Gardiner Expressway to be closed for 35 hours this weekend

Driving in Toronto this weekend? Prepare yourself for a 35-hour shutdown of one of the city's main arteries. 

The Gardiner Expressway will be shut down from 11 p.m. Friday until 10 a.m. Sunday, though there is potential for the eastern edge of the expressway to open slightly earlier, overnight Saturday, if work is completed on that stretch. 

While that may seem like a major headache, the city says this weekend's shutdown will prevent other closures of the Gardiner in the future. 

"This is actually equivalent to 30 different partial closures overnight, which would be just as impactful if not more impactful than doing all the work in one period of time such as this," said Vincent Sferrazza, director of operations and maintenance for transportation services with the city.

Sferrazza said the effort is part of a push to consolidate work in the city to ensure roadways aren't being disrupted over and over again for different reasons. 

To mitigate traffic congestion as drivers are diverted to parallel streets, like the Queensway and Lake Shore Boulevard, the city is encouraging people to take public transit. But traffic agents will also be deployed to manage drivers and timing of lights will be monitored to adapt to traffic. 

The work will be wide ranging, from filling in potholes to replacing guard rails and cleaning up graffiti, the city says.

The disruption to weekend driving comes as Toronto grapples with notoriously bad traffic, which has been called a crisis and some of the worst in North America.

Assadullah Popal has been driving a taxi in Toronto since 1995 and hopes to stay as far away from the Gardiner closure as he can this weekend.

"As a taxi driver, I will not even go downtown unless a customer asks me to take them," he said. "Shutting down the Gardiner, they're closing the doors of Toronto." 

As a veteran of the roads, he has a simple tip for those dealing with the traffic this weekend. 

"Get a large coffee and sit down, you're not going nowhere," he said. 

As the city's streets continue to clog up, some advocates say fewer vehicles on the road is the answer to congestion.

"Regardless of whether or not the Gardiner is closed, there is always going to be traffic congestion coming in and out of the city," said Alison Stewart, director of advocacy and public policy for Cycle Toronto.