Eliminate our one-way streets

[SteelTown]

Wide one-way streets are taking downtown in the wrong direction

February 16, 2008
Terry Cooke
The Hamilton Spectator

"Oppressive four-lane one-way streets help kill neighbourhoods and small businesses."

--Matt Hanka and John Gilderbloom, Louisville Courier-Journal, Feb. 1

Hamilton council should summon the political courage to simply eliminate our anachronistic system of one-way streets. No more public-policy baby steps and enough already with pilot projects like the now three-year-old conversions of James and John streets.

It's time to simply abandon an idea of the 1950s that serves only as a deterrent to restoring livable neighbourhoods in the heart of Hamilton.

I know that such a radical change will provoke some motorists who believe they enjoy an inalienable right to make a quick trip through downtown. And I don't for a minute underestimate the potential for political backlash on the issue in a community where the car is king and change never seems to happen easily.

I learned that lesson the hard way as a political novice when I initiated the creation of a regionwide system of bicycle paths in the late 1980s. We formed a committee of citizens to oversee the process, hired technical experts to design a concept plan (including both on-street bike lanes and rail trails) and got council to approve a capital budget. So far so good, I thought.

But when we actually converted one of the five vehicular lanes on Main and King streets to dedicated bicycle lanes in 1993, all hell broke loose. Angry drivers who experienced some minor traffic delays adjusting to the changes literally lit up the switchboard at City Hall. The Spectator then piled on with front-page coverage of an accident in which a cyclist was hit on Main Street.

Regional council quickly caved to the pressure and abandoned the project. That political debacle remains seared in the memory of veteran city councillors. This explains in part the trepidation with which they now approach the issue of one-way street conversions.

But much changed in Hamilton in the ensuing 15 years. Both our civic attitudes and our infrastructure are better equipped today to support a fundamental shift in favour of neighbourhoods, transit, pedestrians and cyclists, with less emphasis on moving large volumes of cars through the core.

Not the least of these changes is the opening of the Linc and Red Hill Valley parkways, which provide a better way for drivers interested only in getting across town quickly. But perhaps more important are lessons learned in more than 100 North American cities from Sacramento to Seattle that have successfully reconverted one-way streets to two-way.

The reasons for the trend are open to debate, but in essence it comes down to calming traffic so that people feel safe living along these streets. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand why a five-lane expressway like Main Street through the middle of a residential neighbourhood is incompatible with raising a young family or running a successful small business.

Mary Pocius is executive director of the International Village Business Improvement Area and the mother hen of Hamilton's downtown renewal efforts. In Pocius's words, "no single action could do more to improve the lives of downtown citizens and businesses than the elimination of one-way streets."

Fortuitously for Pocius and for Hamilton, she has a political champion in downtown Councillor Bob Bratina and an ally in Mayor Fred Eisenberger, both of whom share her ambitious vision of more livable, prosperous downtown neighbourhoods and businesses. But first they must convince a majority of city council to come with them down that two-way street.