Plans in review for downtown two-way street conversion

[simms3]

If one way streets were problematic in a smaller city (Lakeland), they would be even more so in a larger city.

Who said that one way streets were problematic in those cities?  I didn't...maybe the citizens of those cities did?  I don't know...I honestly didn't know or think that the one ways were problematic here, but people are claiming they are...

That said, both Lakeland and Greenville have been exponentially more successful with their DTs.

I cannot disagree.  I've only been to Greenville's but it was super impressive for a city of its size/stature.

So that speaks well for having 2 way streets, not the opposite.

Does it though?  Causation is not the same as correlation.  For me, I'm not necessarily opposed to two way streets, but I just don't see how it's the magic fix we need to prioritize and spend money on.  Maybe it is?  It's not sinking into my brain for some reason...

Besides, outside of 9-5 on weekdays, Greenville and Lakeland probably have a MUCH higher population in the DT core.

I don't disagree, but resident traffic is not the same as commuter traffic and so my concerns about traffic patterns and capacity have never revolved around how many residents are crammed into an area.  One office building can have thousands of employees.  One garage can hold 1,000++ cars, and these things fill up and empty out in roughly the same span of time.

As far as San Francisco, you are bring SF sensibilities (with its uber high density) to a city without them. If JAX is too big to compare to Lakeland/Greenville, then surely SF is too dense to compare to JAX.

Perhaps, but I keep thinking more about daytime employment/office worker density moreso than residential density when it comes to downtown areas and traffic.  Downtown residents often work downtown and never even use their cars to get to their buildings...

The fact is, good urban design is the same regardless of city population.

Right, so one way streets versus two way streets is one thing that is not uniform across world class urban environments.  We can be selective and look at cities with mostly if not all two ways and we can also look at cities that have basically mostly one ways and find successes in both cases, and failures in both cases, as well.  To that end, I'm not sure whether one ways or two ways are what make an urban environment or pedestrian environment great.

[simms3]

My observation is that many world cities, much larger than Jax in most cases, are moving toward pushing cars altogether out of their urban cores.  Imagine totally closed streets that serve as pedestrian plazas and bikeways as NYC has done with Broadway.  Tokyo is taking a step forward, closing the famed main street through its high end shopping district, Ginza, on weekends. Heck, St. Augustine's closed St. George Street probably does more in a week than all of downtown Jax in a year  .

For once, why don't we become a leader to the future and plan a downtown for only mass transit, delivery and emergency vehicles and drop off/pick up vehicles for hire. 

As I noted about Town Center, most everyone parks on the fringes and walks to the stores.  Walking or ferrying in visitors to Downtown could similarly work if we properly planned it with things to motivate people to want to visit. 

This is where a long term master plan pays off but our City leaders are asleep at the wheel.  Rather than steer with the wheel, we just spin it.

I just don't think any of those are apt comparisons for our downtown, for so many reasons in each case.  The BIG cities that have been the world's leaders for so long and had many millions even before the automobile are closing off some prominent areas, great for the headlines, but there are so many variables to list that aren't the same for us.  Plus, there is always another side of that story, the one where people and businesses are actually upset about these things in many cases (and even to the point of acting on them), that doesn't get told because it doesn't fit the popular narrative.

St. George St in touristy St. Augustine and the Town Center are just not comparisons for our downtown, in my opinion.

[simms3]

AADT means Average Annual Daily Traffic. Without getting into too much technical detail, it can be described as the total volume of vehicle traffic of a highway or road for a year divided by 365 days. It doesn't matter what the number of lanes are or the direction the traffic travels. Here is a link where you can see the AADT for all major roads throughout the state:

https://tdaappsprod.dot.state.fl.us/fto/

Thanks Lake, I understand AADT.  Let me rephrase - AADT as a measure by itself is pretty useless.  I work in site selection and users will very closely monitor and study traffic patterns, in addition to the overall volume, among other traffic related variables.

My point was that the average per day doesn't do a good job describing how much of that traffic occurs in certain hours.  If it were all evenly spaced, some of those streets would have just 1 car per minute throughout the day, but the reality is there are times when the traffic stacks up and that's impacted heavily by the capacity of the road, as you know.

From the look of the plans, it does seem that they are including left turn lanes at certain locations. I suspect, identifying the existing and future traffic conditions through a certain horizon year was conducted prior to the two-way conversion design work getting underway.

