10th Anniversary Post: One Way or Two?

 

Coe Road NE is two-way as of March 2025

Cedar Rapids undertook a number of ambitious street initiatives in the 2010s, including adding bike lanes and converting signalized intersections to four-way stops. Perhaps the most ambitious was converting most of our one-way streets back to two-way. This undid efforts from the late 1950s through the 1960s, intended to relieve traffic congestion. As in most places where this had been undertaken, urban neighborhoods wound up paying the price in lost property value and increased danger, while suburbanites found they didn't really want to go downtown that much anyway.

3rd Ave SE: Downtown on a rainy January day in 2013

Returning to two-way streets comes recommended by urbanists, based in part on the experience of cities like Savannah, Georgia, which saw a dramatic recovery along East Broad Street once it had been reconverted (Speck 2012: 179-180). Along with Jeff Speck, who consulted with the City of Cedar Rapids on urbanist projects throughout the decade, I quoted Seattle-based David Sucher, author of City Comforts: If one's goal is to move as many cars as possible through a neighborhood, the couplet [of one-way streets] works well. But if the goal is to create comfortable shopping districts, make streets two-way (2003: 86).

 If the impacts on commercial districts are bad, imagine what one-way streets do to residential neighborhoods, whose residents find themselves living on a speedway meant for others, on which they can only approach their homes from one direction.

3rd Avenue SE in the one-way era, July 2014

Ten years ago, the city stated the following goals for the initiative:

make the streets accessible and easier to navigate

improve opportunities to walk or bike

increase visibility of downtown businesses

slow traffic

I added my own measurable outcome--The conversion will be a success if it facilitates transformation of the city center into a 24-hour downtown, with a successful commercial enterprises, permanent residents and cultural attractions all contributing to a vibrant place--

which seems in retrospect to be quite the high if desirable bar. I blame my hot-headed youth. It's safe to say that hasn't happened, nor have the three most prominent opposing views come to pass (traffic congestion, traffic crashes, mass confusion).

1500 block of 3rd Avenue SE:
 conversion in process, October 2019

By this point, most of our one-way streets have been reconverted, the major exceptions being 15th and 16th Avenues SW, and 3rd and L Streets SW.  13th Street/College Drive/Oakland Road is still one-way between 2nd Avenue SW and H Avenue NE, and a few one-way blocks remain here and there on other streets as well, but our one-way street mileage today is a tiny percentage of what it was in 2010.

3rd Avenue SW is now two-way, L Street is still one-way

Measuring the impact of all these changes is tricky, partly because I have some but not very much data, and partly because there are other moving parts (many more bike lanes and sidewalks in town, construction projects necessitating extended closure of streets near the river, diminished use of offices post-COVID, closing of two blocks of 2nd Avenue SW for Physicians Clinic of Iowa, no discernable influx of population into the city) affecting the use of streets. So the assessments that follow are tentative.

My overall assessment is cautiously positive. I see no significant negative impacts at all, while positive changes to the affected blocks are less-than-revolutionary. Given that one-way streets are inherently confusing, I believe the first objective to be a slam dunk, but the others are subtle or require data I don't have.

Changes in daily traffic counts are interesting, but don't give us a lot to go on. The first round of reconversions, between 2015 and 2017, occurred on 2nd and 3rd Avenues SE/SW, 4th and 5th Avenues SE, and 7th and 8th Streets SE. On 7th and 8th--which remain one-way close to the Interstate entrance--traffic counts away from the Interstate remain roughly the same. On 2nd and 3rd, traffic counts have declined, but the biggest declines occurred well before the conversion, possibly due to changes in the downtown work/shopping scene. Also, 2nd Avenue SE no longer is continuous, since two blocks were closed early in the 2010s to make room for the new Physicians Clinic of Iowa campus. No data are available for 4th and 5th Avenues. (Profuse thanks to the Iowa Department of Transportation for sending along historic traffic count maps.)

Average Daily Traffic Counts, 3rd Avenue SE/SW

(some stretches have multiple readings)

YEAR 1500-1900e 1000-1500e 500-1000e 000-500e     BRIDGE 600w-000

1993                             8300

2005                         7900

2009 4390,6600 8400 6400         4250

2013 3750 4770,5900 4870 4910            4560         3490

2015 conversion from 6th St SW to 3rd St SE

2017 conversion from 5th Ave SW to 6th St SW

2017         3260,5700 4300 3220,2870    3450            2180

2018 conversion from 3rd St to 19th St SE

2021 3720 4370,6700

Speck argues that the most profound negative land use effects of one-way streets are found on the streets leading into downtown, "since most people do most of their shopping on the evening path home" (2012: 178). So we could look for changes on 2nd and 4th Avenues SE, 3rd Avenue SW, and on Center Point Road NE.

