Before the morning rush hour, city workers will remove coverings from new pedestrian crossing signals and unveil Toronto's first experimental "pedestrian scramble" intersection, a traffic-light configuration that stops cars in all directions with a red light to allow pedestrians to cross in all directions, even diagonally.

The intersection in question is at Mountain Boulevard at La Salle Avenue, which now has a four-way stop sign. That's where the stoplight is targeted for installation — the first stoplight ever inside the village.

Derek Liecty, a Montclair resident, is spearheading the fight to block the stoplight. He is convinced that it, along with a proposed pedestrian scramble crossing system, will create more problems than it will solve.

"I used to work downtown," says Adair, a Seattle resident, "and I really do like it (the right to cross diagonally)."

So do hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pedestrians who use the so-called pedestrian scramble system daily at First and Pike, near the Pike Place Market.

The scrambles — which permit pedestrians to walk every which way when the "walk" light is on — also are in operation at the Beacon Hill Junction, at Beacon Avenue South and 15th Avenue South, and at the West Seattle Junction, at California Avenue Southwest and Southwest Alaska Street.