Last week in Japan was the first time I had ever driven a car on the left side of road. I spent a summer working in Dublin many years ago but I never once drove while I was there.

To be honest, I thought it was going to be more awkward than it was. But other than accidentally turning on the wipers a few times (they were on the opposite side to where turn signals typically live), it came to me pretty quickly.

I also noticed that left-hand traffic seems to impact the flow of many other things in Japan. On sidewalks, for example, people walk on the left. And on escalators, everyone stands on the left (and walks on the right), whereas the opposite tends to be true in Toronto.

Japan is also an orderly and rule-abiding place and so these conventions are widely followed. On more than a few occasions, I realized I was swimming upstream and then quickly switched sides.

What’s interesting is how this directional convention permeates so many aspects of everyday life. Which begs the question: where and when did it start? Do the "rules of the road" always influence everything else?

The answer seems to be that nobody really knows. There are many unproven theories. Some suggest that it has to do with how horses were ridden and walked, and that ~90% of people are right-handed.

But I couldn’t find anything definitive. What we do seem to know, at least anecdotally, is that once a side is chosen, it broadly impacts how people generally move around. Pay attention the next time you're on a busy sidewalk.

Let's resume looking at sidewalks and public spaces.

If you look in the City of Toronto's Official Plan for the stretch of Dundas Street West that runs between Dupont Street and Bloor Street West, you'll find a map that looks like this:

Red signifies "Mixed Use." And so if you were to just look at this map, you might naturally assume that, in the real world, this is a continuous main street that connects The Junction neighborhood down to Bloor. But that's not actually the case. Instead, it looks like this:

Because of the rail corridor on the east side, it is a single-sided street. And generally speaking, these don't make for the best retail streets. But it also has narrow sidewalks and a compromised public realm. If you go back to the map I shared yesterday, you get this:

I don't think 30cm is entirely accurate here, but that's beside the point. What matters is that this is just one of many examples in the city of a discontinuous public realm. (Here's another, undignified example, from Parkside Drive.)

Over the years, there have been a number of design concepts proposed. Below is one by Brown + Storey Architects that was done I don't know how many years ago. Their proposal widened the sidewalks along this stretch, and added bike lanes. They also proposed a roundabout at the intersection of Dundas, Dupont, and Annette, which is another matter that needs addressing.

But none of this has been implemented and I don't know of any plans to do it. When we were going through the rezoning process for Junction House, we were made aware of some transportation studies that had been done for the above intersection. But that's about it. There wasn't an actual ETA.

However, now that my commute consists of walking up and down this part of Dundas, I've been thinking more about how it could be improved.

I think there's no question that the sidewalks need to be widened. It would also be helpful if there were crosswalks to facilitate getting off the south end of this exotic island:

But equally important, I think that something should be done about the single-sided nature of the street. Given that there's limited width, my mind immediately goes to shipping containers, or something similar, to start activating the east side of the street.

This has already been done further south on Dundas (east of Bathurst):

And it could work here too. Already there's a Blondie's Pizza anchoring the south end of this stretch (really fantastic pizza, by the way):

But I would love to hear your ideas, as I'm currently in the market. I also don't think that you necessarily need to be from Toronto in order to comment. Great streets are great streets. So if it were up to you, what would you change, if anything, about this part of Dundas Street West? Let me know in the comment section below.

Here's some recent data, via CityLab, suggesting that Americans are walking less and driving less, but killing more people when they do drive around. (The report is based on data from 2019 to 2022.)

My first reaction to these high-level findings is that they seem to make sense. This time period was the pandemic. And people were locked away at home (though I used to take some seriously long walks around downtown during this dark time).

So I don't know, I'm not sure we can conclude that walking less is truly a structural phenomenon. Similarly, I'm not sure that we can immediately conclude that cars are becoming increasingly more dangerous.

According to Wikipedia, deaths per capita, deaths per billion vehicle miles traveled, and total deaths, have all been generally declining in the US since the 1960s.

However, I do wonder if there's some sort of correlation between people walking less and car-related fatalities. The most dangerous streets, in my mind, are often the ones that don't have a lot of pedestrians.

That's why, broadly speaking, it feels safer walking around Manhattan than it does Los Angeles. So maybe less people walking is enough to trigger an increase in pedestrian fatalities.