Great, this is by far my biggest concern!  So glad to hear this!

As of now, if you want to know how not to do downtown revitalization, we would be a great example. So it's a good thing that we're starting to embrace some things that have been successful in big, mid-size and small communities across the country for decades now.

Yes it would appear so and the incremental changes are noticeably positive.

To me, this is the bigger question and challenge for downtown Jacksonville. I find it really hard to see something coming along in the near or distant future that will result in downtown Jacksonville's glut of 1980s office spaces being backfilled with that same use. Most of our towers were built by large local companies that are now defunct. Plus the office market has changed. FIS is a good example, as they preferred building new instead of taking over a dated high-rise. Then, now in a post pandemic economy, I wonder if they would have bothered building that new office building at all, if they knew what was ahead. So what do we do with these buildings and spaces long term? Office, hotel, residential?

All big questions but I really don't think office space is dead and what we just saw was largely a fad.  As soon as employers get the upper hand, we have better leadership to steer our economy back to prosperity, and the American workforce returns from sitting on the sidelines, office space will come roaring back.  My prediction, at least.  Now in Jax since we have such a dismal office market for decades now, limited office users, and some older building stock that is too expensive (given our market rents) to retrofit into solid office space, it may be a little different.

Let's just hope and pray that JEA finds a solid end user for its Church St former HQ so that it doesn't change its mind on demolishing it.

Right sizing streets that have too much capacity for one mobility choice over others can come in many forms.  Perhaps there's a corridor where wider sidewalks to accommodate more outdoor cafes (increasing seating capacity or revenue for restaurants and bars) is of more important than having that space wasted by an extra auto travel lane (Lakeland).

I don't see why we couldn't have just done this without converting one ways to two ways?  Would have cost less and probably produced similar results.

But, Jax pedestrians are a different breed.  I rarely see jay walking (which is crazy to me that people would wait for the walk sign on streets that DON'T have much traffic, to your point).  Maybe to the analogy that people think parking is incredibly difficult in Jax, people also think walking downtown right now is taking one's life into one's hands.

I don't see Jax has any different from most places. The Landing is a good example. A dated asset that could have been a $12 million fix is now a hole that will be empty for a generation and cost taxpayers $100 million to attract back the foot traffic that was already there. A simple learning lesson is keep/upgrade what you have and focus on complimentary infill on adjacent lots, abandoned buildings and parking lots. Upgrading public infrastructure like streets, parks and sidewalks are a good example of upgrading what you have.

Well I don't know, I think the Landing *was* an example of Jax just being a different breed.  I feel like this situation would have been handled differently by other cities and ordinary citizens would have also responded to the overall decline of the Landing differently.  While I'm seemingly opposed to this two way conversion, I am not opposed to urbanity, and I do believe that Jacksonville's citizenry has the most suburban mindset of any place I've really ever been, and this gets reflected in our leadership and even down to how people behave as pedestrians or parkers.

I am hyper aware of a company right now that is switching downtown office buildings in 2023...Let's just that you would be surprised, perhaps, how fragile people are about things downtown.

I'm, not surprised at all. Now I would be very surprised if that company's decision makers and employees were demographically reflective of Jax's overall demographics. I would also be surprised if the majority of its decision makers and employees actually lived in downtown or the immediate surrounding neighborhoods. With that said, those same fragile people would have a totally different mindset of the downtown environment if Laura or Adams Street were lined with shops, restaurants and consistent foot traffic. Everything is a bit of a balancing act to achieve the desired long term outcome or vision.

Well, you might be surprised, then, to learn that most of the employees of this company DO live closer to downtown than to the far suburbs or beaches.  And it's not that they're fragile, but really it's the parking that's one of the biggest things.  People just cannot imagine walking.  Part of me gets that because it really does absolutely stink throughout most of the year in a button down and jacket (if that's what you wear).  What I've found since moving back is that downtown and the employers who choose to be there have a closer tie to urban core residents than other office submarkets, it would seem, unofficially just from my anecdotal observation.

Regarding "reflecting Jacksonville's demographics", no, my company is a woke F500 trying desperately to only hire minorities and women, but it is still mostly white men (and I work in commercial real estate so that's probably not going to change for a long time).

