Last night I attended a public meeting about changes to the intersection of Bay and Bloor, including a proposal by the City to remove the pedestrian scramble. Opinions at the meeting seemed divided about evenly between those who wanted to remove it (mostly local residents frustrated by traffic delays) and those who wanted to keep it (including some local residents who pointed out that the number of people living — and walking — in the area is set to increase significantly as new condo buildings go up).

The City wants to remove the scramble because they have done a study that shows it is under-performing compared to the other two scrambles (Bloor/Yonge and Yonge/Dundas). The City says that, unlike to the other two, few pedestrians use the diagonal there, it’s not heavily used outside peak hours, there is no danger of crowding because the sidewalks are wide, and the traffic delays it causes are more severe.

Unfortunately, the City has not actually released this study, so there was no information for the public to judge for themselves the City’s assertions. The chart above comparing pedestrian and car numbers was the only set of numbers provided. It really doesn’t seem viable to make this decision, or even for the public to comment on it, until the actual numbers are available. Releasing the study would also, from what was said at the meeting, show that the other two pedestrian scrambles are working well.

As well, the study would provide the basis for a set of criteria to look for alternative intersections where scrambles would be successful. Experience with pedestrian streets has shown that it’s not worth implementing pedestrian infrastructure unless it’s viable — some poorly thought-out early pedestrian malls discredited the concept until better-considered ones showed they could be successful. In Toronto, for example, testing three university pedestrian streets showed that two were successful (Gould and Willcocks) while one wasn’t (Devonshire) and was not continued. People might be more willing to consider losing a scramble if they can see a commitment to keeping the successful ones and finding locations for new ones where they will be more successful.

The City really needs to release the full study before making a decision, needs to reiterate its commitment to at least the two clearly successful scrambles, and needs to use this opportunity to establish the criteria for adding new ones in the future.

One last item — a few people at the meeting said that the scramble should work like older ones in some other cities, where pedestrians can only cross on the all-directions phase and cars can turn freely during their phase. The point of the Toronto scrambles is to provide better service for pedestrians at intersections where they significantly outnumber vehicle traffic. Restricting them to only one cycle would actually create worse service to the pedestrians who are the majority users of these intersections, who would have to wait for two whole cycles before they crossed (a longer wait even if the traffic cycles were shortened).

Not only would it be a bad experience in retail districts where the pedestrian experience is part of their appeal, but studies have shown people would be more likely to get impatient and try to cross against the red, creating a safety problem. As well, it would make the crowding that happens at these intersections (see photo above), with people spilling out onto the street while they wait, much worse (bear in mind that reducing this dangerous crowding was a key reason for implementing the scrambles in the first place). Finally, at Yonge and Dundas, there were already no turns allowed at all before the scramble went in, and they were already heavily restricted at Yonge and Bloor, so turning is not really an issue at these core scramble intersections. City staff also emphasized that the CNIB, in consultations, was strongly against this concept because it would run against the traffic training of the visually impaired. The pedestrian-priority scramble has been clearly successful in at least two intersections in Toronto, improving safety and the experience of the pedestrian majority of users and creating some excitement — it makes sense to keep these at least, and figure out where else it would be successful too.

Photo and graph from City of Toronto.