• All of the former one-way sections of these streets began in residential neighborhoods, typically with older single-family housing. Of the four streets, the neighborhood on 3rd Avenue SW is the most transformed, because it was most impacted by the flood. 2nd Avenue has seen a dramatic decrease in traffic because of the two block closure between 12th and 10th Streets, but there's been no new building in the mostly empty 1200 block.

  

  Start of the converted section, 1800 block of 2nd Ave SE

  
  

Each street must pass through an empty quarter before it reaches downtown: 2nd and 4th Avenues go through the MedQuarter, Center Point Road becomes Coe Road between Coe College and St. Luke's Hospital, and 3rd Avenue passes underneath I-380. Such commercial development as there is on the far side of the empty quarter remains pretty much untouched.

2nd Avenue enters the MedQuarter
(PCI building is at the end of the block)

Only at 3rd Street and below has 3rd Avenue seen a lot of investment as the Kingston Village area has emerged post-flood. (Coe Road at this writing is still one-way below A Avenue NE.) 2nd Avenue has held its own close to downtown, with a mix of offices and restaurants, but a surprising amount of vacancies as well. 4th Avenue has seen very little change. And we don't have anything like a "24-hour downtown."

Before the conversion: 200 block of 2nd Avenue SE,
August 2017 (Google Earth screenshot)

After the conversion: 200 block of 2nd Avenue SE,
this week

So, no dramatic change from the reconverted one-way streets, except for what's explainable by post-flood recovery, MedQuarter expansion, and post-pandemic declines in downtown office occupancy. Cedar Rapids, unlike, say, Providence or Charlotte, has not seen an influx of population that would force more transformation.

I still support the reconversions, for simplicity's sake, because it creates opportunity for future development, and for safety. A three-lane one-way street carrying 8400 cars through a residential neighborhood is not good for the quality of life of the people living there. A three-lane one-way street carrying half that many would be even less safe, because there would be more room for speeding.

ORIGINAL POST: "One Way or Two?" 22 September 2015

FOLLOW UP POST: "One Way or Two? (II)," 18 October 2015

OTHER SOURCES: 

Jeff Speck, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2012)

David Sucher, City Comforts; How to Build an Urban Village (City Comforts Inc., revised ed., 2003)

Love in the name of STOP: Recovering a Street's Safety and Productivity

 

3rd Avenue at 15th Street SE, heading downtown

The first time I went downtown after I returned to Cedar Rapids from Belgrade, I had to remind myself not to cross the street in front of a car coming half a block away. Cedar Rapids drivers aren't particularly aggressive or malicious, but unlike crowded central Belgrade, drivers can go a long way without seeing a pedestrian, so aren't always ready when they appear. Safer to wait on the curb for the cars to pass.

Yet it wasn't hard to notice some positive changes for the city's walkability in the three weeks I'd been gone. The 16th Avenue bridge between Czech Village and New Bohemia is open. Construction work continues on major new residential developments on 4th and 16th Avenues SE. And, to my surprise and gratification, stop signs were installed on 3rd Avenue at 15th Street. Slowing the cars along 3rd represents a huge step towards restoring the residential quality of this neighborhood.

Here it is in the direction I walk home from church. The ambient light prevents you from seeing the flashing alert lights framing the sign, so you'll just have to believe me.

3rd Avenue at 15th Street SE, heading the other direction

3rd Avenue traverses Wellington Heights, one of the city's oldest neighborhoods. About 1960, in order to facilitate car traffic into and out of downtown, it was widened and made one-way, with predictable results: car speeds increased, the neighborhood declined, and walking became more difficult. (Andrew Price (2021) would say we made the mistake of turning a street created by citizens over to traffic engineers.) In the 1970s and '80s, as businesses left downtown for office parks and strip malls, auto volume on 3rd declined and speeds increased.

3rd Avenue passing Redmond Park, 2014

The 1960 changes to 3rd Avenue had made driving easier and faster. However, as Strong Towns reiterated today as they announced their Safe and Productive Streets campaign, a great street is not about moving automobiles, but about building a successful place.... A street is, and always has been, a platform for growing community wealth and capacity, the framework for building prosperous human habitats (Marohn 2022). Children were growing up on 3rd Avenue, within easy walking distance of an elementary school, a park, and a grocery store, but the redesigned street made it problematic to get to any of them.

In 2019 the city took some major steps towards undoing the damage, restoring two-way traffic, creating bike lanes from the third lane, and fixing intersections to slow turning cars--all definite improvements. One problem that remained was the lack of traffic controls between 10th and 19th Streets, which coupled with average daily traffic counts of 2660-3260 meant that cars could still get up quite a head of steam. Installing a stop sign halfway along should keep vehicle speeds more reasonable.