If you want to bring in the whole diversity argument, in many elite downtowns it is actually very expensive to live there and so I don't think many downtown areas "reflect their cities' respective racial breakdowns", so I am not for or against that I'm just saying that's not a fair way to assess my company as one that is open or closed to downtown based on what the employees may or may not look like.

To your last point, yes, any person, literally any person, would like there to be more shops, more restaurants, more attractive streetscapes, more things to do, etc etc.  I think you will get literally no argument from anyone, anywhere, about that.

I just chalk "2-waying downtown" as a "fix" for things to "we need 10,000 units downtown and we'll be good then", meanwhile the same people expand the definition of downtown to 4 square miles and botch every single thing.

The key is knowing that 2-waying downtown streets isn't a "fix". However, that doesn't mean some streets should not be converted from one-way to two-way. It really means that Jax civic leaders and politicians should stop using buzzwords that they don't understand, to sell people on solutions that these things don't actually deliver.

Well and there it is...the first person I really ever heard clamor for the two-way street conversion was Lori Boyer, the queen of buzzwords and of formulaic ideas (some good, some questionable).  I think she's great, I think she's smart, but she is also the person who has helped to perpetuate this weird lifetime long city leadership obsession with reaching 10,000 residents (oops now it is 10,000 units) to achieve downtown whatever...

I don't know if the idea is really good, or bad, but to me I just don't see how it will make a difference for street life or for pedestrians, and that's how it's being sold.  I do see a risk in it creating potential traffic issues, but maybe not if they are factoring in those turn lanes.  It just seems like there are other ways to help our downtown businesses and improve streetscapes without going so far as converting the existing paths with which we enter and leave downtown.  I mean, if we are going to spend the money...aren't there better ways to do so?

[jaxlongtimer]

My observation is that many world cities, much larger than Jax in most cases, are moving toward pushing cars altogether out of their urban cores.  Imagine totally closed streets that serve as pedestrian plazas and bikeways as NYC has done with Broadway.  Tokyo is taking a step forward, closing the famed main street through its high end shopping district, Ginza, on weekends. Heck, St. Augustine's closed St. George Street probably does more in a week than all of downtown Jax in a year  .

For once, why don't we become a leader to the future and plan a downtown for only mass transit, delivery and emergency vehicles and drop off/pick up vehicles for hire. 

As I noted about Town Center, most everyone parks on the fringes and walks to the stores.  Walking or ferrying in visitors to Downtown could similarly work if we properly planned it with things to motivate people to want to visit. 

This is where a long term master plan pays off but our City leaders are asleep at the wheel.  Rather than steer with the wheel, we just spin it.

I just don't think any of those are apt comparisons for our downtown, for so many reasons in each case.  The BIG cities that have been the world's leaders for so long and had many millions even before the automobile are closing off some prominent areas, great for the headlines, but there are so many variables to list that aren't the same for us.  Plus, there is always another side of that story, the one where people and businesses are actually upset about these things in many cases (and even to the point of acting on them), that doesn't get told because it doesn't fit the popular narrative.

St. George St in touristy St. Augustine and the Town Center are just not comparisons for our downtown, in my opinion.

Every case is different for various reasons but that is not relevant here.  My point is that, big or small, over a wide variety of scenarios, the concept of pedestrian-only avenues has proven it can be a huge success.

What is missing here, again, is leadership, vision, consistent master planning and priorities and a reason to walk about Downtown (cars or no cars, for that matter).   Whether the public or the private sector, it is easy to figure out.  Tokyo or St. Augustine, theme parks or the Town Center, Super Bowl or other event, it can be and is done.  It has even been perfected on large cruise ships with simulated "main streets." It isn't complicated - I could do it in my sleep at this point.

There really are no excuses and people here are tired of hearing the ones falsely offered up.  Hard to believe any business in Jacksonville would complain given the near-nothing activity that currently exists.  Only way left to go is up.  "Just do it!"

[thelakelander]

Thanks Lake, I understand AADT.  Let me rephrase - AADT as a measure by itself is pretty useless.  I work in site selection and users will very closely monitor and study traffic patterns, in addition to the overall volume, among other traffic related variables.

My point was that the average per day doesn't do a good job describing how much of that traffic occurs in certain hours.  If it were all evenly spaced, some of those streets would have just 1 car per minute throughout the day, but the reality is there are times when the traffic stacks up and that's impacted heavily by the capacity of the road, as you know.

