Toronto to spend $215M on summer road work

Toronto will spend $215 million on road work this summer and drivers will be paying the price with major projects expected on the Gardiner Expressway and other major routes across the city.

More than 185 kilometres of road will be resurfaced, Coun. Denzil Minnan-Wong, chair of the public works and infrastructure committee, said at a downtown news conference on Monday.

There will be projects on the following roads:

  • Markham Road from Kingston Road to Lawrence Avenue
  • Victoria Park Avenue from Eglinton Avenue to Lawrence Avenue
  • Wilson Avenue from Bathurst Street to Dufferin Street
  • Finch Avenue from Kipling Avenue to Highway 27
  • Kipling Avenue from Bloor Street to Dixon Road

“The biggest challenge is funding…We have a finite amount of money and there are other problems that need to be funded,” he said.

“If the backlog is somewhere around $300 million and it costs $1 million a kilometre to resurface a road, that’s 300 kilometres of road that we aren’t getting to this year.”

This summer’s road work will include major repairs on the Gardiner Expressway starting in three weeks. The Gardiner will close on the weekend of April 26 for annual spring maintenance.

After that, three reconstruction projects begin on the western portion of the Gardiner which will cause lane closures between the Humber River and Bathurst Street throughout the summer. Some of that work won’t end until December 2016.

“We don’t have a choice of the Gardiner Expressway. It has to be fixed,” Minnan-Wong said.

He said that the city is moving up some construction projects to decrease delays during next year’s Pan Am Games.

An additional $60 million will be spent upgrading water and sewer main infrastructure.

The city is also working to repair an enormous number of potholes – more than 120,000 have been filled this year alone.

“We have twice as many potholes as we did last year,” Minnan-Wong said. Last April at this time, crews had filled 66,000 potholes.

“We need to take proactive action…so potholes don’t appear as often,” Minnan-Wong said, adding Toronto will study other cities to prevent potholes from occurring.

Is there a pothole in your neighbourhood? Click here to report it to the city.

Click here for the city’s list of ongoing and emergency road construction, travel conditions and special events.

Click here for the city’s online map about planned capital construction work.

How will you cope with a busy summer of road construction in Toronto? Vote in our poll and have your say in the comments.

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