Happy birthday to you! DVP turns fifty
Posted August 31, 2011 8:40 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
TORONTO, Ont. – Torontonians affectionately refer to it as the DVP, the parkway, and sometimes – perhaps not so affectionately – the Don Valley parking lot.
Regardless of what you call it, the Don Valley Parkway turns 50 today.
The north-south running expressway that connects the Gardiner Expressway with Highway 401 is now five decades old, and plenty has changed in it’s 50 long years.
Veteran 680News traffic reporter Russ Holden said the DVP was designed to handle 60,000 cars a day, but because of roads that were never built, it now gets much more traffic than that.
“The Scarborough Expressway, the Spadina Expressway, the 400 extension down toward the Humber Bay, so it was just meant to carry the expansion of the city to the north,” Holden said.
“Unfortunately it’s covering the expansion of the city to the east, as a lot of the Pickering and Whitby traffic comes in across the 401 and goes south on the Don Valley Parkway, so it’s bulging, but appears to be doing its job.”
Some sections of the parkway now average more than 100,000 cars a day, far exceeding the initial planned capacity.
The first section of the DVP opened Aug. 31, 1961 as the second expressway to be built by Metropolitan Toronto.