Four-way stops can still be tricky for pedestrians. 3rd Avenue is about 40 feet wide, and that's a lot of ground to cover before traffic starts coming the other way. I prefer to cross streets when there are no motor vehicles to be seen at all. But stopping cars at 15th should improve safety all along 3rd Avenue.

Remembering my time in the stop sign-chocked Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C., four years ago, I'll suggest some other streets we could work on: 19th Street SE between 3rd and Bever Avenues as well as between Bever and Mt. Vernon Road (4290-7200 adc); Bever Avenue SE between 19th and 34th Streets (4230 adc and the dreaded sharrow logos); and 16th Street NE between B and H Avenues (4890 adc). These are each auto thoroughfares with modest traffic volumes whose long stretches without stops invite drivers to endanger pedestrians and each other. 

When we treat streets like their primary purpose is moving automobiles, we end up with bad streets. We end up with streets that are hostile. Dangerous. Violent. Streets where people don’t want to be..... They are not loved, and places that aren’t loved ultimately lose their capacity and decline (Marohn 2022).

In our city's core, there remains considerable suburban design to undo. As we undo it, we can dream about creating memorable places to live, not just to drive through.

Desire lines?

17th Street SE, looking north across 3rd Avenue

In a recent post, I celebrated the completed conversion of 3rd Avenue back to two-way. Readers with remarkable retention will recall that, at the same time, 17th Street was turned into a cul-de-sac south of 3rd. (The stated reason was to prevent traffic from approaching the intersection from too many directions at once.)

The plan (as of March; note the right turn spur off Blake was not built)

Here is the cul-de-sac when it was just finished:

Here's what it used to look like:

As I've passed the intersection lately, however, I've noticed increasing numbers of tire tracks across the newly-closed part. (See top picture.) It could be construction vehicles... but there doesn't seem to be much construction going on anymore. Apparently, not everybody is down with the new alignment, at least as regards 17th Street.

3rd Avenue is two-way!

parking, bike lane, auto lane all headed downtown

The City of Cedar Rapids completed an important step towards improved walkability when the last stretch of 3rd Avenue SE was opened to two-way traffic this week. The one-way-to-two-way conversion had been achieved in increments, but this final segment, from 13th to 19th Streets, is arguably the most important. It goes through Wellington Heights, a historic neighborhood whose decline was hastened by the transformation of its major streets into multi-lane one-way high-speed "auto sewers" (to use James Howard Kunstler's phrase) in the late 1950s.

Now that mistake has been undone. The streets are still wider than they probably used to be, but that width accommodates bike and parking lanes. Expect auto speeds to slow, which will improve the lives of cyclists and pedestrians, and will make the neighborhood feel like a neighborhood again instead of houses crouched on the edge of an expressway. (The one-way development occurred before the building of Interstate 380, which is an actual expressway.) Walking to school, or church, or Redmond Park, now is thinkable for 8-year-olds and 80-year-olds.

I really enjoyed watching the project unfold:

Aug 5: 18th St closed for redo of the intersection with 3rd

Aug 6: 3rd Av approaching 18th St

intersection of 3rd Av & 17th St

Aug 25: Squaring the intersection at Park Av

Squaring the intersection at Grande Av,
but with loss of access to 16th Street

View from 16th Street: You can turn east onto Grande,
and if feeling bold get over to 3rd

17th Street, Blake Boulevard, and a big pile of gravel

Sept 1: 17th Street which now ends in a cul-de-sac south of 3rd/Blake

3rd Av & 17th St

Longer view

Building bulbout at Park Avenue

3rd Av, 16th St and Grande Av with new improved sidewalk route

Sept 5: Ridgewood Terrace cul-de-sac

Sept 10: 19th Street approaching 3rd Av,
where four-way stop replaced traffic light

3rd Av & 19th St

Sept 20: Blocking off the left two lanes on 3rd Avenue

Sept 22: 3rd Av and Blake Blvd; 17th St cul-de-sac at right

Sept 29: finishing approach of Blake Blvd,
newly squared intersection

New crossing at Park Court

Oct 14: capping 17th St cul-de-sac

Blake Boulevard facing east from 3rd Av

Oct 16: 3rd Av & 19th St

3rd Av bike lanes striped

new sidewalk crossings at 3rd Av & 18th St

I'm blitheringly happy about this achievement, albeit with inevitable qualifications. Care will need to be taken that current residents don't suffer from their neighborhood's new attractiveness, and get gentrified out of it. I don't like it that it is impossible to access Redmond Park from 3rd Avenue, either by 16th Street (access closed) or Park Avenue (one way for one block, because residents protested city plans to change that). I'm ambivalent about closing parts of the intersections at 16th, 17th and 18th to through traffic, although for pedestrians the sidewalks still go through. [I'd thought there would be access for cyclists as well, but there isn't.] I would like to have more traffic controls. And the electronic crossing light by Redmond Park makes a constant "tink" noise that can be heard a block away. That would drive me crazy if I lived on that block.

