Hong Kong is a bright gleaming city of massive skyscrapers that punch through the clouds like a comb through hair.  And they have traffic. Yet to see the city move people around effortlessly is magical.

Here's four things they do that are obvious.

1. All public busses are double deckers. Twice the passengers but only one driver. Smart.

2. If you simply stand and watch any corner in Toronto that has even a medium amount of pedestrians walking, you'll instantly see those walkers forcing all right turn traffic to a standstill. One car may make the turn when the time of the green light would have allowed 8 to 10 to turn.

All traffic lights work differently than those in North America. Lights are green going east/west. Then lights are green going north/south. Then ALL lights turn red and people walk in any direction, even diagonally, to the next corner.  It's brilliant and costs nothing.

What this means is that on a four lane street (two on each side), no lane has to stop when a light is green.
•  Need to make a right turn? No problem. No one's walking.
•  Going straight? Go right ahead.  
•  Need to make a left turn? If traffic is slow, no problem. Wait for the opening and turn. No one is walking.

Plus, with no one in the crosswalks on any green light, the number of cars hitting pedestrians drops significantly. It is demonstrably safer.

There's one caveat to this that is a must. It MUST be done with all stop lights. Every single one GTA wide. Otherwise no one will know for sure which are 4-way stops, 2-way stops, or something else. It has to be universal with fines for walkers entering the streets when they're supposed to be on the curb. After all, there's entire generations of pedestrians that need to be retrained.

3. Walk times at Hong Kong lights are about 10 seconds less. Ever watch some kid in a cross walk texting while maybe walking one step every 2 seconds? Hong Kong is more like a starting gate. When the light turns, the crowd is moving. No one is sauntering. Everyone makes it to the other side with lots of time to spare. Cutting the current 30 seconds of walk time to 20, also cuts automobile pollution at those stops by a whopping 30% because all those cars are just sitting there idling light after light.

4. They have an incredible subway system. Clearly marked out, massively automated, clean, pretty, and with trains that seem to be miles long.

Every time I visit Toronto and have to put up with its endless traffic delays I muse about what it would be like if they copied Hong Kong. Even just starting with changing the lights. A totally free fix, yet it would make a huge difference to the speed of traffic flow.