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Like so many of the issues that former mayoralty candidate Jane Pitfield brought to the 2006 municipal election, the question of the future of the Gardiner Expressway failed to take off. Pitfield staked her ground clearly and early - vowing not to contemplate the demolition of the elevated expressway for the entire four-year term and settle the question by referendum after that.

Incumbent David Miller put the issue to rest by simply repeating that it wasn't a priority for him.

Miller's sudden enthusiasm for a Gardiner takedown came as a bit of a shock last week when he endorsed it enthusiastically, albeit from the safe distance of a Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference in Quebec.

It shouldn't have, of course: there is a wide gulf between a low priority and an outright rejection, and Miller always stayed on the low-priority side. And the option he endorsed is a far cry from the $1.8 billion plan to pulverize the whole expressway that Miller initially rejected as unaffordable.

This plan is in fact the one that Miller always said he liked: more manageable, less flamboyant, and at an estimated total of $200-$300 million, something approaching affordable.

The highway will come down to the east of Jarvis Street, and in its place Lakeshore will be widened to an eight-lane "great street" that will open up lands to the north and south for high-quality development and parkland. There, at least, Torontonians will be connected to their waterfront, to paraphrase the planning mantra that has formed the basis of the planning argument for Gardiner eradication. Any further west, and those water-loving Torontonians would still be thwarted by a wall of condominiums to the south and a thick braid of railway tracks to the north.

The micro-demolition will still make life tough for motorists. Waterfront Toronto, the tri-govermental agency responsible for the plan, estimates that a jaunt along the new Lakeshore Boulevard will take two minutes longer for an eastbound trip than the current Gardiner Expressway does.

But the times are with the project. Improvements on GO Transit and the Toronto Transit Commission already planned and in some cases at least partially funded will give commuters other options; and the prospect of stratospheric fuel prices mean that by the time this project is complete, cross-town driving will likely have become a less attractive option for more compelling reasons than a sticky stretch between the Don Valley Parkway and Jarvis Street.

And the plan has another bonus: it takes the prospect of the $200 million Front Street extension off the books for good. Whatever money Waterfront Toronto had set aside for what would have been essentially an off-ramp now goes to pay for the east-end demolition - which unlike the extension, should have a palpable effect on improving the city's waterfront. The removal of the Gardiner's old off-ramp to Leslie Street at the turn of the century has thoroughly transformed that stretch of Lakeshore from a grubby stretch of under-used industrial land to one of the most desirable neighbourhoods in the city; there's no reason to think this next incremental demolition will have an effect that's any less salutary.

Given all that, the revised Gardiner takedown plan seems a good one, as major infrastructure plans undertaken without referendum or public debate go. It's only too bad that the mayor didn't care to engage that debate in 2006. He could have made a strong case.