Toronto gave scramble intersections their first shot on city streets in more than fifty years, as one launched yesterday at Yonge and Dundas. NOW had a video of it yesterday, Spacing's Wire will have a timelapse video shot by Sam Javanrouh later today (here's a preview), and we might have something extra-special on Torontoist this weekend. Never has legally crossing a street been so exciting. Good news for Toronto students! The twenty-three Toronto school......

Toronto Police have just announced [PDF] that the Yonge-Dundas scramble lights, which stop vehicular traffic in all four directions at the intersection simultaneously to allow pedestrians to cross in whatever direction they want, are going into effect as of 11 a.m. Thursday morning. The city, which also briefly experimented with a scramble intersection (also know as the Barnes Dance) in the 1950s, has not-so-elegantly re-anointed it "the Pedestrian Priority Phase."......

Image of The Star's coverage from June 21, 1954. News of the city's upcoming experiment with a pedestrian scramble crossing at Yonge and Dundas has been discussed widely. But until Torontoist reader Don Cumming sent us a tip, few of us realized that Toronto first experimented with this idea over 50 years ago. The concept of stopping all traffic so pedestrians can cross an intersection in every direction is also known as a "Barnes......

Something about this picture is about to change. As reported by Spacing's Wire this morning, new signal lights due to start working about a month from now will be the first sign of a new type of intersection in Toronto. It’s known as a “scramble intersection,” because traffic from both directions is periodically stopped at once, allowing pedestrians to cross whichever way they want. Turning cars will no longer have to compete with pedestrians,......