Quote:
Originally Posted by hymalaia
what about cycling? Nothing is more frickin' annoying than trying to make your way around downtown on a bike, flowing with traffic, only to keep having to go round about routes to deal with all the stupid one way streets. It especially sucks if you don't know the street layout aka forget about visitors and tourists cycling downtown.
I'll agree that west Burnside sucks for peds and the one-ways do make walking easier. But I'm not convinced that one-way streets are all that great. Mostly they just confuse visitors. Maybe that's the point?
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Downtown would be gridlock with two-way streets. Most of the east/west streets downtown are two lanes wide. Making them two-way would mean all traffic lanes would be subject to being stuck behind cars waiting to make left turns at each intersection, unless left turns were not allowed and then cars would have to go to the next street and make a right and go around the (incredibly long 200') block... just like today.
And how would you propose turning the currently three-lanes-wide north/south avenues into two-way streets? Center left turn lane with only two through lanes (one in each direction)? Two lanes one direction, one lane the other? Take out one side of parking to make two lanes in each direction? Take out parking on both sides for two travel lanes each direction plus a center turn lane? That would make every north-south avenue downtown a Burnside Street.
One way streets are very effective at traffic flow, and much more efficient than allowing left turns in front of on-coming traffic. Who the hell cares about confused tourists?
For a cyclist relying upon body power I can see where having to go around the block to account for the one-way street grid might be a burden. But to simply label them "stupid one way streets" is, to me, stupid.