There's a lot more that goes into this than just AADT that's available. I could go into more detailed traffic planning and engineering analysis but I don't think its necessary. At the end of the day, Jax is a pretty autocentric city. If the variables were remotely strong enough to suggest that maintaining that two-waying these streets would be a detriment, this project would have certainly died on the vine years ago. The debate around the design of the One Riverside development entrance is a great example of this. It's about as auto-oriented as can be because of Public Works, despite the DIA vision of doing a lane diet from 6 to 4-lanes.

We have a lot of problems to overcome downtown. Congestion at any time of the day isn't one of them that's strong enough to economically hurt downtown. We'd probably be better off replacing most of our stop lights with four-way stop signs (i.e. San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter) at this point.

From the look of the plans, it does seem that they are including left turn lanes at certain locations. I suspect, identifying the existing and future traffic conditions through a certain horizon year was conducted prior to the two-way conversion design work getting underway.

Great, this is by far my biggest concern!  So glad to hear this!

You can see the plan here. Left turn lanes are included at the higher volume intersections: https://www.thejaxsonmag.com/article/plans-in-review-for-downtown-two-way-street-conversion/

To me, this is the bigger question and challenge for downtown Jacksonville. I find it really hard to see something coming along in the near or distant future that will result in downtown Jacksonville's glut of 1980s office spaces being backfilled with that same use. Most of our towers were built by large local companies that are now defunct. Plus the office market has changed. FIS is a good example, as they preferred building new instead of taking over a dated high-rise. Then, now in a post pandemic economy, I wonder if they would have bothered building that new office building at all, if they knew what was ahead. So what do we do with these buildings and spaces long term? Office, hotel, residential?

All big questions but I really don't think office space is dead and what we just saw was largely a fad.  As soon as employers get the upper hand, we have better leadership to steer our economy back to prosperity, and the American workforce returns from sitting on the sidelines, office space will come roaring back.  My prediction, at least.  Now in Jax since we have such a dismal office market for decades now, limited office users, and some older building stock that is too expensive (given our market rents) to retrofit into solid office space, it may be a little different.

Our fad is +30 continuous years at this point. There will always be a need for office space. However, it's hard to imagine the likes of Independent Life, Gulf Life, Barnett Bank, Florida National, etc. coming back to consume all that corporate headquarter office space they built.

Let's just hope and pray that JEA finds a solid end user for its Church St former HQ so that it doesn't change its mind on demolishing it.

We successfully fought this battle offline back during the pandemic in 2020. JEA isn't going to demolish it. They are doing the smart thing and selling it. Was very happy to see JEA move in that direction after getting rid of Zahn. Hopefully, who ever buys it will take advantage of spaces that were originally designed for mixed-use.

Right sizing streets that have too much capacity for one mobility choice over others can come in many forms.  Perhaps there's a corridor where wider sidewalks to accommodate more outdoor cafes (increasing seating capacity or revenue for restaurants and bars) is of more important than having that space wasted by an extra auto travel lane (Lakeland).

I don't see why we couldn't have just done this without converting one ways to two ways?  Would have cost less and probably produced similar results.

Our DT roadway network would have still been screwed up. We have to be one of the only U.S. cities with a totally screwed up one-way system of streets based on a dumb half implemented 1970s plan. Even with Adams and Forsyth being two-way, we need to do the same with some seldom streets like Julia and Pearl.

Broad is also another one that needs to eventually be addressed. It's been all economically downhill since we turned it into a one-way death trap with no parallel parking for retail storefronts that also have no off-street parking. I was a first responder to a pretty bad accident at Broad and Church a few months ago. Luckily the lady speeding lost control and took out a street light and another car in the bus lane. If she lost control in the opposite direction, she would have hit me, a few others and the Richmond Hotel. Because we've created wide streets with wide +12' travel lanes, people are treating them like they are expressways. A result of this has been many of the incremental demolitions over the years as people lose control and crash into adjacent buildings (i.e. Wormans). As I mentioned, everything is a balance. Two-waying some streets are a positive thing for increasing multimodal accessibility and simply making it safer by slowing traffic down to posted speed limits.

Well I don't know, I think the Landing *was* an example of Jax just being a different breed.  I feel like this situation would have been handled differently by other cities and ordinary citizens would have also responded to the overall decline of the Landing differently.  While I'm seemingly opposed to this two way conversion, I am not opposed to urbanity, and I do believe that Jacksonville's citizenry has the most suburban mindset of any place I've really ever been, and this gets reflected in our leadership and even down to how people behave as pedestrians or parkers.

