Is There a "One-Way Epidemic"?

Recently, City Limits ran an op-ed by architect John Massengale about the need for safer street design. Under the photo at the top, the caption read: "First Avenue in Manhattan. Avenues used to run two-way, which is safer for pedestrians, but were mostly made one-way, to make life easier for drivers." This argument was elaborated in detail in the text. This week, Cap'n Transit followed up on his blog, extending the campaign against one-way streets.

These are familiar arguments. After beginning a discussion a while ago about one-way streets, it was suggested that I refer to "The One-Way Epidemic" section in Walkable City, which makes these same claims. These pieces all serve as good examples for discussion purposes. I wholeheartedly agree with the need to redesign New York City's streets to be safer for pedestrians, and I share the majority of the views of these safe-street advocates. I find some areas of common ground regarding one-way streets, as well, but it is useful to draw out the key differences as well as the overlap to illustrate why the rhetoric against one-way streets is overblown and counterproductive.

Let's start with the term "epidemic" used in Walkable City. This is rhetoric that invokes fear. The book explicitly compares the creation of one-way streets with an outbreak of influenza that killed 20 million people in 1918-1919. The not-so-subtle claim is that one-way streets are an imminent threat to your life. Avoid them like the plague!

Those Old-School Traffic Engineers

It has become popular to indict traffic engineers of yesteryear as men so determined to move cars more quickly they disregarded the safety of pedestrians just trying to get across the street alive. This criticism that they were anti-pedestrian is an uncharitable view. It ignores the historical record, unfairly excluding their deliberate attempts to improve pedestrian safety. So in the words of Al Smith: Let's look at the record.

To illustrate this, we don't have to look any further than the language commonly used to criticize the engineers who designed one-way streets decades ago. Consider this example, which is typical of comments made by many observers of streets (who are well intentioned and otherwise often well-informed):

The city's avenues were converted to one-way for one reason only: to give the city's driving elite priority over its walking majority.