Charles Durning Carroll

Traffic islands are a great thing. They not only allow pedestrians to halve their crossing time, but they beautify the ugliness of streets, and most importantly, they take space away from cars!

In Toronto, where I live now, there are no traffic islands except on University avenue. There they are wonderful except that the avenue itself is so dead. Because of the big office and industrial buildings there there are never any pedestrians along the avenue.

In comparison, here I have a picture of the wonderful Astor Place traffic island with its cool and crazy cube. It’s kind of empty in this picture, but its usually very busy. Just try this island at rush hour on a weekday!

Too many North American cities are generous to the car. Many people with cars love this, of course. University Avenue in Toronto has three lanes going each way, as does Avenue Road. With three lanes each way we’ve got a bloody highway in the middle of the city.

As we know highways are deadly to cities. New York, in contrast to Toronto, forces one-way traffic on most streets. This slows traffic down, allows more human population density, and is safer overall for everyone concerned.