When did the LED "NO Left Turn Signs" get place on King St?? Must been a sleep to not see these signals before now, as they will do wonder for QQ "NO Right Turn" locations.

You replace the current Bike Signals with Europe Style; put in the Bar Signals for TTC that will require training the drivers as to what they mean in the first place considering TTC has them at a few location and TTC drivers are clueless as to what they mean; the LED No Right Turn signs; Fix Spadina Left turning issues; some nice red paint on the ROW at intersections; QQ will has a lot less issues to deal with than what there now. Removing haft the traffic lights will help also.
 
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I'm going to point out the problems:
1) Why is the pedestrian cross button located in the middle of the road. So if a pedestrian wants to cross the street, they have to walk across an active bike lane to activate a traffic light? That makes absolutely no sense. By the time they've gotten to the button, they have already essentially jaywalked 1/3 of the street (the bike lane). That tiny space is also dangerous when there are large crowds, especially next to the streetcar ROW. Having the pedestrian crossing button in that location is practically inviting pedestrians to either get hit by a streetcar or a bike!

2) The pedestrian crossing at the bike lane should not be cobblestone and should be paved to activate the fact in pedestrian's brains that they are standing in an active lane.

3) What is the point of blue? It's pretty but it has no meaning. When I see blue, I imagine water. Aesthetically, blue looks nice but that box should be red to denote STOP or DANGER or CAUTION.

My solution/suggestion:
solutions_zpsf5yghngs.jpg
 
drum118 said:
When did the LED "NO Left Turn Signs" get place on King St?? Must been a sleep to not see these signals before now, as they will do wonder for QQ "NO Right Turn" locations.
Click to expand...

They've been up since October or November of last year.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
wilson_wu said:
I'm going to point out the problems:
1) Why is the pedestrian cross button located in the middle of the road. So if a pedestrian wants to cross the street, they have to walk across an active bike lane to activate a traffic light? That makes absolutely no sense. By the time they've gotten to the button, they have already essentially jaywalked 1/3 of the street (the bike lane). That tiny space is also dangerous when there are large crowds, especially next to the streetcar ROW. Having the pedestrian crossing button in that location is practically inviting pedestrians to either get hit by a streetcar or a bike!

2) The pedestrian crossing at the bike lane should not be cobblestone and should be paved to activate the fact in pedestrian's brains that they are standing in an active lane.

3) What is the point of blue? It's pretty but it has no meaning. When I see blue, I imagine water. Aesthetically, blue looks nice but that box should be red to denote STOP or DANGER or CAUTION.

My solution/suggestion:
Click to expand...

I totally agree. The main issue is that pedestrians are inadvertantly wandering across a roadway facing a green signal (the bike path), and cyclists are inadvertently crossing the path of pedestrians continuing off the end of a crosswalk (though these people technically don't have a walk signal since the signalized area does not include the crosswalk.

However, I differ slightly on a couple points.

1) I'm actually okay with the current crossing button location, because it is unreasonable to expect people to not walk across a bike path to get a head start on their crossing. But more importantly, extending the official signalized crosswalk by roughly 5 metres involves increasing the Flashing Don't Walk interval by 4 to 5 seconds (@ 1.2 m/s) which will increase delay to everyone travelling along Queen's Quay, notably the streetcars. I think that if we address your Issue 2), Issue 1) will be less of an issue, people generally have no issue waiting for a gap to cross bike paths. If the crowds exceed the capacity of the small island, I'm sure people are smart enough that they would wait on the near side of the bike path if they were aware that the path existed.

2) Exactly!

3) Or even better, forget the current design entirely and put in standard centre line and stop bar markings like on every other roadway in North America. See for example the Finch Hydro Corridor Bike Path, shown in the thumbnail below. Pavement markings are the worst possible thing to try to be creative with, yet the designers here decided to make up their own and somehow expect people to understand them. It took me a while looking at the current design before figuring out what on earth it was supposed to mean. Clearly unacceptable, especially for a street that will see so many non-regular users.

 
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The blue boxes are quite a bit back from the intersections, so it certainly was confusing the first time I rode there -- do I stop here? does it mean slow down and then stop at the intersection? is it just a pretty box? Definitely not intuitive.

Where they are really confusing is at Spadina -- blue boxes but no stop signs or lights for cyclists. I know they are there because pedestrians cross, but there is nothing to explain them. Perhaps "watch for pedestrians" or "pedestrians crossing" stencilled on them would help.
 
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So I finally had a chance to get down here last night and walked from Spadina to Bay St. Overall, it looks fantastic, and I'm really excited that Toronto finally has, frankly, some nice infrastructure. Things look developed, clean, and crisp--and even the condos on the north side look better than they once did.

It was a Friday night, so perhaps you'd expect a fair number of people down there, but it was great to see it bustling and lively.

