Toronto City Council has voted in favour of rebuilding the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway following a marathon debate on the matter.

City council voted 24-21 in favour of the so-called ‘hybrid’ option for the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway following two days of debate Wednesday and Thursday.

The move will see the elevated expressway rebuilt from the Don Valley Parkway to Jarvis Street at a cost of roughly $919 million.

The project is expected to take six years, including traffic diversions that will last for about a year-and-a half. A number of on and off ramps will also be relocated as part of the plan.

The vote is considered a victory for Mayor John Tory, who championed the hybrid plan on the basis of managing congestion in the city.

Speaking to reporters after the vote, Tory said the move is a win “for the whole city” because it will hold back congestion and prevent lost productivity.

Tory said the Gardiner issue showed that council is capable of having a respectful and informed debate around a major issue.

“I think we made a major step forward in having a debate that was respectful in its tone,” he said.

The hybrid plan won out after another vote on a ‘tear down’ option failed 19-26. That plan would have seen the eastern stretch of the highway removed and replaced by a widened, eight-lane version of Lake Shore Boulevard.

Tory said it doesn’t matter, practically speaking, that the vote on the hybrid option was close. However he said he will work with Coun. Pam McConnell, who fought the rebuild, on ways to make the hybrid option more palatable to downtown communities who were against it.

Speaking to reporters after the debate, McConnell said she anticipates that the vote will not be the end of the discussion around the issue.

“When you have opposition like this it’s major,” she said. “We’ll try mitigating it, we’ll try to make it as best for our community as we possibly can.”

However she said she expects waterfront stakeholders to take legal action to prevent the rebuild.

The vote brings to close weeks of public debate about the future of the eastern portion of the expressway.

Over that period, Tory lobbied his fellow council members strongly to try and win them over to the hybrid option.

On the flip side, almost all downtown councilors favoured the ‘tear-down’ option, arguing that the hybrid plan will cost a great deal more and will sacrifice an opportunity to open up new lands for development and to revitalize a key stretch of the city’s waterfront.

Those who spoke out in favour of the boulevard plan included former mayor David Crombie, Ryerson University President Sheldon Levy, Chief Planner Jennifer Keesmat and former Toronto chief planner Paul Bedford, who warned the city risked becoming an ‘international laughingstock’ if it chose to buck the international trend by maintaining an elevated expressway.

A number of creative motions also emerged Wednesday and Thursday to try and find a middle ground or alternate option as the formal debate unfolded.

On Thursday, TTC Chair Josh Colle asked city staff to explore the idea of selling the expressway to a company that might make money through tolls.

However a number of councillors took issue with the idea, pointing out that the city might lose control of the lands and that no one is likely to buy the crumbling expressway, which is in need of hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs.

Coun. Rob Ford also made an appearance at council Thursday for the Gardiner debate, a major issue he said he would interrupt his recovery from cancer surgery to vote on. Ford voted to maintain the existing expressway, a position no other councillors endorsed.

On Wednesday, Ward 39 Coun. Jim Karygiannis said he’d like to look at the idea of replacing the entire Gardiner with an underground tunnel.

Ward 7 Coun. Giorgio Mammoliti floated the idea of turning the elevated expressway into a car-free skyway with parks, walking and cycling paths and light-rail public transit.

Council directed city staff to look at ways some of those options might be implemented and report back at a later date.

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