The Landing issue had little to do with the average Jaxson. It was moreso silly political games from a few powerful individuals. An event as simple as Brown getting re-elected would have altered the outcome of the site and the amount of money that taxpayers will be on the hook with it.

Well, you might be surprised, then, to learn that most of the employees of this company DO live closer to downtown than to the far suburbs or beaches.

I consider Urban Jax as the pre-consolidated city, as the infrastructure was built out prior to the automobile becoming the dominant form of local mobility. Urban (Pre-consolidated) Jax was Flint, MI before consolidation. So once we get outside of a good three mile radius of DT, you're basically in the burbs. I'd be shocked if the majority of downtown workers in any major Northbank or Southbank company resided within pre-consolidated Jax's limits.

And it's not that they're fragile, but really it's the parking that's one of the biggest things.

I work downtown and parking is a big pet peeve of mind as well. However, it's not about walking. It's about paying to park in a place that's void of activity to come to work. Even though I can afford it, I park outside of downtown and ride the Skyway to Central Station near my office everyday. Because the Skyway is unreliable and slow, it adds 30 to 45 minutes each way to my daily commute. However, I rather spend the parking money on supporting our struggling restaurants and coffee shops each day.

People just cannot imagine walking.  Part of me gets that because it really does absolutely stink throughout most of the year in a button down and jacket (if that's what you wear).  What I've found since moving back is that downtown and the employers who choose to be there have a closer tie to urban core residents than other office submarkets, it would seem, unofficially just from my anecdotal observation.

I believe people will walk when there's a reason to walk. They walk all over malls, amusement parks, beaches, museums, Jags games, etc. with no problem. What the average person does not like though, its walking in scenes that can can give zombie movies a run for the money at times. With that in mind, one of our biggest low hanging fruits to capitalize on is flipping the ground floor retail in our office towers to the street, spilling that activity out on the sidewalks and programming the streets on a regular basis. Anything to stimulate some additional activity and foot traffic on the cheap will go a long way to making a change for the better, which will ultimately influence others.

Regarding "reflecting Jacksonville's demographics", no, my company is a woke F500 trying desperately to only hire minorities and women, but it is still mostly white men (and I work in commercial real estate so that's probably not going to change for a long time).

It ain't truly woke if that cultural diversity isn't reflected at the decision making table. I even get on my firm about this. I get tired of hearing people use those buzzwords when they aren't really about that life.

If you want to bring in the whole diversity argument, in many elite downtowns it is actually very expensive to live there and so I don't think many downtown areas "reflect their cities' respective racial breakdowns", so I am not for or against that I'm just saying that's not a fair way to assess my company as one that is open or closed to downtown based on what the employees may or may not look like.

I'm not accessing an individual company. If that's how it came across, that wasn't my intent. If anything I was trying to make a point about not making infrastructure decisions for the greater good of the community on one company (yours, mine or anyone else's). Our opinions and desires are no more important that the person trying to get back on their feet with the help of places like Clara White Mission. Our offices aren't representative of the community. They're small elements with opinions that should be balanced with others. Public planning and infrastructure decisions need to be more inclusive to the needs of the overall community. As I've said earlier, it's all a big balancing act.

Well and there it is...the first person I really ever heard clamor for the two-way street conversion was Lori Boyer, the queen of buzzwords and of formulaic ideas (some good, some questionable).  I think she's great, I think she's smart, but she is also the person who has helped to perpetuate this weird lifetime long city leadership obsession with reaching 10,000 residents (oops now it is 10,000 units) to achieve downtown whatever...

Many of the local buzz words and theories predate her time. The 10,000 residents myth has been around a while. There are cities with more vibrant downtowns with less residents than DT Jax. That myth should be taken out back and shot. I honestly think we'd be better off if we didn't call most of our projects as world class, transformational, game changers, etc. The misuse of buzzwords cause more harm than good.

I don't know if the idea is really good, or bad, but to me I just don't see how it will make a difference for street life or for pedestrians, and that's how it's being sold.

