And tell me how on the Cincinnati-Detroit merge you propose, that it is less confusing to a driver than the way it already is? To me it looks pretty intimidating and your spending a ton of money adding signals to an area that doesn't need them. I would rather spend that $250,000 (just an estimate) on new signals and the other few million dollars to rework each one of those intersections and put it towards other things.
That's
one possible solution.
Also you kind of avoided the fact that if we kept the streets I'm pointing out as one way we would have added sidewalk capacity (room for outdoor seating at bars or restaurants), bike lanes, and more on street parking. With your version we would have no room for a wider sidewalks, no room for bike lanes, and no added street parking. To me I would rather keep the one way street that aren't vital through street corridors to the rest of the town, and just shrink the scale. I'm guessing though you are in favor of making it possibly more easy to navigate for a motorist than to have room for bikes, pedestrians, and more parking? You can't turn these streets into a 3 lane (center turn lane) they need to be at least 2 lanes each direction because they are the ways in and out of downtown and you can't just take away that capacity without cause problems.
I didn't avoid any part of your comments. We don't have the capacity, no matter what event or events are going, to fill the streets we have. The streets become their regular selves when you approach the on-ramps to the highways. Streets don't have to stay 5 lanes or 4 lanes or 3 lanes wide for their entire length. You yourself proposed taking lanes away so I don't understand why you're critical of doing the same with a two-way street.
And the drawings I've posted are there to show that it is indeed possible to convert these "nonconvertible" one-way streets, not to propose a certain number of lanes.
Regarding the "major intersection reworkings", with more two-way streets, there are actually fewer places where lanes suddenly end, and more opportunities for a driver to correct themselves than with our current one-way streets.
The argument of lanes suddenly ending is actually the reverse. Look at the map I posted of 7th & 8th Streets. Do lanes end on 7th Street? Yes, the four lanes of off-ramp traffic are reduced to two by the time it reaches Elgin. But it's limited to the convergence of the off-ramps, and will naturally slow drivers down as they enter downtown. Often, drivers on that particular off-ramp and stretch of 7th get up to 45 miles an hour because it's built like a drag strip, then have to hit their brakes when they see the light turn red. Is the lane reduction in that case a bad thing? I don't think so.
For the entire length of 8th Street, there actually be "new" lanes people could travel, since traffic would be opened to both directions. As a driver approaches 75/51/444, the road widens to its original amount of lanes and people are able to exit downtown as normal. No lanes would end abruptly, there just won't be traffic approaching them from the other direction after Elgin.
I'm not against wider sidewalks at all, and assuming I am because I'm in favor of making our streets bi-directional is ludicrous. Wider sidewalks are part of what can build a community (see Jane Jacobs). The issue of bike lanes is an entirely different argument, though. Cyclists and traffic planners are divided on the issue. Same with angled parking. And it's not the main purpose of this topic.
Fact: Two-way streets slow down traffic.
Fact: Slower traffic is safer for pedestrians.
Fact: Two-way streets increase predictability for motorists. It's what they're used to.
Fact: Our downtown streets are overbuilt for current and even the wildest projections.
We need narrower, slower, more pedestrian-oriented streets in the heart of our downtown. Converting our streets from one-way to two-way would help achieve that. I'm not saying it's the only thing that needs to be done with our streets, but one of many things we need to do.
And Heavy Traffic Way is already two-way, from 7th to 1st. At 1st, you're forced north onto Guthrie because, guess what, lanes end.
