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Looking North on Third Street on a Monday afternoon at 3:30pm.
Like many cities, Downtown Columbus is full of one-way streets. Traffic engineers of the mid-twentieth century utilized them as a way of moving as many automobiles as quickly as possible through what were previously congested urban areas. Today, one could argue that one-way streets have done their job a little too well, and have hurt the effectiveness of Downtown revitalization efforts.
“We have made getting in and out of Downtown our highest priority instead of focusing on the quality of the experience,” says Brian Higgins, Founder of Arch City Development, an urban consulting and development firm located here in Columbus. “This perpetuates a circular cycle where people feel forced to drive because transit choices are poor, so we demolish buildings to create cheap parking and sacrifice the walkability of our streets.”
A perfect case study can be found on Spring Street and Long Street in the northeastern quadrant of Downtown where the majority of historic buildings have been lost over the decades to make room for massive surface parking lots that serve the Downtown workforce during weekday business hours. Spring and Long streets were long ago converted into a one-way pair that services traffic entering and exiting our Central Business District via entrances to Interstate 71 on the eastern border of Downtown. Currently, those highway ramps are closed to traffic during a long-term reconstruction project on the interstate. Which begs the question of whether or not Spring Street and Long Street should continue to function as one-way streets.
“We need to have the traffic pattern settle in after the first phase of construction is complete so that we can get an accurate picture of what we are dealing with before we make any changes,” says Rick Tilton, Assistant Director at The Department of Public Service for The City of Columbus. “If we try to make some guesses now, we could make a bigger mess than if we just waited to see what the traffic patterns are like after this phase of construction is done. So the plan is, after each phase gets done, we’ll take another look and see if it is feasible to go to two-way.”
Several Downtown streets have already been converted to two-way over the past decade, including portions of South Front Street, Town Street, Civic Center Drive and the much-lauded Gay Street, which has seen a redevelopment resurgence following its conversion. City officials see Spring and Long streets as unique challenges for conversion.
“Spring and Long are a lot more complex when it comes to the two-way issue,” explains Bud Braughton, Engineer of Downtown Projects for The City of Columbus. “The 2006 Downtown Columbus Circulation Study looked at those streets and didn’t recommend them for conversion because they would be high-risk. Not so much because of the area by Interstate 71, but because it would start to make intersections really congested and cause gridlock from Fourth Street back to High Street.”
Cleve Ricksecker, Executive Director of Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District, served on the 2006 Circulation Study group and agrees that keeping certain Downtown streets in a one-way configuration can be beneficial.
“After weighing the pros and cons, the group recommended keeping them one-way to allow for traffic calming measures, including unrestricted on-street parking at parking meters,” he explains. “A two-way conversion would not allow for these measures. Unfortunately, the traffic calming measures were never implemented.”
Without traffic calming, vehicles traveling on these five-lane-wide streets can easily exceed the 35 mile-per-hour speed limits, as the built environment provides a wide path where it can feel natural to drive even faster, particularly during off-peak hours when traffic levels are low. If cars are exceeding 40 to 45 miles-per-hour, an unsafe environment is being created for pedestrians, cyclists, transit vehicles making frequent stops, and turning vehicles with limited lines of sight that can emerge from alleyways and cross-streets.
“Traffic calming is an excellent idea and the increased safety is exactly the reason why we need to seriously consider replicating this model throughout Downtown, Italian Village and Weinland Park,” says Higgins.
Randy Simes, an Urban Planner with CH2M HILL, agrees that safety is an important issue for consideration.
“While converting one-way streets to two-way streets may slow down traffic and offer better access to small businesses, it also increases the number of conflict points for pedestrians and bicyclists,” he says. “The safety of these two modes of transportation is often what drives the conversion of one-way streets to two-way, but that is not always what is achieved.”
Braughton also expresses concern that conversions to two-way streets can create additional safety risks during rush hour gridlock.
“What we are worried about is when we start making a situation out there dangerous because people are taking chances,” he states. “Drivers sit through a light that they’ve already seen change twice due to gridlocked traffic, and they run through it because they don’t want to watch it change red again. That’s what we’ve got to prevent.”
Higgins strongly disagrees.
“Sorry, but we can’t plan around the stupidity of drivers,” he says. “What if drivers start taking chances? What if pedestrians run amuck in the streets? What will happen to traffic during a zombie apocalypse? I would be very disappointed if we actively started assuming that people are going to be road rage jerks, and then started planning for it!”
With disagreements being commonplace between planners, engineers, neighborhood leaders, city leaders and residents, is there a realistic “happy medium” to be found? Is there a balance to be achieved between automobile traffic, pedestrian safety, the urban experience and other factors?
