I am not a transportation engineer, but sometimes I like to, you know, pretend. And lately, I've been thinking about how to better design the Toronto intersection of Dundas, Dupont, Annette, and Old Weston (which I touched on briefly over here). It's a weird 5-point intersection that is often cited as one of the most confusing in the city. And so there's a lot that could be done.
Here's what it looks like today:
The centerpiece is the Dundas-Dupont Traffic Island, which is actually a city-owned park. It's not the most generous green space, but the real problem with this park is that it's very much an island. There's really only one pedestrian access point -- its north end. For the most part, you need to be unlawful in your movements on and off it.
This is a fairly common occurrence in cities. The island is, almost certainly, a remnant space. It was never explicitly designed; it is just what was left over after they figured out how to connect all of these streets and negotiate the intersection's grade changes.
The other signal, that these are remnant spaces, is the paint markings on the street. Their main job is to tell cars where to go. But they're also unproductive spaces. Nobody is intended to actually occupy them. So what they really say is, "we have too much road and we didn't know what to do; so we just painted them."
If you watch the below video of Claire Weisz (founder of WXY Studio) explaining the work that she has done in New York City, you'll see remarkable similarities to what I'm talking about here. This sort of thing happens all the time, especially at messy intersections where multiple streets converge. The objective was to connect the streets and the rest became a byproduct.
https://youtu.be/FsDaZH-RpWA?si=DYwICeahXk9pxOqr
But when properly designed, these spaces actually become better for everyone: drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians. And this Toronto intersection strikes me as a perfect candidate. So if my local Councillor Gord Perks is reading this post, I would ask him to do what he can within the city to encourage this kind of positive change.
And not just here, but wherever there is a street that sucks.
Many of you have probably heard of the concept of a "digital twin." Put simply, it is a digital representation of a physical thing. This could be a thing that already exists or, in the case of a new building, it could be a thing that you're about to make exist.
But there's no reason to stop at the scale of a building. Right now, there are groups working on modeling entire cities. Sadly, in Ukraine, it is being done to document important buildings that could get destroyed. But in other places, it is being done in order to create a new kind of urban testing environment (via FT):
“In the city, you don’t have a development environment; you only have one city. The laboratory is the place where the planners go to test. So test in a digital twin and then develop or implant in the city. That’s going to be the value.”
The thinking is that if you combine a digital twin with good real-time urban data and AI, then you might actually be able to start testing new city building initiatives. For instance, maybe you could ask it: What would happen if we added a traffic lane, here? Would it actually help congestion or would it induce new demand?
It's hard to model this kind of stuff today, which is one of the reasons why there's usually fierce debate about seemingly everything. But if we had accurate models that could tell us something close to reality, that feels like it would be a game changer for city builders.
These are the current (well, 2019) and targeted (2028) mode share splits for Dublin city centre (sourced from here):
The biggest planned change is a ~41% reduction in cars, taxis & goods entering the city centre. More specifically though, the plan contemplates a reduction in the number of cars in the core. The number of taxis and goods being moved around are both expected to increase.
To achieve this, the city is targeting drivers that pass through rather than stop in the city centre. Supposedly, about two out of every three drivers are currently doing this, and so the goal will be to redirect them.
Though, to be clear, this is not a plan to stop people from driving into the city centre. It is rightly about reducing the amount of road space allocated to private vehicles, prioritizing other modes of transport, and creating more "traffic-free civic spaces" for Dubliners and visitors.
Of course, this is what many cities around the world are trying to do. So perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of this plan is that most Dubliners actually support it.
According to The Irish Times, the plan received more than 3,500 public submissions, and 81% supported "reducing road space for private vehicles to facilitate a more efficient public transport system." Further, 82% said they wanted more pedestrianized public spaces.
There were, however, some concerns expressed. The carpark operators in the city centre are naturally worried about the impact to their businesses. This is expected and self-serving.
Guinness (owned by Diageo) is also asking about how its delivery trucks will get to and from their brewery. This is obviously a crucial consideration. But I'm confident in saying that, whatever gets implemented, I'm sure that nobody is going to mess with the operations of St. James's Gate Brewery.
In fact, I'd be surprised if this weren't written into the Constitution of Ireland somewhere.
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