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.

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.