Officials rethink one-way streets

St. Petersburg looks at the advantages of turning two key streets back into two-way corridors.

By BRYAN GILMER

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 30, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- William and Delores Schmitz enjoy visiting downtown St. Petersburg, but with all the one-way streets, "it takes some planning," Mrs. Schmitz says.

The Clearwater retiree reached into the side pocket of her purse outside Florida International Museum on Friday and produced a well-worn downtown map that shows which direction each street runs. She tore it from a tourist brochure.

"It used to be very confusing before I found this," she said. "The first time we visited, we were confused for a long time."

Merchants and residents along Eighth and Dr. M.L. King (Ninth) streets N and S are lobbying the city to switch those two streets back to two-way operation.

If the City Council says yes, St. Petersburg may join a growing list of cities across the country abandoning the speedy efficiency of one-way streets in an effort to create vibrant downtowns friendly to visitors, businesses and pedestrians.

The city's planning manager and traffic manager both say it is time to consider making many of the downtown streets two-way again. City Council member Jay Lasita thinks the Eighth and King streets project could serve as a good pilot program.

St. Petersburg began making most of the streets in the city's core one-way in the late 1950s, in the name of easing congestion and preparing for expected population growth that never happened.

The addition of Interstate 275 also reduced the demand on surface streets, so that four-lane, one-way streets downtown now carry just a quarter of the traffic they are designed for.

With pedestrian-oriented downtown development such as BayWalk set to open soon, traffic that moves a little more slowly would make pedestrians feel safer, St. Petersburg transportation manager Angelo Rao said.

"I would say we need to have two-way streets circulating the entire network," he said.

One-way streets may confuse newcomers. They require a motorist who misses a turn or an address to drive around the block -- or drive several blocks -- to correct the mistake. Some say they take a grid system that makes sense and add a counter-intuitive element.

And one-way streets move traffic through a neighborhood, not into it.

Those are some reasons that Cincinnati; Albuquerque, N.M.; and St. Paul, Minn., are all converting one-way streets back to two-way traffic.

Toledo, Ohio, has switched some back. There were so many benefits and so few drawbacks that city leaders now want to make all 10 remaining miles of downtown's one-way streets two-way.

"The restoration of two-way traffic is a major incentive for visitation to downtown Toledo, (for) . . . shoppers, consumers of personal services, and visitors to the entertainment attractions in downtown," traffic engineer Walter Kulash wrote in a report on the plan.

"This improvement in pedestrian atmosphere is the major factor in strengthening and further enlarging the "honey pots' of downtown activities that are now emerging."

Members of the Ninth Street Business Association have made bringing back two-way traffic on their thoroughfare (and all-northbound Eighth Street) their primary goal. They say businesses have withered since one-way signs went up 20 years ago. Northbound traffic is diverted from M.L. King to Eighth, and southbound cars on King whiz past businesses.

"What they tried to do was make it easy to flow traffic into the downtown area to make the downtown grow," said Dan Driscoll a past president of the group. "It didn't work, but it did sacrifice the peripheral downtown for that purpose."

A City Council subcommittee listened to the group Thursday and asked Rao to talk with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays to ensure that two-way traffic on Eighth and King would not cause problems with baseball traffic.

When the committee gets an answer, it will consider recommending $35,000 for a consultant to study the project in greater detail.

Rao expects some opposition to going back to two-way traffic in that neighborhood and in the downtown generally, especially from longtime residents who have become fluent with the one-way street network -- people such as downtown worker Susan Haight.

"First Avenues N and S are great ways to get to 66th Street," she said. "It gets traffic flowing better. I love them. They need to leave them there."

But with streets handling just a quarter of their capacity, gridlock on a restored two-way system is unlikely, Rao believes.

"There's just so much leeway."

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