I have always wondered about the 2 way street dilemna. Here we keep talking about converting the one way streets to two way as a cheap and effective way to promote ease of use, per se, of downtown. However, I have never seen a downtown of a major city that has more 2-ways than 1-ways (granted I haven't been most places). Successful cities that utilize 1-ways: New York, DC, Atlanta, Philly, and I never really paid attention elsewhere, but these cities come to mind. It seems as if most core streets in these cities except for cross streets (and even then) are 1-way.Are we positive that creating 2-ways would benefit downtown more than inhibit it? I think 1-ways are easy...if you are walking (or even driving) you know which direction the cars are coming from. If you are driving you can get anywhere by making all right hand turns. Intersections don't need turn lanes or turn signals and lights can be more easily timed.
How $500 Million Turned Car-Centric Indianapolis Into a More Walkable CityLow-slung homes, green lawns and no sidewalks: Many neighborhoods just outside downtown Indianapolis showcase the suburban ideal of the 1950s and 1960s. Developed at the height of the automobile, they made Indiana’s capital city a car-centric town. Paths are sometimes worn through the grass like an urban trail, a stripe of pounded dirt cutting through the green that marks how residents have nonetheless found a way to walk their dogs and visit their neighbors on foot.Despite the apparent need for sidewalks, Indianapolis went more than 20 years without constructing one. With a consolidated city-county government, the footprint of municipal services encompasses 3,000 miles of thoroughfares and residential streets over 400 square miles. But it’s not just cars and bikes navigating those streets; there are also pedestrians on the asphalt, hugging the side of the road and trying to patch their way through a city that wasn’t designed with them in mind.But in 2010, Indianapolis saw an infusion of $500 million after it sold its water and sewer utility to a public charitable trust. That money was designated for investment in infrastructure projects in a five-year program called RebuildIndy. Fifty public meetings were held to gather ideas for how to spend the money.“Consistently, sidewalks were at or near top of list, along with trails and bikeways,” says Scott Manning, communications director at Indy’s Department of Public Works. While a zoning change in the 1990s required that new developments install sidewalks, there hadn’t been enough major projects for that to make a dent. The approximate cost to build all the missing sidewalks along thoroughfares had swelled to $365 million. People were ready for a change.