One difference it makes is traffic will be able to travel eastbound on Adams and westbound on Forsyth. If they help slow auto traffic down to 25-30mph, that's another plus. There's also additional marked crosswalks and RRR. These things alone would make those two streets safer and storefronts on them more accessible. This alone, may be worth it. Not a "game changer" or "world class" but an improvement that should be reinforced with additional complimentary public investment and tax incentives for better utilization of adjacent buildings.

I do see a risk in it creating potential traffic issues, but maybe not if they are factoring in those turn lanes.  It just seems like there are other ways to help our downtown businesses and improve streetscapes without going so far as converting the existing paths with which we enter and leave downtown.  I mean, if we are going to spend the money...aren't there better ways to do so?

We can two-way a few streets, if necessary, and invest in other improvements. We need just about everything right now.

[Charles Hunter]

The Left Turn Lanes are planned at
Adams Street
WB @ Jefferson (not sure why, since Adams returns to 1-way WB west of Jefferson, so there is no opposing traffic)
EB @ Broad (which is 1-way NB)
WB @ Main (1-way SB)
EB @ Ocean (1-way NB)
Adams is 1-way WB between Liberty and Market
so all EB traffic must turn onto Market
and there is a WB left-turn lane at Market

Forsyth Street
west of Jefferson, Forsyth is 1-way EB, so all WB traffic must turn left onto Jefferson
EB at Broad (1-way NB)
WB at Main (1-way SB)
EB at Ocean (1-way NB)

[Charles Hunter]

From thelakelander
One difference it makes is traffic will be able to travel eastbound on Adams and westbound on Forsyth. If they help slow auto traffic down to 25-30mph, that's another plus. There's also additional marked crosswalks and RRR.

Adams and Forsyth will be posted at 25 MPH

The crosswalks at each intersection will be marked with "high emphasis" (aka "ladder") crosswalks, except at Hogan and Laura, where the "brick" treatments will be kept. There are no additional (say, midblock) crossings.  I don't know what you mean by "RRR".

[thelakelander]

Sorry...a resurfacing. I was at FDOT D5 PLEMO too long and speak in abbreviations at times.

RRR = Resurfacing, Restoration and Rehabilitation work

[Charles Hunter]

Sorry...a resurfacing. I was at FDOT D5 PLEMO too long and speak in abbreviations at times.

RRR = Resurfacing, Restoration and Rehabilitation work

I should have known that ... but for the civilians!   
With the pedestrian talk, I was trying to bend it into RRFB (Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacon) - and there aren't any of those in the Adams/Forsyth plans.

[Steve]

I do agree that good urban planning makes sense regardless of city size. That said, in cities like Lakeland and Jacksonville they arrive via a car. In Chicago and New York, a considerable number take public transit and are forced to walk. For them, the street is already two-way; they can walk in either direction. If the pedestrians had to travel one-way in the direction of the car traffic, what a sight to see that would be.

There's also the dynamic that in Chicago and New York the one-way streets help move a substantial number of cars. If we had that many cars, I'd be fine with one-way streets - that means that those people would have to park and walk somewhere and we'd have that critical mass we're all craving.

[simms3]

Well, here we go:

https://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/news/2025/feb/10/closures-coming-as-forsyth-and-adams-streets-are-returned-to-two-way-traffic/

I am still dreading this change and think it's wild lunacy.  In the process of installing the new traffic lights, I've already encountered what it can mean to be down to one lane on these streets.  One time already coming in on Forsyth, traffic didn't budge long enough for me to emergency park my car at a meter by the courthouse and literally run to my building to be on time for a meeting.

This is going to be an unmitigated disaster.

Fortunately, downtown commuters coming in from the beach or the southside will be less impacted (and I would say probably those coming from the northside who exit at Union), but those coming from the westside/SW Jax who enter from Forsyth may expect more backups than usual, especially if office use increases (as it is in other markets) and our extreme vacancy downtown decreases (which would be a good thing).


The "point" as per the article and many frequent conversations and dialogues is to "slow" traffic so that people "notice" shops/businesses or decide to stick around longer.  As someone who LOVES downtown and urban environments, I truly don't think the way to get people and office users to love downtown more or stick around longer is to deliberately harm their commute and aggravate their livelihoods.  That's not the way to foster interest and demand downtown.

People will stick around more if there are more things to do or places to go!  That simple.  Downtown has a somewhat thriving entertainment district and does have places to go, as it is.  If we want more of that, then the key is to attract more office users and more residents (daytime/permanent population), and continue incentivizing small businesses (restaurants, bars, shops).  Worsening commutes into downtown is not a good way to attract more office users, though.

