Day Three Hundred and Four - Why Did The Blogger Cross The Road?

Yesterday marked the day when Toronto joined some great, world class cities - Tokyo, Edinburgh...Barrie [obviously] - we unveiled our own pedestrian scramble! What is a pedestrian scramble? Well, it doesn't involve eggs and hopefully also does not involve actually scrambling pedestrians. What it does involve is an intersection, pedestrians, lights and crosswalk signs painted on the diagonal. I think perhaps a photo is in order and could probably explain things better.


I was going to do this yesterday, but there was a bit of a weather delay so today I walked across a pedestrian scramble [multiple times]. What happens is this - half of the time when the lights change, cars stop and people cross normally and some cars don't stop. The other half of the time is INSANE - all of the cars stop and then people just run out into the street any which way - jaywalking, multiple crossings - anything goes. It's pretty frakking awesome - I loved it! And I'm saying this as someone who loathes the Yonge-Dundas area - it's totally the place to be if you are interested in combining your interests in 1. tacky tourist crap and 2. getting shot. The scramble changes this a little bit as it really lessens the congestion in this area to a very impressive degree. Also, running wild into the streets is always a recipe for good times.