Allen + Eglinton Crazieness

I made a comment in the Spacing Toronto explaining the Allen + Eglinton pedestrian craziness:

Funny you should mention this intersection. For a few years I was walking to Eglinton station from the southwest and was always annoyed at how pedestrians are given absolute lowest class status over the cars exiting and entering Allen.

So that cars can quickly exit left form Allen, pedestrians are forced to cross three separate lighted intersections from the southwest to get to the station. The funny thing is, the third crossing seems to be there solely so that cops and cop staff can make an illegal straight cruise from the Allen into the police parking lot.

Almost every pedestrian, including me, would often make a ‘corner cross’ which still let cars turn left unobstructed but would technically block cops from making the illegal crossing. Often the uniformed and un-uniformed cops would yell at (but never ticket as far as I could see) us corner crossers saying we were jay-walking. But for the amount of pedestrians crossing vs. the few amount of cop cars making the Allen exit, it really seems like the pedestrians should have been given that corner crossing. And the cops really had no right to complain, since we were only blocking their illegal moving violation anyway.


Somebody asked for a drawing, so I did one up in Google Maps explaining it.The three blue lines represent the three pedestrian crossings (all having traffic lights) just to get to Eglinton from the SW corner.

The red line is my suggested pedestrain crossing. This is the route that most pedestrians take anyway. This wouldn't block either the right or the left-turning cars, but...

The orange line is the cops' shortcut, which the suggested route would block. But as far as I can see the cops' shortcut is illegal, so why are we making allowances for it?


View Allen + Eglinton Pedestrian Craziness in a larger map

What a great tool for explaining stuff like this.