Raise the Hammer

In my post on Saturday I misrepresented Ryan McGreal and raisethehammer.org. It is not Ryan McGreal's personal blog. They are a group, very similar to ours, from Hamilton. They have been working on the same type of issues since 2004.

Ryan says, that he will write a blog about scaledown.ca in the near future. I would encourage everyone to visit raisethehammer.org and see how another group in another city is getting on.

Editorial Staff
Editor: Ryan McGreal
Associate Editor: Adrian Duyzer
Graphic Design: Trevor Shaw
Contributing Editors
Accidental Activist: Ben Bull
Photo Essay: Mark Fenton
Downtown Bureau: Jason Leach
Ideas: Ted Mitchell
Suburban Bureau: Trevor Shaw
Entertainment: Kevin Somers

Molasses in January

"you know I work so hard

to keep it alive
now all I hear from you

is nothin' but jive

lately it's been so hard now

to make ends meet

and honey, your head's

a one way street"

-Aerosmith

Recently, Scale Down writers and readers engaged in some lively online discussions about downtown traffic patterns and our obsession with one-way streets. I just wanted to give everyone some welcome news that Andrew from International Metropolis forwarded to me. It seems as though those one-way streets were just an experiment and will be going away shortly.

WINDSOR DAILY STAR - WEDNESDAY, MAY 18, 1955

ONE WAY STREETS
SIX MONTH TEST PERIOD GIVEN OKAY
Council Approves Truck Route Plan, New Parking Site

A limited one-way street plan to relieve downtown congestion was approved by council last night. It will go into effect for a six months’ trial period.

Under the scheme, Victoria becomes a southbound artery and Pelissier northbound, between Chatham and Erie streets. Trucks over three tons gross weight are prohibited.

Ald. Albert H. Weeks said he opposed the limited plan which would create Victoria southbound when Dougall, the next street west is also southbound.

Ald. Maurice Belanger, chairman of the traffic committee said, “We have advertised this proposed change several times. There has been no opposition at all. Ald. Weeks, you are the only one to oppose the move so far.”

Controller Lawrence A. Deziel said, “I think it is goofy to have Victoria southbound one-way alongside Dougall which is already southbound one-way. Dougall should be changed to a two-way artery.”

Ald. Belanger said, “Let this go through tonight and let’s consider Dougall later on.”

The one-way pattern, proposed by the committee, was approved as was Traffic Co-ordinator Eric Wiley’s truck route proposal.

The truck route plan calls for construction work at the southwest corner of Wellington and Wyandotte and the northeast corner of Wellington and Tecumseh, for easier turning.

Use of Tecumseh, Wellington and either College or Wyandotte would keep heavy transports out of the downtown area.

Both projects will now go to the desk of City Solicitor James Watson, for inclusion in the next bylaw to amend the traffic law.

Third reading was given to a bylaw expropriating a Victoria Avenue site for an off street parking lot.

The lot, first in a series of properties to be expropriated for off-street parking stretches along the west side of Victoria from Park to the Guaranty Trust Building. It now contains three houses and an automobile storage yard.

Council adopted a recommendation from the board of control that City Treasurer E.J. Langlois be authorized to negotiate a short-term loan to cover the cost of the
property.

Under provisions of the Ontario Municipal Act, the city may either negotiate with the owners of the property, or take the setting price to arbitration.

Er, well, maybe not that shortly. Luckily, Windsor's recently adopted Downtown Windsor Master Transportation Plan is readdressing the one-way fiasco (albeit 53 years later than expected) and will, hopefully, see the light in ending this "experiment"

Hundreds of cities and towns across the North America are converting their 1950s-era one-ways back into two-ways to reduce speeding, help local business and keep pedestrians -- especially children -- safer. They are doing so because a growing body of research shows that one-way street grids create a number of signficant problems for pedestrians and the city as a whole:

One-way street grids force motorists to drive more to get to their destination.
Rather than simply making one turn and driving half a block, on a one-way street grid drivers often must circle an entire block to get to where they want to go. Not only does this additional driving waste time and gasoline and produce more traffic congestion and carbon emissions, "the increase in the number of turning movements and total miles of travel" makes the street more dangerous for pedestrians too. "There are simply more (typically 30-40 percent) vehicle/pedestrian conflicts within a one-way street network than in a comparable two-way system," according to a 1999 study presented to the Federal Transportation Research Board and a 2004 article in the Journal of the Institute of Engineers.

One-way streets tend to encourage faster speeds.
The federal report, "A Review of Pedestrian Safety Research in the United States and Abroad," states, "vehicle speeds may increase after conversion from two-way to one-way." But residents of this New York street don't need a study to tell them that. The vehicles careening down one-way Eighth Avenue and Prospect Park West at 40+ mph are the most "logical presentation" anyone needs.

One-way streets are more dangerous for pedestrians, especially for children.
A 2003 study published in the American Journal of Public Health notes, "Higher vehicle speeds are strongly associated with a greater likelihood of crashes involving pedestrians as well as more serious pedestrian injuries." And who gets hurt most on these higher-speed streets? "Children ages 5 to 9 have the highest population-based injury rate in pedestrian-motor vehicle accidents."According to this 2000 study in the Canadian Journal of Public Health, "Children's injury rate was 2.5 times higher on one-way streets than on two-way streets"

So it seems that when council finally changes our tourist-confounding one-way streets back to the two-ways they were intended to be, we may just have a safer, more environmentally friendly downtown.

I think this experiment is finished.