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One Way to Neighborhood Deterioration?

University of Colorado at Denver

Despite the widespread use of one-way streets as a traffic engineering response to urban traffic congestion, very little is known about the impacts such streets have on residential neighborhoods. The social costs of automotive hegemony have generally been ignored in the face of the easily demonstrable traffic movement advantages of one-ways. As part of the Denver Planning Office's study of how to mitigate negative impacts of one-ways in neighborhoods, a survey of residents on one-way arterials and adjacent two-way locals was conducted. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 232 residents. Residents on one-ways were found to be older and less family-oriented than their two-way street neighbors. One-way street residents were significantly more bothered by traffic (noise, volume, danger), less satisfied with their block (cleanliness, peacefulness, air quality), and therefore made more life-style adjustments (less use of front of house, rearranging use of rooms, installing buffers). Consequently, more one-way street residents wanted a traffic change on their block. On a number of measures (e.g., economic conditions, neighboring, stability) no differences were found. These mixed results are read as confirmation that one-way arterials do have some of the suspected negative impacts but also that many people accommodate and resign themselves to the situation.

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