Scramble from Sam Javanrouh on Vimeo.
I saw this on Streetsblog this morning—it’s a great time-lapse video of Toronto’s first Scramble intersection. Yes, truly mesmerizing.
I’ve always admired these intersections in the financial district of San Francisco. The concept is so basic. All pedestrians traveling all directions cross at the same time. These intersections ease frustration for motorists, pedestrians and cyclists alike. I bet the number of injuries caused by angry motorists sneaking right turns through pedestrian laden crosswalks are greatly reduced.
Why aren’t these types of intersections standard in all busy downtown cores?
– Anne
Anne & Tim
Tim King
Anne
cfdgirl
Tim K
Car Free Days 
Regular intersections are more efficient at moving people and vehicles if (and it’s a very big if) everyone follows the simple rules: pedestrians can only start crossing with the walk signal, and vehicles must yield to any pedestrians in the crosswalk.
We got one of those on the magical island of West Seattle! It’s super fun to go cattywampus kittycorner scramble across the diagonal.
Hi Anne
In the ‘everything old is new again’ veign, there was one of these ‘scramble’ crossings when I was growing up, circa 1960, in Victoria, BC, Canada.
Worked fines as I recall, but was removed in favour of the more ‘modern’ standard crossing.
Likewise the ‘traffic circle’ that used to deal fairly well with traffic at the intersection of five roads. Gone but not forgotten.
Ron Richings Vancouver, BC, Canada
I think one of these intersections is what’s needed at Blakeley and 25th in Seattle near University Village. It’s supposedly the most dangerous bike-car intersection in the city.
Most likely that’s because cars swing around the corner w/o seeing bikes and bikes, because they are in a trail crossing don’t bother watching for cars. Bad behavior on both sides.
This could be the ticket
I’m hoping to get our local council to put something similar in a local street.
There’s only one problem with the intersection on the viedo- the trams should have priority, and not have to wait with the cars.
There was one of these when I was growing up in Wayne, PA in the 70’s – it may have been there longer. It was in the center of a shopping district, and work well.
While only a 3 way intersection, there’s one on the west end of the Bellevue transit center. The hardest part was figuring out the audio that plays on a loop when the walk sign is on – “walk sign is on for all crossing”.
We have similar junctions in the Netherlands for bicycles. These allow cyclists to get a green light twice as often as drivers, and make their turns without the chance of being on the wrong side of a truck. You can see a couple of videos of such a junction here:
http://hembrow.blogspot.com/2008/08/simultaneous-green.html
Thanks for the heads up David. I’ll be showing those videos locally…
They have some intersections like this in England — I love how quick it is when you want to go diagonally!