Pedestrian, Over-Easy
"What it means is that traffic will stop in all four directions, followed by a pedestrian free-for-all, where people cross the street in any direction they chose: left, right, diagonal." - CBC.ca, Toronto Edition.In other words, nothing will really change. They're calling it a 'pedestrian scramble' or as most Torontonians already know it as 'crossing the street'. As anyone who has had the displeasure of driving anywhere downtown Toronto can attest to, pedestrians seem to dash across the street frogger-style at any damned moment.
My vote is to make very large sections of the downtown core a totally car-free zone. This is not some people-loving, altruistic, hippy sentiment towards a greener tomorrow. Instead, its' my bitter and cynical olive-branch. It's my hope to coral these wandering deadites of the Big Smoke and thereby free up the roadways in the rest of the city.
Much of Chinatown, Queen St., Kensington Market, and the greater entertainment district are already swarmed by street urchins, hipsters in throat-beards and Bay St. Commandos rendering the roads unnavigable. Let's just quarantine these areas and create a urban utopia of Chuck Taylors, RollerBlades, skateboards, and ramblers. All of them thrashing about in the once-forbidden asphalt rivers, euphoric in their ability to meander about in this concrete jungle.
Now for the hard part. The rest of the roads are meant for the gasoline chuggers only! Mean machines of plastic and steel rocketing from one end of the town to the other, nary a concern for any more wandering meat-packets drifting between the white lines. Designated cross-walks will be the pedestrian's only access for survival. And there will be no walking; only running.
There will only be two signs to indicate your access. An outline of a man running from a giant, flaming car or a skull-and-crossbones. Guess which means you get to go?
I'm done here.