This whole notion that we have to punish auto commuters for good things to happen is a total farce and one of the dumbest things we have latched onto in a while.  And in similar vein, the idiotic poorly planned "Market St San Francisco" level bike lane they did at probably high cost along Liberty St is from the same ideological parent thought.

[Skybox111]

Agree many cities have multiple lanes that are one way and it doesn't seem to bother foot traffic many people will walk to those places if they want to especially new york. This city is bigger than downtown and people need to get from place to place even to downtown to work or passing through downtown to any of the neighborhoods nearby to get home or where work is across the city. People aren't going work at some retail or restaurants to stay downtown and work forever with low pay or stay to shop or browse around. they also want higher paying jobs which is office or industrial especially industrial which this city should be more of better jobs and income for this city. You can piss this city off removing more lanes and expect them to drive in those areas 
And they will avoid the area making businesses suffer more and cause accidents when it's been one way for a long time.

Tighter smaller roads and truckers will hate driving to deliver goods to retail and restaurants and construction sites which require bigger and longer semi trucks to deliver long loads. Truckers in Boston hate it because they can't see everything around them all at once when turning thats why a stupid bicyclist got herself killed when she didn't care to pay attention and rode through when the truck was making a wide turn and ran over her. When construction was happening on hogan to revitalize the buildings there was a 53 footer that had a difficult time turning down that road just to deliver construction supplies for them and then make another delivery across town and then on to orlando. These trucks don't deliver everything in those trailers for just one place they deliver parcels to many locations and some of those supplies come from outta town.

[Tacachale]

Not all streets are being converted to two way, and there's no indication such projects will keep drivers out of Downtown or reduce traffic, though it will calm traffic and make the pedestrian environment better. We've seen this is places like Laura Street and San Marco Square, which are both far better off now than they were before. This is a great project and a long time coming.

[jaxlongtimer]

Based on my experience, many drivers already think Forsyth is a 2 way street.  I can't count how many times I have encountered wrong-way drivers there  .

There is probably no perfect solution for streets that will satisfy everybody.  Are they to be pedestrian, car or truck friendly?  One solution for larger trucks is to restrict them to certain hours of the day such as before 7 AM or after 6 PM.  Businesses and others would have to adjust but the trade-off is not having their workers and customers be held up by them or have safety issues.

St. Augustine has lots of narrow streets, some one-way through the historic area, and it doesn't seem to impede anyone but given the narrowness and the foot traffic no one is going to speed through.  Yet cars keep coming...  so, it comes down to how bad people want to be downtown.  Lots of small towns like Fernandina Beach have narrow two way streets and do just fine.  Create the draws and people will put up with a lot to be there.

Additionally, if we had a bus loop that circulated Downtown, people could park more on the fringes and not drive through the heart of it.  This is another big issue with why Downtown doesn't thrive more... public transit there is not good.  It also shows how undesirable the Skyway is as it reaches to some of those fringe areas for parking and people still don't use it much - maybe because it doesn't stop close enough to desired locations? is unreliable? runs too infrequently or for too short hours? fringe parking isn't safe? too expensive? not marketed well? not enough of it? in the wrong places?  How hard is it answer these questions and come up with some viable solutions?  Does anybody even care to look at these things?

[Joey Mackey]

In response to simms3, I don't think it will be unmitigated disaster.

I agree that recently when Forsyth has been closed down to one lane, there has been stagnant traffic in the morning. But that won't happen when Forsyth is converted to a two-lane road. Currently, there are four major parking garages on Forsyth between Julia and Main. Two on the north side of the street and two on the south side of the street. Everyone who needs to park in those garages must travel east on Forsyth.

After the two-lane conversion, if you are traveling east on Forsyth you will not be able to make a left and enter the garages on the north side of the street (if they do allow that they need to change that in the plans immediately). Instead, you will need to travel east on Adams street and then travel south and then travel west on Forsyth street to park in the garages on the northside of Forsyth street.

Roughly assuming each parking garage generates similar traffic, by forcing drivers to go west on Forsyth to park in the two northside parking garages, the two-lane conversion will actually reduce the current traffic flow that goes east by about half. Which lines up pretty well with a two-lane conversion.