Pedestrian scramble in Toronto

also known as the Barnes Dance, named after the traffic engineer who coined the activity, Toronto is launching a pedestrian scramble intersection, where at one point in the signal cycle, all lights are red, and pedestrians can move in any direction. See "Green light for 'pedestrian scramble' " from the Toronto Globe & Mail.

New multidirectional crosswalks were completed at the Yonge-Dundas intersection Wednesday as new signs waited to be unveiled. Today, the new priority is pedestrians. (Charla Jones/Globe and Mail)

From the article:

From behind a windshield, however, the change may not be so popular. It will mean much longer red lights for drivers to make way for this new 28-second, pedestrian-only phase in the traffic-light cycle. Currently, the longest wait at this intersection for drivers (those on Yonge Street) is 31 seconds. As of today, the longest wait for a green light will stretch to 57 seconds, and green lights for drivers will also be five to eight seconds shorter.

The scramble concept, long ago implemented in several other cities around the world, is also known as a "Barnes dance," after Henry Barnes, a traffic commissioner in Denver credited with coming up with the idea there in the 1950s and reportedly making pedestrians so happy they were "dancing in the streets."

However, here in safety-conscious Toronto, the preferred term is "pedestrian priority phase," said John Mende, the city's director of traffic infrastructure management.

This is being considered, selectively, in DC, where such crossing options were employed at certain intersections Downtown.