The Worst Traffic Lights in Toronto

The light is green. Really tough to tell eh, and we’re not far from them even.

The sidewalk sign is easily seen, and when the light changes to yellow it’s obvious too, but not the green.

Here, I’ll blow up the photo:

Located at the Yonge and Richmond Street, a one-way road travelling west.

They’re not in need of replacing, they’ve been like this for years. This makes no sense! Every other green light downtown can be seen from far, why are these ones so dim?

Maybe it’s intentional? Like, keep the lights faded so I don’t know what I’m driving into, and naturally slow down.

Then I remembered a story I wrote for the paper in 2013. Maybe these lights have to do with that?

60 intersections in downtown Toronto
are equipped with Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence was added to traffic lights so they could talk to one another, and adjust their timing. When tested, gridlock was reduced up to 40% and travel time was reduced up to 26%.

To instal AI into each intersection costs between $20,000 – $40,000, and the city that was chosen to be the test city is… Toronto.

Read it on Autonet here.