The Case Against One-Way Streets

You might say that a number of cities are heading the other direction on one-way streets. Dallas, Denver, Sacramento, and Tampa are just some of the places that have converted one-ways into two-way streets in recent years. Any number of reasons are cited for the shift:

One thing that's not typically cited is traffic flow. Cities have long been home to one-way streets because transportation engineers believe they move cars better than two-way streets do. That's largely the case because one-way streets eliminate tough left turns through oncoming traffic. Any way around conflicting lefts, on two-way streets, creates congestion: left-turn lanes take up space, and guarded signals take up time.