As interesting and exciting as it always is to see some new development in town, I can't help thinking this is a retrograde step. With the sudden proliferation of traffic lights, and some of them alarmingly close together, unless they're scrupulously timed to facilitate traffic flow (something I have NEVER seen anywhere in Toronto; quite the opposite), I'm inclined to think this is going to become a major traffic snarl during rush hours. Something unsignaled that took 15 seconds to traverse looks to me likely to take upwards of a minute and a half to two minutes to get across now when it's busy. I'm not convinced this is going to turn out to be an improvement, really.
I've been pretty skeptical of traffic circles, but I'm beginning to come around. I'm wondering now if this reconfiguration might have been better served by the introduction, here, of traffic circles to Toronto itself, rather than a sudden clutch of half a dozen traffic lights stuffed into a couple dozen acres. Just a thought.
A traffic circle was also studied for this location as part of the detailed design review. Unfortunately, with 3 streets crossing one another (especially with Dundas coming in at an odd angle), the major downside was that it didn't create land parcels with sizes that were developable. You ended up with a lot of triangular land sections that make it hard to market and develop. It also created a huge plot of land in the centre of the roundabout that would have been completely wasted. It couldn't have been used even as a park as anyone using it would have to cross through the heavily trafficked roundabout to get to it.
Also, the fact that traffic is forced to slow down is a good thing. In the old highway style interchange, cars world be careening at 70-80 km/h. The bridges with their narrow sidewalks created an entirely dangerous experience to walk through. Pedestrians had to cross multiple highway style exits to get from one side of the interchange to the other. I know this from personal experience walking and biking this stretch in years past.
With regards to the number of lights:
Kipling is adding only 1 additional set of lights.
Bloor is essentially reducing the number of lights as in the past drivers had to navigate a right turn and a left turn if they wanted to go straight through on Bloor.
Dundas adds the most on lights, and even then is only 4 lights. With 2 of these being with minor roads.
Ultimately, the old design was catering fully to cars, with a horrible walking and biking experience. It could not have served as a proper location for the Etobicoke city centre due to its horrible highway style interchange.
The new design definitely improves the overall walk ability, bikability of the area and sets up the land to be redeveloped to better suit a city centre. The design is by no means perfect, Dundas is too wide, the Dunbloor light is horribly executed, there seems to be little light synchronization right now, etc. But it is miles ahead of the deathtrap that it replaces.
The detailed design review and environmental assessment documents should still be available from the city website if you want to check out the different proposals and their decision matrices that were used to pick this final design.
