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Scramble Crossings (City of Toronto) (Yonge/Dundas, Yonge/Bloor, Bay/Bloor)

unimaginative2

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Montreal uses scramble crossings quite extensively, especially in Old Montreal.

I'm not so sure about the pedestrian mall idea. Yorkville Avenue seems the most obvious place, especially since they almost did it in the 60s. Cumberland might be even more well-suited.

I hope that these street narrowings aren't going to involve the destruction of dozens of mature trees like Adam Giambrone's pet project on Landsdowne.


Pedestrian thinking at city hall

JEFF GRAY

October 1, 2007

Here in Toronto - if intriguing plans from traffic bureaucrats actually see the light of day - crossing the street may come to include learning a couple of new phrases of traffic engineers' cant: the "pedestrian scramble," also called the "Barnes dance."

The concept, which may be tried out at pedestrian-heavy intersections at Yonge and Bloor or near Union Station, refers to signals where pedestrians get their own exclusive piece of the traffic-light cycle.

At one point, cars in all directions are stopped, and you are free to cross the street in any direction, even diagonally, without worrying about turning traffic.

Its other name, a "Barnes dance," is a reference to Henry Barnes, a traffic commissioner in Denver who is credited with implementing the idea there in the 1950s and reportedly making pedestrians so happy they were "dancing in the streets."

Pedestrian scrambles are just one in a long list of ideas in a report coming before city council's works committee on Wednesday, mostly aimed at tilting the balance on city streets from those in cars to those on foot, on bikes or on public transit. Officials, mindful of the city's budget crisis, tout the ideas as low-cost, short-term "doables."

(For people who follow such things, this week the city is awash in "sustainable transportation" schemes at the moment, given that it is also playing host to Walk21, an international conference on pedestrian policies.)

Some of the proposals before the works committee are simply straight-ahead do-goodism: "bike stations" at transit hubs and a bike-sharing program.

Many will be contentious: a city-spanning Bloor bike lane, calls for wider sidewalks and narrower streets.

One idea that may provoke a fight is a move to review parking rules on downtown streets.

Rush-hour is getting longer, the argument goes, so parking, stopping and turning restrictions meant to keep traffic - and especially public transit vehicles - moving need to expand, too.

Current restrictions ending at 6 p.m. could be pushed to 6:30 p.m., upsetting restaurants and other businesses that want on-street parking to resume as soon as possible after rush hour.

Another is the groundbreaking (for Toronto) proposal for a "permanent pedestrian street," similar to those found in European cities and, closer to home, in Ottawa and Montreal.

The report dismisses the idea of making an area such as Kensington Market, which has had successful pedestrian-only events on Sundays, a permanent pedestrian zone. Instead, it suggests a search for a single street that could be transformed. Surely a street can be found somewhere in Toronto that would work without cars. Yorkville Avenue? Parts of Queen Street West?

There are also a few ideas that would clearly appeal to drivers who won't be coaxed out of their cars. For example, the report suggests examining a shift of deliveries to off-peak hours in "congested commercial areas" in an attempt to keep traffic moving.

It also calls for a review of the city's largely useless high-occupancy vehicle lanes, whose rules are different from those controlled by the province (demanding three people per car, rather than two) and are universally disregarded anyway.

Not surprisingly, the report punts away the idea of congestion charges, or tolls, as something for the regional Greater Toronto Transportation Authority to look into, a cautious position in line with that of Mayor David Miller, who has said that any future "road pricing" scheme must be considered regionally, not just in Toronto.

City bureaucrats acknowledge the proposals are "modest" and unlikely, on their own, to produce major reductions in the Toronto's greenhouse-gas emissions.

But these moves, the report argues in its conclusion, could form the foundation of the more dramatic transportation strategy called for in the Mayor's plans to fight climate change.

In other words, these little steps could be just the beginning of a new and more determined battle against Toronto's reliance on the car.

Dr. Gridlock appears on

Mondays.

jgray@globeandmail.com
 
I like the idea of scramble crossings, when combined with no pedestrian crossings paired with parallel traffic.

Vehicles can become hopelessly backed up at intersections when waiting to turn right where many pedestrians are crossing at the same time. That leads to gridlock and idling, which causes pollution and wastes fuel of course.

