The City of Toronto will perform annual maintenance and improvement activities on the Don Valley Parkway (DVP) this weekend from Friday, August 14 at 11 p.m. until Monday, August 17 at 5 a.m. The closure will extend the entire expressway from Highway 401 to the F.G. Gardiner Expressway. The rain date is planned for Friday, August 21 to Monday, August 24. This year’s annual closure, typically planned for the spring or fall, has been moved to August to take advantage of warmer summer weather as well as lower than normal traffic volumes the city continues to experience. City staff estimate that it would take approximately 30 separate days with lane closures to complete the same amount of highly coordinated work performed in just 54 hours over a single weekend. Motorists can use Kingston Road, Victoria Park Avenue, Leslie Street, Bayview Avenue and Avenue Road as alternative routes into the city during the weekend closure.
As well, there will be one ActiveTO major weekend road closure this weekend, along Lake Shore Boulevard West from Stadium Road to Windemere Avenue. ActiveTO weekend closures that would typically be in place on Lake Shore Boulevard East and Bayview Avenue will not be available this weekend in order to provide alternative routes for drivers. All three weekend closures are expected to return the weekend following the DVP maintenance closure. Learn more about ActiveTO at http://www.toronto.ca/activeto.
Here are some specific activities that the City is expected to undertake during the closure, all numbers are approximate:
• 10 lane kilometres of roadway milling and paving
• 3,600 tonnes of asphalt will be used
• Inspection and controlled chipping on bridges
• Construction and repair of roadside ditches
• Cleaning of bridge joints and catch basins
• Debris removal and sweeping
• Graffiti removal
• Guiderail repairs and replacement
• Inspection and repair of ‘crash’ barriers
• Roadside and overhead sign maintenance
• Inspection of maintenance of RESCU cameras and equipment cabinets
• Repair of traffic detection equipment
• Pothole repairs
• Other work related to expressway lights and utilities may be done by Toronto Hydro.
This weekend’s DVP maintenance closure has been coordinated with important overnight work related to the renewal of the Gardiner Expressway between Jarvis and Cherry Streets. To facilitate this work and minimize disruption to the travelling public, the westbound lanes of the Gardiner Expressway, from the DVP to the Yonge-Bay-York ramp and the on-ramp to westbound Gardiner Expressway from Lake Shore Boulevard East at Logan Avenue will be fully closed. The first opportunity for motorists to enter westbound Gardiner Expressway is the on-ramp at Jarvis Street. These closures will take place on:
• Saturday, August 15 at 10 p.m. to Saturday, August 16 at 8 a.m., and;
• Sunday, August 16 at 10 p.m. until Monday, August 17 at 5 a.m.
A map is available to residents and visitors to help make their travel plans, available at http://www.toronto.ca/roadrestrictions. In addition, the City’s T.O. INview map shows planned capital construction work taking place across the city: http://www.toronto.ca/inview. Details about this closure are available at http://www.toronto.ca/dvp
