Comment 101973

By IRC22 (registered) | Posted June 03, 2014 at 12:56:19 in reply to Comment 95586

One-way streets also increase the risk of injury and death in three ways. First, one-way street designs encourage dangerously fast speeds, and the kinetic energy of a car increases exponentially as speed increases linearly.

The assumption is one-way streets lead to faster speeds than two-ways. When traffic signals are very close together, they can be timed for a set speed limit. As an example, downtown Portland, Oregon times their network of one-way streets for 12 mph. You don't have this "throttling back" ability with two-way streets. If downtown Portland were all two-way streets, the operating speeds of drivers would undoubtedly increase.

Second, one-way street designs encourage more cut-through driving, and cut-through drivers are more prone to hitting pedestrians than local drivers.

Ehhh.. any study to support this claim?

Third, one-way street designs require more turning movements at intersections, which increases the risk of collision with a pedestrian.

A pedestrian crossing the North leg of a typical intersection with two-way traffic has a lot of potential vehicle conflicts to avoid: -NB thru. -SB thru. -SB right turns. -SB left turns. -EB left turns. -WB right turns.

A pedestrian crossing the North leg of a one-way street network has fewer potential vehicle conflicts to avoid (assume the one-way routes travel NB and EB): -NB thru. -EB left turn.

The number of pedestrian/vehicle conflicts are greatly reduced along one-way streets.

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