For the first time in two years, the Gardiner expressway is closed for the entire weekend for fall maintenance.
The full length in both directions has been shut down since Friday at 11 p.m. and will not reopen until 5 a.m. Monday.
Superintendent of Toronto Transportation Services Mark Mills told reporters Saturday that the weekend shutdown will cost "about $2 million for the paving and about $500,000 for our in-house work."
"We will be on budget with this project," Mills added.
There's a reason there hasn't been a weekend-long closure since 2016. It's something Toronto's General Manager of Transportation Barbara Gray came down to the sheer number of road construction projects in the area in 2017.
"We weren't able to do the volume of paving certainly last year that we did this year [so far]," Gray explained. "Last year there was a lot of other construction closures that were happening in the city, and we try to minimize the amount of disruption by coordinating those closures."
"Last year there was work on the Lake Shore, there was the York-Bay-Yonge ramp work that was closed and so we really felt that it was better to focus on what we could do on overnights."
The city suggests using alternate routes like Lake Shore Boulevard, the Queensway, Bloor Street and Evans Avenue to get around this weekend.
The closure was scheduled for last weekend but was delayed due to weather.
- With files from Jackie Rosen and CP24