Mississauga The Southlands | ?m | 72s | Camrost-Felcorp | a—A

[Deadpool X]

It's more like 60 percent, and often because they have limited options. And I'd rather be able to walk to get groceries, coffee, etc., rather than drive a car.

Houses in suburbs on an average are more expensive than the shoebox condos in downtown. Anyone who can afford to live in suburban SFH can also afford to live in a downtown condo. So no, their options are not limited.

Also, where are you getting 60% number from? More than 60% of GTA's population lives outside of City of Toronto and the City of Toronto itself is mostly suburban.

 

[afransen]

Did my first drive through these lights. They are 100% not fixed. The green for Kariya can last as little as 10-20 seconds. I was stuck behind a few cars that were at the light, and cars had barely started going through the light before the countdown started. To me it's really unintuitive why the minor street has (1) higher priority and (2) a longer light and (3) activates in its favour so much quicker.

Now I have seen other examples of really bad timing in Mississauga (e.g. Matheson and McLaughlin--Matheson gets huge priority over McLaughlin and it lasts foreeeeeever). You'd think a car-oriented place like Mississauga would have an idea how to program traffic lights, but I can confidently say that Mississauga sucks at it. Even though Toronto has way too many extraneous lights, at least they're programmed more intelligently and aren't overly long unnecessarily.

An intersection near my house had a left turn signal added due to many severe collisions. When they first added it, the signal cycle was so short only 3 cars or so could get through before having to wait 2-3 minutes for the next cycle. It took a couple months, but I'm sure they had enough complaints and now it is fine. Raise your concerns through 311 and I think it will be addressed. Not sure if they just let the initial configuration ride for a period of time until they get data on how to calibrate the signal cycles.

What bothers me is the many places where even off-peak there are very long signal cycles that don't really seem justified and encourage non-compliance. If traffic is light, there is no compelling reason for multi-minute signal cycles to maximize capacity. Pedestrians will not wait and will jaywalk, and people will run red lights when they can't be bothered to wait.