“The City of Columbus is generally too concerned about order and traffic flow,” says Ricksecker. “Certainly, the City can take measures to calm traffic without compromising access to Downtown. However, we should not go overboard. We don’t have a strong enough transit system to keep employers Downtown if access by car becomes too difficult. The employers will simply leave Downtown for the suburbs.”
An improved public transit system is a topic discussed regularly by Downtown leaders, planners and residents alike, and could potentially work in tandem to solve some of the traffic flow issues that have limited the uses and functionalities of our Downtown one-way streets.
“If fewer people drove Downtown this might not be a as big a problem,” says John Wirtz, a Transportation Engineer and Planner with Jacobs Engineering in Chicago. “Can the City of Columbus increase transit use to help reduce peak hour rush hour demand? That might allow more ‘Complete Street’ treatments Downtown.”
Aaron Renn, Urban Analyst and Founder of The Urbanophile provides another outsider perspective from Chicago.
“I’m not convinced that we need all two-way streets in Downtowns,” he states. “Cities like Columbus need efficient vehicle distribution, and even Chicago, New York, and San Francisco have predominantly one-way streets in their Central Business Districts. Instead, I would focus on one-way streets outside of the CBD for conversion, or perhaps consider select low volume CBD streets.”
The future of Downtown streets in Columbus will soon receive an updated manual with the development of the Downtown Action Plan this summer. The Downtown Action Plan will build upon the 2006 Downtown Columbus Circulation Study while also factoring in updates made with the 2008 Bicentennial Bikeways Plan and the 2010 Downtown Columbus Strategic Plan. This new document will outline how the various transportation recommendations will be engineered and implemented. The plan is currently being developed by the City of Columbus Division of Mobility Options.
“Mayor Coleman specifically wanted the Division of Mobility Options created because he wants to see more bikes, and he wants to see the city more pedestrian-oriented,” says Tilton. “He wants people to be less dependent on their individual cars. He wants the department to focus on bike lanes, bike ways, shelters and pedestrians.”
“But this is going to be an ongoing process,” he adds. “Back in the 50s and 60s there was a different way of looking at this. So we’re kind of paying for the sins of our fathers. But not only are we getting smarter about this, we are working to change the culture through a longer process.”
Looking East on Long Street on a Monday afternoon at 3:30pm.
I’ve said it before but if we’re going to keep some streets one way, let’s make those BRT corridors and offer a wide bus/bike only lane. There are some great examples of this already existing in other cities. Certainly we can raise the bar in our own planning.
Also, +1 for the use of “zombie apocalypse”
Those roads just look absolutely disgusting to me. I agree that Columbus looks completely grey. I wish they would put tree-lined boulevards on most major streets, and bike/bus/street car lanes too. Also do something about the former city center parking garage. Do we really need a complete 1 block parking structure? Couldn’t we make it a transit station or tear part of it down and put retail/housing onto it?
Our policy leaders have failed! STUDY, STUDY , STUDY is all we get. It is now time for a cultural shift. I hope our citiizens will try the COTA or a bike or even carpool. Its really not that difficult. Walker this is a well written article. Thank you for bringing it to everyone’s attention.
I can only imagine Spring and Long lined with residential and retail, two 30 mph traffic lanes(still one way), East/West bike only lanes, on street parking and wider sidewalks. There is no need for 3 to 4 lanes of traffic, north and south maybe but not east and west. It really isn’t that hard folks. They are only making it so.
Here’s an interesting, and related, article:
http://bettercities.net/news-opinion/blogs/greg-kelly/17492/b-grid-be-good
Perhaps streets like Spring and Long are part of the “B Grid” that accommodates cars, while High, Broad, Gay, and many others can be the “A Grid.”
@Colemandale – Yes, there have been plenty of studies going on over the past ten years, but you can’t overlook the changes that have been made in our infrastructure during that time. Gay Street is the most notable improvement, but practically every street in RiverSouth is now two-way with great improvements to pedestrian and bike infrastructure.
Still a long way to go, but there has been some pockets of success. Thanks for the props on the article. ;)
I would love to see all of the streets downtown turn into two-way streets. But you’re right in mentioning that transit is needed just as badly as a switch to two-way streets, if not more. I can’t reiterate this enough but I don’t want to change the topic of discussion. I am a downtowner that wants to see more life downtown! Two-way streets is the way to get there. Also, I’m totally in love with @Pickerington_Kyle’s idea of tearing down that parking garage and turning into a transit center. That would be amazing.
Sorry, I’m getting off topic again. ;]
The more I think about this the more sense it makes. Two-way streets for all!!!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: narrower lanes and roundabouts.
