Change My View (CMV)

I believe that all (or as many as reasonably possible) non-highway streets should be one-way only. I moved from New York to Los Angeles and found the one-way streets in New York to be better in all ways for both drivers and pedestrians.

In Los Angeles, where nearly all roads are two-way:

• Drivers can spend tons of time waitingto make left hand turns at lights. Often, there are streets that are very busy in both directions, and only a few cars can make left turns (most of them illegally, after the light turns red) each time the light changes. I have had times where I've been in a line of only 15 cars or so waiting to make a left and it took 10+ minutes. Some lights have left-turn arrows. These help, but make the light stay red longer for everyone.

• Making a left turn onto a busy street (or proceeding through that street) if there's not a light can be downright impossible (and extremely unsafe).

• In general, making a left turn (crossing oncoming traffic) is less safe, as the speed of oncoming traffic can be difficult to judge.

• On many streets, cars are permitted to park on both sides of the road, and there's simply not enough room for two cars (going opposite directions) to pass by each other safely. I believe there have been instances of serious traffic jams caused because there was not enough room for cars to pass or maneuver in a way to let other cars past them. I have also heard of accidents caused because each driver thought the other would pull to the side in a space in between parked cars.

• For pedestrians who are jaywalking, crossing traffic in only one direction is much easier and safer than needing to worry about both directions. Some streets are such that walking to a crosswalk is so far that jaywalking is more or less necessary (but I understand opposition to this argument given that it's illegal - still, legal or not, it's going to happen).

• (Hopefully this makes sense) - For pedestrians crossing the street at a light in a crosswalk, it's safer if the cars making a left turn into them are doing so from the lane closest to the crosswalk. If cars are making a left turn into them from the middle-right lane on a two-way street, they 1) don't have as good visibility into the crosswalk as there are multiple lanes of traffic between them and the pedestrians, and 2) are going to be going faster as they approach the crosswalk, making it more difficult to stop if they didn't see a pedestrian (and if they happen to hit one, they'll be going much faster).

• For cyclists, bike lanes can be on both sides of the street, again making turns safer.

• Subjective, I know, but smaller, one-way streets are more aesthetically pleasing than busy multi-lane 2-way streets.

I realize that in some areas, it wouldn't be really feasible to make all roads one-way, because each road doesn't have a "counterpart" that's parallel and close by that could go in the other direction. However I believe a large proportion of roads in more urban areas (Los Angeles is a great example) could be converted to one-way streets.

In terms of traffic, it seems to me that the same volume of cars would be handled - just that it would be redistributed. For example, if there were 10 parallel east-west streets, each with two driving lanes, previously each street would have one lane going east (10 lanes total) and one lane going west (10 lanes total). If they were all one-way streets, 5 streets would have two lanes going east (10 lanes total) and 5 streets would have two lanes going west (10 lanes total).