Traffic on Toronto's Gardiner Expressway has gotten worse than you think

It is unlikely that any driver has ever considered navigating Toronto traffic to be a breeze, but roads around the city have been even worse than usual lately thanks to a confluence of factors, including significant construction projects that have increased congestion by, according to one new study, around 230 per cent in some cases.

The data comes from local firm Geotab, which measured travel times along the Gardiner Expressway, which is at the centre of a years-long rehabilitation project that has entailed consecutive stints of lane closures starting from last spring.

The report also delved into the subsequent business impacts of the delays — which range from missed schedules and other interruptions to lost productivity and even work-related stress — warning that roadwork on the freeway has led to a "significant strain on daily commutes and business in the GTA."

"While most major metropolitan areas in North America have their share of congestion, especially during commuting hours, the extensive renovation project on the Gardiner has caused major increases in the time it takes to travel through Toronto," researchers state.

They then outline how work along the artery has led drivers to spend nearly double the travel time to get from one end of the affected area, which comprises six different project zones, to the other in peak times.

The largest surges in traffic took place during the first few weeks of construction in spring 2024, after which conditions improved "slightly," only to increase again this spring when a new phase of the work kicked off, Geotab says.

Even in that relative lull between last March and this April, the numbers show that "average times were still much higher than they had been prior to construction."

What was a 23- to 25-minute-long trip during rush hour before the lane closures began now takes an average of 38 to 30 minutes, as measured in the periods of January 8, 2024 to March 22, 2024 and April 13, 2025 to May 2, 2025.

This was also, notably, along the entire length of the area being revitalized — some specific portions saw far, far larger spikes in gridlock.

"This year, we found that the most congested sections of the Gardiner experience a delay of about 230 per cent," the report says, highlighting the stretch of road from just west of Parkside Drive to just east of Dunn Avenue as the worst.

Some areas of the Gardiner have been worse for traffic delays than others. Infographic from Geotab.

During the worst weeks of 2024, meanwhile, the firm found that some spots of the highway saw traffic jump around 250 per cent from pre-construction levels, so it looks like this round of improvements has been slightly easier on drivers, though not by much.

There is also the fact that the work is now set to reach completion more than a year earlier than planned after the schedule was expedited in light of rampant complaints. Still, the Gardiner managed to land at number nine on Ontario's Worst Roads in 2025 list (as crowdsourced by CAA), and number two on the list for Toronto.