a wheel,” says Cass. “We had a different system, a grid. We wanted to provide access to all 13 municipalities in that motorists would use the express roads and not the local roads and take the pressure off residential neighbourhoods. The grid was spaced about four kilometres apart, so you would have been close to the grid wherever you were in the city.”

The DVP and Gardiner were supposed to be joined by the Spadina Expressway, the Allen and the Scarborough Expressway, even the Crosstown Expressway. Of course, by the mid-1970s the political climate changed.

“Jane Jacobs (instrumental in killing the Spadina Expressway and an anti-car campaigner) never gave it a chance,” says Cass, wistfully. “It would have taken the traffic off local roads and contained the harm.”

Back in 1957, however, there weren’t as many qualms about the car and at the helm was Fred “Big Daddy” Gardiner, the first chairman of Metro Toronto, a municipal leader unique to his time and unparalleled since.

Gardiner knew from planning studies that Toronto was set to grow exponentially in the ensuing 25 years and infrastructure had to be built: roads, subways, water mains, sewers and waste treatment.

With an iron grip and singular mindset, he got things done and those who got in his way learned at their peril, says Cass.

“He (Gardiner) was an amazing person,” said Cass. “I always admired him. There was no fooling around. If he believed something was right, it had to get done.”

With Big Daddy pushing, the project went from proposal to the first section opening a scant four years later, rocket speed compared to the lengthy environmental assessments required today.

“You’d never get it built today in that time, if at all,” said John Mende, director of transportation infrastructure management at the city of Toronto.

It wasn’t a simple job. Hills were flattened, homes expropriated, railway lines moved and the river itself rerouted. There was also some vocal opposition, led by naturalist Charles Sauriol whose own home was expropriated.

Gardiner dealt with opponents in his inimitable style and with memorable quotes.

“I’ll tell you what the Don Valley was,” he’s reported to have told a detractor. “It was a place to murder little boys.”

The reality was the valley had become an illegal trash dump — tons of it — and a place where hobos and ne’er-do-wells camped out, recalled Cass.

“There was a lot of crime down there, you didn’t really want to go there,” he said.

Cleaning up the valley in preparation for the DVP revitalized it and opened it up for the trails today.

The second section from Eglinton to Lawrence opened in 1963, followed by the section south of Bloor to the Gardiner in 1964. The last big stretch to open was to Sheppard Ave. East in 1966, including an interchange with the 401.

In all, it cost about $40 million, budget spillage in context of today’s costs, and it’s a bargain to maintain. Mende says it costs about $650,000 in the summer to cut the grass, sweep the roadway and mend barriers and only $100,000 in the winter for snow removal, de-icing and salting.

There have been a few tweaks since 1961, notably upgrades to the lighting, the addition of GO bus lanes and replacement of steel dividers with concrete. Future improvements could include the addition of an extra bus lane but it will be costly because the roadway will have to be widened, says Mende.

The road is also pretty unique in that it has been constructed with a stronger core so that only the surface needs replacing periodically, says Mende. Even then special compounds are mixed with the asphalt to make it more “elastic” and extend its life cycle, meaning fewer disruptions for maintenance.

“The one thing that has changed is that the traffic flow is pretty much all day and all night,” said Mende. “Back then it was just rush hour.”

Indeed, in a taste of things to come, moments after it opened, traffic backed up at the Eglinton Ave. East exit.

“Well, there was no where else to go, it was as far as it went then,” said Cass, who lives not far from the Parkway and often travels it, though not at rush hour if he can avoid it.

“The funny thing is we had to put those curves in it because that’s the way the Don Valley went. Years later traffic engineers discovered you should put curves on highways because otherwise drivers start to do silly things and drive too fast. We were ahead of things there I guess.”

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