Raise the Hammer

The first article doesn't specifically address safety as it relates to one-way streets; merely reiterates the well known fact that the safer the road, the better. No arguments there. So...which is safer?

I had to dig for the second article, since the linked url is bad, and the specific article wasn't noted, but found it here: The Journal of the Institution of Engineers Singapore - A Microscopic Simulation Study of Two-Way Street Network VS One-Way Street Network. (Click on the 'Cached' link to the right--the download link goes to the same bad url as the one above). Yep, it's the results of a computer model that indicate pedestrians and cars meet up more often. Not that they're more dangerous, just that there are more of them, because cars have to loop around. It's not even the point of the study--merely a side note on a study showing that one-way streets are faster and more environmentally friendly than two-way.

The third is not an article from a journal, but an opinion paper presented to a symposium, noting no studies, no data analysis, no empirical evidence to support themselves. It also stops short of claiming that two-ways are safer than one-ways, choosing rather to limit itself to the increase in 'potential conflicts' within an interesection. Except that its analysis directly conflicts with one published in 1998 in the Journal of the Institute of Transportation Engineers, which found the number of conflicts of two-way to be at least six times more than one-way. While perhaps not relevant, it is worth noting that the article is written by a private engineering firm with a vested interest in converting one-way streets into two-way streets.

Which brings us to the final article, which has been refuted multiple times by both myself and SpaceMonkey (and, oddly, referenced in the article noted above).

I did, however, find this article interesting: No Two Ways About It: One-Way Streets Are Better than Two-Way.

Now, to be clear, I'm all for converting to two-way, despite the fact that it will make my commute...less than pleasant. But to claim that it's somehow safer than one-way, or that the above article somehow puts the entire issue to bed, is completely false.

Comment edited by jonathan on 2012-05-23 23:28:24