On Wednesday, the Star’s Tamar Harris reported on mass confusion on the road at the intersection of Richmond and Bay, where in two hours of observation, she saw the vast majority of drivers and cyclists incorrectly navigate an intersection. That’s bad news, and as many Harris spoke to said, it reflects bad design.

The good news is, I have seen the solution. And it’s already in use in Toronto. On Wednesday morning, minutes after reading Harris’ story, I observed an intersection presenting a similar navigational challenge, but marked differently. In the time I observed, not a single motorist or cyclist made the kinds of errors Harris observed.

The problem at Richmond and Bay is that the city has painted the entire right-turn lane green, in an effort to alert everyone to the presence of cyclists. They have painted white cycling sharrows and a green turn arrow onto the area, in an effort to show it is to be shared. The hope is that all users will know that the rule here should be the same as the standard rule: turning cars should hug the curb, cyclists wanting to proceed straight ahead should stay to the left of these cars.

But it appears almost no one in the city already knows that is supposed to be the standard rule — a sad state of affairs, but easy to see if you watch any intersection where cyclists pedal up on the right side of cars waiting to turn right, and motorists leave them lots of room to do so. It’s wrong, dangerous, and common.

And the paint on the road at Richmond and Bay seems to have only made it more confusing. When cyclists see green paint, they say, “this is my space!” When motorists see green paint, they think the same thing and try to stay as far to the left of the lane as they can, thinking they are helpfully leaving room for bikes. The confusion is unnecessary.

The city has applied a different approach at the tricky intersection where Dundas, Annette, Dupont and Old Weston meet. The bike lane approaching the intersection from the west comes up to a big, much-used right-turn lane. The solution here: the right turn lane is unpainted black pavement, just like the car lanes in the middle of the road, with a familiar white right-turn arrow on it. The bike lane is painted green, and proceeds in a strip to the left of the turn lane, showing cyclists where to go. The green strip actually proceeds through the intersection onto Dupont, marking the lane consistently.

Read more:

We spent rush hour watching cyclists and drivers navigate an ‘absolutely terrifying’ Toronto intersection. Most did it wrong

Editorial: When it comes to cars and bikes, Toronto needs to make it easier to do the right thing

Here, the effect is that road users approaching the intersection see that the car lane “crosses” the bike lane. Everyone seems to understand immediately how it was supposed to work.

There’s a green bike-lane sized strip that all road users understand as showing where cyclists are protected. There’s a black car-width lane illustrating where everyone expects a turning car to go. It’s almost too easy, even if the crossing point obviously requires some careful blindspot-checking by motorists and caution by cyclists (steps which, in my own observation, the colours reminds them to take).

To be clear, in my roughly 20 minutes of observation, I did see people break the law. This is Toronto, after all, and it was the morning rush hour. Cars proceeded to make left turns through the stale yellow and the fresh red. A cyclist straight-up ran a red light, on purpose. One car on Dundas made a dangerous turn right into the middle of oncoming high-speed car traffic.

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But all those law-breakers appeared to be doing dangerous and illegal things on purpose. No one made such mistakes because they couldn’t understand how the bike and car road infrastructure was supposed to work.

As urban designer Ken Greenburg told the Star about road infrastructure, “It has to be intuitive.” At Annette and Dundas, the markings appear to be just that — people understand them instantly. Which doesn’t solve all our road safety problems, but certainly is a necessary first step.