Oct 23: Auto heading downtown on 3rd Av!

17th St cul-de-sac, with Blake Blvd not quite finished [It is, now]

crossing at Park Ct by Redmond Park (It's rather loud!)

All in all, a positive step. We are more than ever a community of people, rather than a network of car paths.

EARLIER POST: "3rd Avenue Conversion Coming Soon," 30 March 2019

3rd Avenue conversion coming soon

The one-way-to-two-way reconversion of 3rd Aenue SE begins this summer, and will be completed by fall, according to the latest word from the Cedar Rapids Public Works Department. The entire project covers the stretch from 10th to 19th Streets, some of which is already two-way; the part from 13th to 19th will be converted.

3rd Avenue, along with its partner 2nd Avenue, was made one-way in 1958, in an attempt to facilitate traffic flow into and out of downtown. I don't know for a fact that they were widened at the same time, but I suspect they were; in any case both streets were for about 60 years three-lane, one-way streets. The results were what you'd expect they'd be. The neighborhood, shown in yellow and blue on the 1930s HOLC map above, declined into one of the city's poorest. Whatever traffic there was at first declined as business moved out of downtown, and with the construction of I-380 through town. For most of my time in Cedar Rapids, 2nd and 3rd Avenues have been relatively low-volume: In 2017 average daily traffic count for 3rd Avenue was 3260. 2nd Avenue, whose traffic dropped precipitously after a block was closed to accommodate Physicians Clinic of Iowa's expansion, had only 2060. Thanks to the inviting design of the street, though, speeds are high--hardly conducive to the residences that remain.

Two-way streets in residential areas are better than one-way streets. Slower auto traffic speeds mean more pedestrian safety, as well as an improved sense of community.

Conversion of 2nd Avenue was completed a couple years ago, and was straightforward (though we still haven't figured out how not to park in the bike lane). 3rd Avenue is going to be more complicated, because a number of intersections feature three streets coming together. Making 3rd Avenue two way means there'll be an additional direction from which traffic will come i.e. five at these intersections. Thinking this might create a safety hazard, designers sought to uncomplicate the intersections by blocking auto access from one of the streets. These are currently planned for 17th Street where it approaches 3rd Avenue and Blake Boulevard from the south...

...and Ridgewood Terrace, where it approaches 3rd Avenue and 18th Street from the east.

Another cul-de-sac, planned for 16th Street where it approaches 3rd and Grande Avenues from the south, was removed after neighbors objected. That intersection will retain most of its current bizarre design, except that they will remove the slip lane that allows traffic to move from 3rd to Grande at speed.

A roundabout planned for the intersection of 3rd and 15th was also removed from the design.

As an urbanist I am reflexively against cul-de-sacs, albeit in these cases bicycles and pedestrians would be able to proceed across 3rd Avenue. Also, as someone who finds the late Hans Monderman at least credible, I am not against complicating the built environment in order to reduce auto speeds. My preferred solution, drawing on my semester in Washington, D.C.'s Capitol Hill neighborhood last spring, is to put more traffic controls on 3rd. Currently there is a stoplight at 10th, and then nothing until 19th (currently a traffic signal, to be converted to a four-way stop).

I would like to see four-way stops at two or maybe even three intersections along the way. (Heck, I'd add another four-way stop on 19th, where cars currently get quite the head of steam between 3rd and Bever Avenues. Call me Scrooge, but people live around here!) I rather assumed this would be about as popular in car-dependent Cedar Rapids as that roundabout was, and so mentioned it only in confidence to city traffic engineer Ron Griffith. But then my table was discussing 17th Street during the breakout session, so I tried it out on them. A woman who uses 17th Street to get to and from Johnson School was in favor; a guy who lives nearby on Blake and is (to my mind, irrationally) concerned with traffic noise was against. Everyone else ignored me. So much for my "scientific survey research."

17th Street as currently configured, approaching Blake and 3rd from the south

The months-long project will be, I think, worth the inevitable inconvenience. While I might have done it differently, that's easy for me to say from my comfortable chair at leafy Coe College. Two-way traffic will benefit the neighborhood sociably and financially, and enable safe and comfortable travel in a variety of forms. There will be complaints about the changes, but I think it will be worth those as well. Eventually, I hope, the culture will catch up to the infrastructure...

...and we can have and enjoy a prosperous urban neighborhood.

SEE ALSO:
"One Way or Two," 22 September 2015
"Is 3rd Avenue a Barrier to Redmond Park?" 25 June 2014