Fixing the City Streets
I’m way out of my league here, but I’m obsessed about this, so I might as well get it out of my system.
We need a few changes to the way the streets work to make city living more tolerable. I live in Toronto, where as far as I can tell, the traffic design is completely haphazard. Any Toronto city planners are welcome to e-mail me with the facts. I’ll get around to searching the ‘net for it later.
• No left turns anywhere, ever. Either make triple-right turns easy, provide more dedicated u-turn spots, or build round-abouts. Left turns just destroy traffic flow. I also find the idea of alternating one-way streets appealing.
• More dedicated pedestrian streets. Alternate them with streets for cars. Cars just suck, don’t people realize that?
• All delivery and emergency vehicles must run on natural gas and/or electric.
• Dedicated underground streets for delivery and emergency vehicles. A grid of streets below the city streets, alternating emergency vehicle lanes (under the pedestrian lanes) and delivery lanes (under the regular street traffic). No left turns on the delivery lanes, either, but also no taxis. Replace all the sidewalks above with transparent and translucent materials to allow light through.
• Ban SUVs. Just ban them outright. Either that or everything over a weight limit has to go on the underground lanes.
• Toll on all cars entering from the suburbs between the hours of 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. on week days. They won’t donate taxes but they’ll happily wear out our roads and pollute our air.
• Divide all transit stops in two, and alternate them between A stops and B stops. Alternate vehicles as A and B vehicles. A vehicles stop at A stops; B vehicles at B stops. People have to walk a bit more, but they need the exercise. Transit vehicle traffic flows much more smoothly, and other traffic does, too.
Like I said, I’m not a professional urban planner, but the city’s roads are a joke, and no-one seems to be bothered to do anything about it, so I guess I’ll have to do it myself.