Raise the Hammer

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/08/...

"Two years ago, city crews went to St. Paul Street — the one-way spine of downtown St. Catharines, Ont. — took down the “no entry” signs, painted new lines and opened up the street to two-way traffic. According to planners, it would slow cars down, make the downtown more pedestrian friendly and spur retail development.

People, especially businesspeople, didn’t like it. And then they did.

Lured by the new two-way, the Wine Council of Ontario included St. Paul Street in its redrafted Ontario Wine Route. Crews are currently at work on a new St. Paul Street performing arts centre. Slower-moving drivers have reported discovering stores and restaurants they never noticed before.

“It was somewhat controversial at first, but I would say now that, without exaggeration, people are 90% in favour,” said Brian McMullan, the city’s ebullient young mayor.

“A prominent local businessman came up to me the other day and said, ‘I didn’t support it from the start, but this is the best thing you’ve ever done.’ ”

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"St. Catharines was only following the example of hundreds of cities in the United States and Canada that have been shutting down their one-way streets since the 1990s. In Ottawa last week, planners announced they are considering the two-way conversion of several streets in the shadow of Parliament Hill. Two-way roads would help to “‘normalize’ the streets, by slowing traffic,..."

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"The recently elected mayor of Lexington, Kentucky, took office on a promise to stop the “jammering and jabbering” and scrub the downtown clean of one-way streets. In 2009, Perth, Australia, drafted a bold plan to systematically eliminate almost all one-way streets in the regional capital of 1.5 million people. Only a handful of “narrow local streets” would escape the city-wide wave of conversions, according to Perth’s official website."

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"“The one-way is designed to maximize efficiency for the car; that’s its purpose,” said Larry Frank, the UBC-based J. Armand Bombardier Chair in Sustainable Urban Transportation Systems....

The effects on urban cores were immediate. In small towns, the conversion of Main Street to one-way was usually the first harbinger of urban blight. A much-quoted statistic holds that 40% of the businesses on Cincinnati’s Vine Street closed after it became a one-way...

Since they encourage higher speeds, one-ways have consistently been found to be hot spots for pedestrian fatalities. In a 2000 paper examining pedestrian safety on one-ways, researchers analyzed traffic statistics in Hamilton from 1978 to 1994 and concluded that a child was 2.5 times more likely to be hit by a car on a one-way street."

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"Forfar, Scotland, was once the site of a major castle where Scottish clans plotted their resistance against the Roman Invasion, but now it is a quiet market town about 90 minutes north of Edinburgh. Castle Street, the narrow road bisecting the town, had been two-way since it was little more than a dirt track through the lowlands. Last summer, city council voted to transform the retail street into a one-way thoroughfare. “The traffic is faster, there’s no doubt about that,” said Alastair Cameron, the leader of a community movement against the one-way conversion. The road is riskier for pedestrians, sales have plummeted "

Comment edited by George on 2012-05-16 11:12:58