The MGT worked well and I didn't see any pedestrians on it, nor did I see any drivers doing anything nuts. But I did notice a number of cyclists not observing their red lights, and the choke point around York where the MGT and the pedestrian walkway converge for about 10 meters has to be fixed. That's a serious design flaw, and someone is going to get toasted there if they keep it that way.

That all being said, what galls me is the number of cyclists ripping through reds and doing whatever they want. Here's the (very) simple rule: if you want the public to invest big dollars in cycling infrastructure, then you have to observe the rules that make use of that infrastructure possible. If you don't, not only are you wrong, you're childishly irrational.
 
Miscreant said:
The MGT worked well and I didn't see any pedestrians on it, nor did I see any drivers doing anything nuts. But I did notice a number of cyclists not observing their red lights, and the choke point around York where the MGT and the pedestrian walkway converge for about 10 meters has to be fixed. That's a serious design flaw, and someone is going to get toasted there if they keep it that way.

That all being said, what galls me is the number of cyclists ripping through reds and doing whatever they want. Here's the (very) simple rule: if you want the public to invest big dollars in cycling infrastructure, then you have to observe the rules that make use of that infrastructure possible. If you don't, not only are you wrong, you're childishly irrational.
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I was there last night too and this is what I saw. Looks way more dangerous to me than a cyclist running a red light. I guess the public shouldn't invest in any infrastructure for motorists either.

wkiomv.jpg
 
Miscreant said:
That all being said, what galls me is the number of cyclists ripping through reds and doing whatever they want. Here's the (very) simple rule: if you want the public to invest big dollars in cycling infrastructure, then you have to observe the rules that make use of that infrastructure possible. If you don't, not only are you wrong, you're childishly irrational.
Click to expand...

From what I've seen, the rate of cyclists running red lights paled in comparison to the rate of pedestrians disobeying Don't Walk signals, to the point that drivers were unable to proceed north-south on green lights because of the swarms of jaywalking pedestrians.

In the 40 minutes of footage I took on opening weekend, I captured easily a thousand cyclists and only two of these ran red lights. And I was by no means being selective, I have no way of knowing who's going to run a red.

And though the rate of drivers disobeying signals is probably lower than either group, it is clearly more dangerous. All but one of the collisions since opening* has been the result of a motorist running a red light.

*The one was a streetcar turning into another streetcar because its driver misinterpreted the switch position.

In fact, the only group of road user that was consistently obeying signals was streetcar drivers.

So based on your simple rule, we should stop building all kinds of infrastructure except dedicated streetcar rights-of-way.
 
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reaperexpress said:
1) I'm actually okay with the current crossing button location, because it is unreasonable to expect people to not walk across a bike path to get a head start on their crossing. But more importantly, extending the official signalized crosswalk by roughly 5 metres involves increasing the Flashing Don't Walk interval by 4 to 5 seconds (@ 1.2 m/s) which will increase delay to everyone travelling along Queen's Quay, notably the streetcars. I think that if we address your Issue 2), Issue 1) will be less of an issue, people generally have no issue waiting for a gap to cross bike paths. If the crowds exceed the capacity of the small island, I'm sure people are smart enough that they would wait on the near side of the bike path if they were aware that the path existed.
Click to expand...

Walking along QQ today, I noticed that all of the pedestrian crossing buttons are located on the south side of the intersections. It's great if you are heading east, because you're walking on the right and the button is there. But when you head west, the button is on the wrong side.
 
smallspy said:
They've been up since October or November of last year.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
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I must have seen them and thought nothing about them until now. I am at those intersection weekly, but couldn't remember where I saw these signs until I saw them yesterday. I have seen them in Europe and the US, but can't recall if in Canada, considering I have been from coast to coast driving.

Its something that needed for this area.
 
PinkLucy said:
Walking along QQ today, I noticed that all of the pedestrian crossing buttons are located on the south side of the intersections. It's great if you are heading east, because you're walking on the right and the button is there. But when you head west, the button is on the wrong side.
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I gather you're talking about the east-west buttons along Queens Quay. In which case it might not be a major issue given that they are unnecessary for the vast majority of pedestrians - the east-west pedestrian phase always comes up anyway because Queens Quay is the main street. The east-west buttons exist only to allow visually impaired people to activate the Accessible Pedestrian Signal audio cues.
 
Ah. I wondered as they always had the red light showing they were active. I didn't ever hear the signal though

Even still, shouldn't they be on the right of the pedestrian?
 
PinkLucy said:
Ah. I wondered as they always had the red light showing they were active. I didn't ever hear the signal though
Click to expand...

Normally you'll just hear a faint ticking noise from the buttons to help people locate them. The chirp and cuckoo sounds are then activated by holding down the button for three seconds.

Even still, shouldn't they be on the right of the pedestrian?
Click to expand...

I personally don't think it would matter much given that there's generally a fair bit of mix-up at intersections anyway. Queen's Quay would be the exception because there's such a high volume of traffic simply travelling straight along the street, and the sidewalk is extremely wide.
 
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