Slows traffic but *decreases* trip lengths; safer for drivers; fewer conflict points; safer for pedestrians because you only have to cross half the street at a time.
And no, they don’t have to be huge. We have room.
Not appropriate everywhere, but MANY of those one-ways are perfect candidates for conversion.
Minnesota gets it. Carmel, Indiana gets it. Wisconsin gets it. Even the feds get it.
We’re still dogmatic against them, though.
Good points in this article, however, sometimes I really do just want to get through downtown as quickly as possible.
I like parking garages, and don’t support taking any down. few want to park their car at a park and ride and take much longer when they could just park downtown. And it will be a long time before the masses can or want to use public transit first and foremost.
Other than the speed of traffic itself, all the one way streets keep a lot of people out of downtown because it was too confusing. My mother has not driven downtown once in her life for that very reason, and she would never ride the bus either ( sadly). There are many like her. I screw up every single time I go somewhere new downtown and have to circle all around and get super stressed, so I’d love to see the end of major streets being one way too.
Stephen & Kyle – You guys *do* know that there is already a COTA transit center inside the City Center garage, right? ;)
Jefe – I know that roundabouts work in urban areas, but ever time I see a photo of one, all I think about is how hard it looks to cross as a pedestrian. I can’t imagine amateur cyclists would feel comfortable navigating one in a Downtown setting.
Melikecheese – Sometimes I want to get through Downtown quickly too. Which is what the highways are for. ;)
Asch – Aside from what Kyle & Stephen just said, I’ve rarely heard anyone advocate for the removal of parking garages. I think the City Center garage is a bit of a monolithic structure, but there’s opportunity for redeveloping portions of it (the surface lot adjacent that borders High for example) that would help to mask the garage a bit.
Totally agree with you on the one-ways being confusing. I just met some friends at Tip Top for lunch yesterday and they were late on arriving because they forgot that you can’t turn left onto Gay Street when southbound on High Street. Because of the turn restrictions and one-way streets, they had to drive all the way down to Main Street to turn around. If a driver can’t even “circle the block” and instead has to drive a half mile south to turn around and come a half mile back up, then I’d argue that our traffic flow is not being enhanced by one-ways. Looking forward to what the Downtown Action Plan recommends.
Great post Walker. I applaud officials for making progress and citing some corridors that can feasibly convert without throwing off rush hour traffic i.e., Front and Gay Streets. With more focus on biking and transit, slowly some of the other heavier streets (Long, Spring, 4th, 3rd) could eventually come around too. This issue is part of the full circle of hopefully moving away from the dependance on cars.
Walker – That’s not a transit center. THIS is a transit center.
http://fruzsinaeordogh.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/wtc_transportation_1_1.jpg
Don’t get me wrong, parking garages are better than surface parking lots, but they require CONSTANT maintenance, are usually pretty freaking ugly, and are all about the car, meaning people are either coming or going downtown from other areas. While we want people downtown, we should moreso want to move away from car ownership and excessive use downtown. We want people to live downtown, and apartments and retail are going to get that done faster than parking garages.
I guess what I’m trying to say is we need parking garages downtown for the time being, but they shouldn’t be the answer to our transportation problem. Here’s why I don’t prefer car garages: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQXXq-R_ANE
Well, this article wasn’t about parking garages, so I’ll save my thoughts for another day. ;)
@Walker. Ugh I try so hard not to get off topic. Sorry all!
Two-way stuff.
Thanks for the article, Walker. I love how proactive you are when it comes to our city streets. City officials playing the same broken record when it comes to actually changing our streets. Columbus doesn’t have gridlock traffic that these other cities have. ’Additional safety risks when converting to two-way streets??’ That’s a poor excuse. Safety risks are one way streets, five lanes wide and you pattern the lights to all turn green and the cars speed well over 40 mph through downtown.
I really look forward to Spring when gas will most likely go over $4 and maybe even higher. We’ll really see what folks do in terms of any behavior changes.
Hey, after this downtown study finishes how about this… let’s do ANOTHER study. I wonder how much money has been spent in downtown alone with all the studies we’ve done.
As big and spread out as our downtown is (compared to other cities our size), there’s no reason we can’t accommodate the potential backups that would result from returning most one-way streets to two-way traffic. I just got back from a visit to Indy, and can share the pain and frustration I had just trying to get to a couple of downtown locations due to the maze of one-way streets always sending me further away from my intended target. Do away with the one-way ‘pseudo-freeways’ and return the streets to the folks on foot/bike!!
@Jessica – There certainly have been plenty of studies, but to give credit where credit is due… every positive change that gets made comes out of one of those studies. So it’s not like they’re all for nothing.