Walking in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

I think others have discredited the notion of ramps or tunnels enough.

As busy as King and University is, it is not busy enough to warrant a scramble. Even Toronto, with much heavier pedestrian volumes shut down/reverted a scramble because it did not demonstrate enough benefit to pedestrians.

The King and University Intersection could be greatly improved by other means:
-tightening the turning radiuses forces drivers to slow down and shortens crossing distances
-narrowing lanes also shortens crossing distances and people drive slower
-adding refuge islands, and
-add leading pedestrian intervals on all the signal phases.

Also, although they too don't have enough pedestrian volume to warrant a scramble I think the Caroline/Erb intersection and Courtland/Stirling could be implemented with great benefit to the pedestrians that do use them without over-penalizing vehicles on the road.

For example, Caroline/Erb could have looked like this (also assumes two-way conversion of Caroline/Bridgeport and Erb) - especially with the Ion coming through every 4 minutes:

While I agree with most everything you say, the other improvements you list are definitely worth doing, I'd argue that neither of us really know the traffic volumes at King/University of either peds or vehicles, but I think there's probably enough. And I do feel it's important to reiterate that it has benefits for drivers too, in terms of operations.  I think it would make the entire intersection operate with less conflict. The other advantage is a scramble could be implemented with paint and programming, the other enhancements somewhat less so.

I do agree that Caroline/Erb has more clear benefit for pedestrians (although, that whole intersection is a mess in so many ways).