Category: one-way streets

Transportation officials dispute my one-way theory

When I wrote last month about the surprising (to me) prominence of one-way streets uptown on the city’s High Accident List, aka HAL (“One-way to higher traffic accidents?“) , I said I had asked for a response to my observation from Transportation Director Danny Pleasant. He responded today. Here’s what he said: 

Mary – Sorry it took a while to respond. I was in one of your favorite cities, Boston, earlier this week. It could not have been more beautiful. I explored the city on foot along two incredibly vibrant one-way streets: Boylston and Newberry. I’m not sure it would be possible to create more robustness, regardless of whether the streets were one-way or two.

Here is information regarding Charlotte’s one-way streets, prepared by Debbie Self, a talented engineer in charge of CDOT’s traffic and pedestrian safety programs:

“It’s fair to say there is not a significant safety concern with one-way streets. In uptown, there are roughly 150 intersections (100 are signalized and 50 are unsignalized). Of that total, the majority of intersections involve at least 1 one-way street. So one could say most of the intersections in uptown that have one-way streets are not on the HAL. There are 15 uptown locations (defined as inside the I-277 loop) on the 2013 HAL.

Other noteworthy comments:

  • Uptown collisions tend to involve fewer injuries because the travel speeds are much lower. Injury rates are not reflected in the HAL.


  • A few of the Uptown locations rose to the top 10 based on more accurate traffic volume counts. The updated traffic counts were lower which resulted in a higher ranking on the HAL (the crashes by year remained about the same). Some of last year’s top 10 locations moved down because of higher volumes or a safety enhancement was completed.


  • 5th/Caldwell had fewer crashes in 2012 because CDOT installed reflective back plates on the traffic signals to address angle crashes.


  • College Street in the areas of 7th, 8th & 9th Streets has been on the HAL for many years. It’s been hard to pin point a single underlying cause. Angle crashes account for about half of the crashes at College and 7th, 8th and 9th. CDOT will likely consider reflective back plates at the signals as a mitigation given our successful reduction in crashes at 5th/Caldwell.


  • The HAL is published annually to raise awareness of intersections with an elevated crash rate. It is a tool to identify location that have potential opportunity for mitigation of crashes and/or reduction in the severity of crashes.

Distractions/not paying attention continue to be the highest contributing circumstance for all crashes. That’s true for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists. We want to emphasize keeping your mind on the task at hand – walking, driving, or biking.”

One-way to higher traffic accidents?

I don’t want this bit of city-traffic-related news to get lost in the recent deluge of news about Charlotte’s airport. The numbers raise a question, in my mind at least, about the safety of one-way streets uptown.

Earlier this month Charlotte’s Department of Transportation released its annual list of High Accident Locations. To see it, download it here. (Be sure to notice what it does and doesn’t measure; for instance it doesn’t measure traffic accidents on interstate highways.) The report drew a news article in  The Charlotte Observer, “Report: Charlotte traffic collisions down; fatalities up.”

Here’s what I noticed: Among the Top 10 high accident locations, seven were either uptown or nearby. Of those seven, all but one involved one-way streets. The only one of those seven that did not was East Seventh Street and Hawthorne Lane, in the Elizabeth neighborhood.

The city’s top high accident location was Cambridge Commons Drive and Harrisburg Road (average daily traffic of 15,000), in east Charlotte near I-485, with a three-year total of 49 accidents and a crash rate (a formula taking into account the traffic volume – to know more download the report) of 2.98.

Other in-town streets:
2. North College Street and East Eighth Street.
3. North College Street and East Ninth Street.
5. Third-fourth Connector Street and East Fourth Street at Kings Drive.
7. East Seventh Street and Hawthorne Lane.
8. South Church Street and West Hill Street and the ramp to West Belk Freeway.
9. East Seventh and North College Street.

