Two-way streets: safer and better for business

Here’s a recent article from the Louisville Courier-Journal about the relative merits of one-way and two-way streets. Here are some choice quotes from the article:

One-way streets pose many threats for pedestrian and motorist safety, make city streets seem less safe, disproportionately impact poor and minority neighborhoods, hurt downtown businesses, reduce the property values of homes and negatively impact the environment and contribute to global warming. Conversions to two-way have already happened in more than 100 cities around the United States.

These one-way streets also constitute a kind of “environmental racism,” where speeding motorists on one-way streets increase the levels of exhaust, noise and pollution. […]

One-way streets have hurt downtown commercial businesses. For instance, on Vine Street in Cincinnati, 40 percent of the businesses closed after conversion from a two-way to a one-way street. One-way streets have a negative impact on storefront exposure, which is lost when one direction of travel is eliminated and traffic is speeded up.

It seems pretty clear that the same thing has happened on Skillman and 43rd Avenues. Making them two-way again would do a lot to help safety and businesses.

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