USA Today ran an article a couple of days ago about cities converting one-way streets back to two way. Evidently one-way streets became popular in fifties to improve traffic flow, and to make evacuation easier in the event of a nuclear attack. The city of Hamilton, Ontario where I grew up had one way streets, which, combined with the synchronized traffic lights, would allow you to drive all the way across the city without stopping if you were going about 30 mph. Unfortunately, this improved traffic flow had the nasty side-effect of hurting a lot of downtown business districts, because drivers often cruise right past the businesses. When combined with the construction of suburban malls and subdivisions, it almost doomed most downtown business districts.
Now many cities are converting some or all of their one-way streets back to two way flow. The intent is to help revitalize urban business districts. However, there is controversy about this move, because the slowing traffic flow, and increased stop and go may increase fuel consumption and pollution. This may indeed be a near term consequence of the change. However, looking longer term there may actually be a benefit to the degraded traffic flow. If the two way streets actually help urban areas to recover economically, more people may move back into city centers rather than living in outlying suburban areas. If this happened than many of those people may end up walking or using mass transit like they do in cities like New York or Chicago rather than driving everywhere. This could conceivably help to improve the environment. Unfortunately, it's not very clear cut as to which way is the most beneficial. Only time will tell.
[Source: USA Today via Hugg.com]
https://www.autoblog.com/2006/12/23/cities-converting-one-way-streets-back-to-two-way/
2006-12-23T20:31:00+00:00