My usual Thursday routine is to go to Starbucks to work. Today I decided to go to the King and Yonge Starbucks so I could pass through the newly changed Yonge and Dundas intersection. What am I talking about? Well they have changed it so there is a period of time that cars are stopped in all directions and people can walk through the intersection. This is common in some other big cities, most notibly Japan where you see these everywhere. I am no scramble virgin, I have walked diagonally before in Tokyo, so even though I heard many people say "cool" or "that is neat", I knew what to expect.
I passed through around 1:15 (skipping my planned lunch at Chipotle cause the lineup was too long) and was surprised to see cars and people moving through the intersection at the same time. God forbid! I thought it was people or cars, not both. Well as it turns out Toronto has done a half ass job at installing this new traffic pattern. There are always people in the intersection! Either walking with the traffic on Dundas or Yonge. I thought, and maybe a full Japanese person can correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought it was all pedestrian or all traffic. And the point of this was to actually help the traffic move through the intersection faster because they didn’t have to worry about people. Well this is not so here in Toronto.
I was expecting them to allow right turns now at the intersection because there would be no pedestrians to watch for when making a right turn. But nope. Instead this configuration may slow down traffic because you have to wait longer for your next light because there is that third step where all traffic is stopped.
So we’ll see how this goes, I think I read that they were planning it for the Bay and Dundas intersection too. Yonge and Dundas is really busy (in the summer) but with Dundas Square pretty much useless in the winter, I don’t know if it will be busy enough to warrant it then. It will be nice in the freezing cold when I can run diagonally from Dundas Square into Forever XXI to buy that last miniskirt in the window.
See how a scramble is supposed to work!!!
P.S. After I made the walk, I was interviewed by 640AM and asked my opinion and if it was my first diagonal walk. I told him all of the above.
P.P.S. When I got to Starbucks the Bell Hotspot was down. So I am now at home again. At least I got to walk diagonally on the first day that I could. It’s the small things in life.