If you’re thinking that correlation (one-way streets and high number of accidents) does not equal causation, of course you are right. The streets were converted to one-way years ago by traffic engineers who wanted to get vehicles into and out of uptown as efficiently as possible. That was the thinking several decades ago. So busy streets are going to have more accidents.

But the crash rate takes the street’s business into account. What else might account for the striking number of uptown one-way streets that are atop the high accident list? Could it be speed? Could it be people driving home from work and just not taking as much care? (The report also shows that mid- to late afternoon rush hour is the time of day with more accidents.)

But notice something interesting: The No. 11 High Accident Location was  East Fifth Street and North Caldwell Street. Notice the accident numbers over three years: 10 in 2010, 11 in 2011 but dropping to 6  in 2012.  That intersection used to be where two one-way streets crossed. But from Fifth Street south, Caldwell has been converted to two-way. Did that cause the lower number of accidents in 2012?

I’ve emailed CDOT Director Danny Pleasant, to see if he had comments.  I’ll add them if he responds.

Let’s talk window shopping

The Caldwell Street item sparked some interesting back-and-forth (here’s a link) about whether one-way or two-way makes much of a difference for pedestrian comfort.

One commenter points out that the newly reconfigured intersection of Stonewall and Caldwell is so wide that it isn’t pedestrian friendly (or bicycle friendly or even motorist friendly) at all. Others say sidewalk width and street-level retail are more important.
Here’s my take: They’re all important.

If the sidewalk is narrow (one commenter mentions Seventh Street uptown between Seventh Street Station parking deck and Tryon) pedestrians will be turned off.

If there’s nothing interesting to look at – that is, if you’re walking on a wide sidewalk but you’re going past a vacant corporate plaza, a surface parking lot, a parking deck, a blank office wall, or even windows into office buildings – pedestrians will be turned off.

And if the cars are zooming past, as they tend to do on one – way streets when the lights are timed to let you cruise at 35 and hit them all green – then pedestrians will be turned off.

So reverting one-way to two-way is a good first step but if it’s the only step it may be a waste of time. I continue to maintain that street-level retail shopping (or as the late jeweler and City Council member Al Rousso used to cry, “Window-shopping! We need window-shopping!”) is what’s key for uptown, and it’s going to be incredibly difficult to achieve because:

• We’ve spent two decades demolishing storefront buildings until the few that remain are too far from each other to create any retail synergy.

• The city’s uptown zoning still allows new development without street-front retail. It requires ground-floor retail, not street-front. Thus we get Founder’s Hall and the shops inside office towers. To window-shop requires leaving the sidewalks and streets entirely. Unless you’re in an urban scene as dense with stores and lively sidewalks as, say, New York or Paris, that’s anti-urban.

This Monday: Caldwell goes two-way


More back to the future: Several uptown streets are being converted from one-way to two-way.

This is, by and large, a good thing. One-way streets encourage driving fast, which is fine for highways but inside cities is A) More dangerous for pedestrians, B) More dangerous for drivers and C) Makes city streets feel like roads instead of city streets.

Below is a snippet from last week’s memo to City Council, saying that Caldwell Street, from Fourth Street to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard (formerly Second Street) switches to two-way traffic by noon Monday.

Brevard Street is due for similar treatment, from Stonewall to Trade streets. Update: the section of Brevard from Stonewall to MLK Boulevard will convert in May 2010, and the segment from MLK to Trade will switch in 2011 – some right-of-way issues will delay that segment, says CDOT Chief Danny Pleasant.

Here’s the memo:

Beginning Monday, August 17, traffic patterns will change on South Caldwell Street between Fourth Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Starting at 9:00 a.m., crews will begin changing Caldwell Street from a one-way street to a two-way street. The conversion is expected to be complete by noon.
This conversion to two-way traffic is part of the Center City Transportation Plan adopted by the City Council in 2006, and has been implemented as part of the interchange and street modifications associated with the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Later phases will also convert Brevard Street between Stonewall and Trade to two-way traffic. The changes will improve traffic circulation in the area and improve accessibility and safety for pedestrians.