I would like to see the city try this out, but I am a bit cynical that there would be sufficient notice of what new behaviours would be required so that it would work. Combine uninformed drivers and ignorant pedestrians and you have a recipe for disaster - people will get run over, cars will get rear-ended. A public awareness campaign and abundant signage would need to be well thought out.

42
 
They could try putting a couple around downtown college campuses e.g. OCAD, U of T, and Ryerson

I think that students who have to cross streets to go to class would find them quite useful.
 
St. George and Harbord/Hoskin would be a perfect spot, especially if they were timed to operate just during the first ten minutes of every hour when classes are changing.
 
Don't you worry that pedestrians and cars would dart out into the intersection at inappropriate times if it was a top-of-the-hour thing only? People don't always read the light signals, and sometimes just take their cues from the overall traffic (vehicular and pedestrian) patterns.

I think it should be all or nothing at each intersection lest some pedestrian suddenly hits the asphalt just as a driver intends to make a quick turn.

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Yorkville is such a good candidate for a pedestrian zone. It practically became one during Nuit Blanche, creating what must have been hell for drivers. How can it be done on Queen Street with streetcar traffic?
 
Before this thread goes off topic...

please speculate about transit malls/pedestrian zones on the threads that have been created for them (and there are a few)

and keep this one for scramble crossings at intersections only. Thanks!

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Bay and Bloor and Yonge and Bloor are the most obvious scramble choices.

Downtown is a little trickier. I work south of Union Station, but usually walk between Dundas and my office in the morning and evenings as a form of exercise.

Along Bay and Yonge, south of Queen, the sidewalks at the corners are very narrow, and people waiting to cross in one direction often block the way for people approaching a walk signal from the other direction. Scramble could help, in that it would allow the corners to empty at the same time.

However, most of that corridor turns aren't really allowed anyway, so would they still keep the pedestrian crossing with the flow of traffic? If so, then you'd still end up having the pile up of pedestrians waiting to cross.
 
Bay and Bloor and Yonge and Bloor are the most obvious scramble choices.

Downtown is a little trickier. I work south of Union Station, but usually walk between Dundas and my office in the morning and evenings as a form of exercise.

Along Bay and Yonge, south of Queen, the sidewalks at the corners are very narrow, and people waiting to cross in one direction often block the way for people approaching a walk signal from the other direction. Scramble could help, in that it would allow the corners to empty at the same time.

However, most of that corridor turns aren't really allowed anyway, so would they still keep the pedestrian crossing with the flow of traffic? If so, then you'd still end up having the pile up of pedestrians waiting to cross.
With scramble crossings pedestrians don't cross with traffic, only at the scramble, right? So with no pedestrians to hit, right turns on a green could be allowed. I've never used a scramble crossing but it seems like a good idea.
 
Pedestrian scrambles can run from 8am to 9pm on campuses since there are always a lot of students walking around there anyway.

Even in summer, the pedestrian scrambles at the University of Southern California (in evil America!) were running everyday and it wasn't too much of an impedance for cars since when the cars were driving, the pedestrians had already crossed.
 
have any of you actually had to live in a city that used these exclusively? After three years in new haven ct, I can tell you that they are absolutely horrid for pedestrians, and only really benefit vehicular traffic. Why is this? because you end up having to wait two cycles of vehicular lights for every pedestrian crossing - this meaning twice as much wait time as you're used to. This is especially frustrating at longer lights - imagine waiting at spadina for five solid minutes before being able to cross. Sure there's a novelty to being able to cross at a diagonal, but the time you save in this "shortest distance" cut does not at all make up for the time you spend waiting for the light to change... after attempting to obey the system for a month or two I gave up entirely, and based my crossings only on whether or not there was a vehicle approaching the intersection.
 
I lived in Denver for 8 months, and they had scramble crossings at some intersections. It was not bad like silentworth describes, but then the light cycles were a lot shorter than 2 1/2 minutes in each direction, so you weren't waiting for five minutes.

As well, I think they still allowed pedestrians to cross in the direction the traffic was going, if I recall correctly. Though, I believe it was only on the side of the street that traffic couldn't turn to (it's all one-ways in downtown Denver), so no cars were left waiting for pedestrians to cross.
 
Young and Bloor doesn't need scamble crossing. All it needs are those idiots that have no way of getting through the light to not try to cross. The best thing I think would be to get cameras there that photograph any drivers stopped in the cross section due to their own greed and stupidity.
 

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