{"id":50398,"date":"2014-11-28T13:00:19","date_gmt":"2014-11-28T18:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=50398"},"modified":"2014-11-27T11:57:55","modified_gmt":"2014-11-27T16:57:55","slug":"slow-deadly-evolution-torontos-crosswalks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2014\/11\/28\/slow-deadly-evolution-torontos-crosswalks\/","title":{"rendered":"The slow and deadly evolution of Toronto’s crosswalks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crossing the\u00a0street in Toronto has been a potentially deadly challenge for almost\u00a0a century. Until the 1950s, when the number of automobiles dramatically increased on our city’s streets, people on foot were required to dodge between moving vehicles\u00a0with no legal right of way. Every day was a real life game of Frogger.<\/p>\n

In 1958, in response to an increasing number of deaths, Toronto introduced its first marked crosswalks, giving pedestrians priority over cars at\u00a0select locations and punishing those who entered the street elsewhere.<\/p>\n

The crossings were minimalist affairs: just painted white lines on the road and signs that read \u201cPedestrian X Crossing” and “Stop for Pedestrians.\u201d There were no lights, no zebra markings, and\u00a0no instructions for walkers to point as they\u00a0entered the road. As a result, drivers often ignored or failed to see the new features of the road.<\/p>\n

In fact, the new “cross-overs,” as they called, weren’t much of a victory\u00a0for people traveling on foot.<\/p>\n

Metro Toronto hoped that forcing\u00a0pedestrians into crosswalks and punishing those who tried\u00a0to cross mid-block would improve safety by keeping people off the streets. Fines started at $5 for the first “jaywalking” offence, $10 for the second, and $20 every time after that, although judges were allowed to issue fines of up to $200.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s simple,\u201d said Sam Cass, Metropolitan Toronto\u2019s head traffic engineer. \u201cYou play ball with me and I\u2019ll play ball with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost immediately it became clear the crosswalks\u00a0weren’t perfect. Less than\u00a024 hours after the official launch, 5-year-old Deborah Wark, walking home alone after visiting a neighbourhood candy store, was struck and killed at a crossing on Keele St. It was \u201cpedestrian safety day,\u201d and a police officer had left the intersection moments earlier.<\/p>\n

Wark\u2019s death caused a public outcry, but Cass said the crossings weren\u2019t to blame. He said safety was a personal responsibility and that drivers needed to get used to yielding to pedestrians. Rather than improving the design, there were calls to cancel the fledgling crosswalk program entirely.<\/p>\n

No changes were made, but deaths still occurred.\u00a0Just days after Wark was hit, three people were killed by a truck at a crossing at Bathurst and Melrose.<\/p>\n

\"pedestrian<\/a><\/p>\n

Drivers complained parked vehicles blocked the warning signs and the white road markings became practically invisible at night or\u00a0in the rain. Pedestrians walked into the street in frustration when drivers refused to yield, sometimes with disastrous consequences.<\/p>\n

A year later, in an effort to make drivers more aware of crosswalks, Metro added advance warning signs and painted large Xs on the roadway. \u00a0It was also around this time the “point your way to safety” signs appeared. Toronto City Council also called for flashing lights that could be controlled from the sidewalk, but the idea was rejected. Traffic experts said giving pedestrians control over the flow of traffic would lead to more accidents.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking the crosswalks more obvious does not make them any safer for pedestrians,\u201d Cass said. “Accidents cannot be prevented with traffic signal or control devices,” he added later.<\/p>\n

There were all kinds of ideas for improving Toronto’s\u00a0crosswalks, many of them ridiculous. Red flags were handed out at an experimental crossing at Yonge and Gould in the summer of 1960 in the hope that the colours would better catch the attention of drivers. Coloured asphalt was tested on the 401 with a view to using it at crossings and other problem areas.<\/p>\n

(Best of all, in the 1950s, cops would drive around berating bad drivers over a loudspeaker from inside an anonymous yellow panel truck. \u201cYou in the convertible, and you, sir, in the two-tone sedan, don\u2019t you think you should allow the little girl to cross? She\u2019s at a crosswalk, she has the right of way,\u201d Constable Al Keates said on one occasion recorded by the\u00a0Globe and Mail<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

\"toronto<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite the high profile fatalities and public criticism, it appeared crossings were having a positive\u00a0effect on the number of accidents. Traffic deaths\u00a0dropped by almost a third in the eight months after they were unveiled, and by 1962 the numbers were continuing to trend downward. 58 people died in 1961, compared\u00a0to\u00a085 the year before crosswalks.<\/p>\n

Lights did eventually appear in the form of fixed amber blinkers attached to concrete traffic islands, but there was no still no nighttime illuminations\u00a0six years after the first crosswalks were\u00a0installed. In 1964, Toronto mayor Philip Givens suggested adding rumble strips or \u201csome sort of electrical impulse\u201d (he didn’t explain further) to warn drivers of approaching crossings in addition to lights.<\/p>\n

Cass, who had long opposed lights, said it would be hard to select a colour for crosswalks. Snow plows used blue, ambulances red, and traffic lights red, yellow, and green. \u201cWhat about black,\u201d Givens suggested. North York reeve James Service proposed a revolving light. Cass warned too many lights might distract drivers, but amber eventually won out.<\/p>\n

Following a successful test of overhanging lights on the Danforth in 1966, Metro Toronto began\u00a0illuminating crosswalks at night<\/span>, but the arrival of pedestrian-controlled flashing lights wouldn\u2019t come until 1988 when Ontario standardized crosswalks province-wide.<\/p>\n

Today, it\u2019s still not clear whether pedestrian crossings\u00a0are completely safe. Go out onto the street, press the button, and no doubt several cars will zip past\u00a0before traffic\u00a0stops. At least one study has shown that, despite the addition of safety features, it is still safer to cross at an intersection rather than a mid-block crosswalk.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf people think a marked crosswalk is going to stop traffic, they\u2019re quite mistaken,\u201d Raynald Marchand, manager of the traffic safety and training section at the Canadian Safety Council, told the Globe and Mail<\/em> in 2002.<\/p>\n

At least there are (legally speaking) no more jaywalkers<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Crossing the\u00a0street in Toronto has been a potentially deadly challenge for almost\u00a0a century. Until the 1950s, when the number of automobiles dramatically increased on our city’s streets, people on foot were required to dodge between moving vehicles\u00a0with no legal right of way. Every day was a real life game of Frogger. In 1958, in responseContinue reading “The slow and deadly evolution of Toronto’s crosswalks”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8234,"featured_media":50404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[69,24,50,18,14,32,9,8,20,6],"tags":[21993,21994,19],"class_list":["post-50398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-curiosities","category-history","category-infrastructure","category-neighbourhoods","category-spacing","category-streetscape","category-traffic","category-transit","category-urban-design","category-walking","tag-crosswalks","tag-pedestrian-crossings","tag-toronto"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe slow and deadly evolution of Toronto's crosswalks - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2014\/11\/28\/slow-deadly-evolution-torontos-crosswalks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The slow and deadly evolution of Toronto's crosswalks - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Crossing the\u00a0street in Toronto has been a potentially deadly challenge for almost\u00a0a century. 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