Raise the Hammer

One-way apologists

I grew up on these one way streets. I learned to drive on them and I've walked and biked many miles along them. I make no apologies, they've served Hamiltons traffic well, but I understand your point. I'm also very used to out-of-town folk complaining about them.

As responsible parents teach their children, you always have to look both ways on every street, because people make mistakes and drivers sometimes go the wrong way on one-way streets.

Sure, but that's an unusual circumstance. You need less two way situational awareness for a one way street. It's easier to keep your eye on the traffic and to predict where the traffic will come from. There are fewer opportunities for a car to "suddenly appear". Two way streets are far more dangerous that one way streets. Portland has had a 100% increase, Sacramento 163% increase in pedestrian accidents since two way conversions. As I said above, even our own two way conversions have had an increase in pedestrian accidents.

One-way streets allow for faster driving, and the risk of both collision and of injury in a collision increase exponentially with vehicle speed.

We have these things called "speed limits" that control the speed traffic moves at. One way streets are certainly more efficient for moving traffic and have less problems with congestion. Perhaps that's what you mean? Two vehicles moving opposite direction colliding is far worse than two vehicles driving the same way colliding.

One-way streets require more turns at intersections (the overshoot-and-backtrack phenomenon) and vehicle turns are among the most risky situations for crossing pedestrians.

The left hand turn across traffic the the most dangerous maneuver for both vehicles and pedestrians. One way streets mitigate this. Vehicle collisions on two way streets are much more dangerous than one way streets for example the head on collision vs the rear end collision.

One-way street designs discourage drivers from being highly aware of their surroundings because they're designed to facilitate unidirectional monolithic traffic flow, not to mediate safe interactions among various directions and modes.

Certainly there are fewer things you need to pay attention to. All other directions and modes can be aware of a unidirectional, monolithic travel flow easier than random, sporadic flow from both directions. It lessens moments of "where did that car come from" and provides natural breaks in traffic. I get very confused when you show us picture after picture of empty roads and then tell us how dangerous the street is. As a pedestrian it's pretty easy to keep track of traffic and it's pretty easy to find safe times to cross.

One-way street designs encourage through driving, and the evidence demonstrates that through drivers are more likely to hit pedestrians than local drivers.

It seems a lot of your points are based on predicting human behaviour. It makes sense that non-local drivers would be looking at street signs, not aware of crossings and are unfamiliar with the road itself. They could still be driving through the area on a two way street.

I don't believe every street should be one way, but the bigger problem with Cannon, Main, King and a variety of other Hamilton streets is there are functioning curb lanes, with cars travelling 50k a mere foot (or less) from narrow sidewalks. Let's protect the sidewalks and separate the traffic with protected bike paths, parking, street furniture and the like. I'd rather have 2 one way lanes than 4 two way lanes.