Continuing with the transportation topic, I must express my admiration to the fact that most roads here are straight, and most junctions and bridges meet at exactly ninety degrees. Although mathematically a city with randomly oriented streets has on average shorter distances than a city on a grid, navigation is easier on grids. The exception is highway entrances to cities. It seems like every self-respecting large American city must have a maze of bridge at its entrance. These highways are not tolerant for mistakes, which may take you to the wrong part of the city. In Toronto there are places where street names are almost invisible. They are there, somewhere, buried in visual clutter of hundred store signs and flashing advertisements. You really have to prepare for the drive, because unfortunately cars don’t have yet a "back" button.
Most traffic lights have only two states. That means that when you turn right, pedestrians have a green light. When you turn left, both incoming traffic and pedestrians have green light. The result is turning left in yellow and right in red (which is allowed). Recently, countdown lights are being replacing the pedestrians’ lights. However, many people underestimate the number of seconds it takes to cross an intersection. Another interesting feature of intersections is that bus stations are located right before them. During red light passengers get on and off the bus without interfering traffic. This is clever, since a stop after an intersection always blocks the traffic (and may create a line of cars into the intersection), while a stop before blocks on average only half of the time. The arrangement requires drivers following the bus to wait patiently when the light is green.
There is a very high awareness here for accessibility in public areas. For instance, sidewalks are of standard width and have ramps at the corners. Busses have hydraulic ramps carrying people on wheelchairs inside. Once places are accessible as a rule, disabled people can drive on motorized wheelchairs, which are in fact faster than walking. The general attitude of disabled people here is to get out and do whatever they can on their own, rather than staying at home and have others to take care of them. As it turns out, accessible ways are important not only for wheelchairs, blind, and elderly people. They are useful for all kinds of carts, and there is even a small cleaning vehicle that drives on the sidewalks. Obviously, when they built the city they couldn’t image that one day vehicles will be driving on the sidewalks, but they definitely had a very strong sense of standards and straightness that made this possible.
Navigation and accessibility don’t end with city planers. A visitor from Microsoft some time ago told us that according to the US government regulations, every product purchased by the government has to be fully accessible to disabled people. This is one of the major concerns when Microsoft develops and tests user interfaces. They even have to design interfaces with displays for blind, music players for deaf and so on. However, they found out that in general, simple and more accessible designs are better designs for everyone.
