One-way traffic is
trafficTraffic on roads may consist of pedestrians, ridden or herded animals, vehicles, streetcars and other conveyances, either singly or together, while using the public way for purposes of travel...
that moves in a single direction. A
one-way street is a
streetA street is a paved public thoroughfare in a built environment. It is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about. A street can be as simple as a level patch of dirt, but is more often paved with a hard, durable...
either facilitating only one-way traffic, or designed to direct vehicles to move in one direction.
General signs
Signs are posted showing which direction the vehicles can move in: commonly an upward arrow, or on a T junction where the main road is one-way, an arrow to the left or right. At the end of the street through which vehicles may not enter, a
prohibitory traffic signProhibitory traffic signs are used to prohibit certain types of manoeuvres or some types of traffic.-No entry:No admittance to unauthorised personnel, usually shown as a red circle with a white rectangle across its face.-Speed limits:...
"Do Not Enter", "Wrong Way", or "No Entry" sign is posted, e.g. with that text, or a round red sign with a white horizontal bar. Sometimes one portion of a street is one-way. another portion two-way. An advantage of one-way streets is that drivers do not have to watch for cars coming in the opposite direction on this type of street.
In addition to one-way streets, one-way traffic is also seen on
highwayA highway is any public road. In American English, the term is common and almost always designates major roads. In British English, the term designates any road open to the public. Any interconnected set of highways can be variously referred to as a "highway system", a "highway network", or a...
entrance and exit ramps.
No entry signs
The abstract 'No Entry' sign was officially adopted to standardization at the League of Nations convention in Geneva in 1931. The sign was adapted from Swiss usage. The Swiss, in turn, adopted the practice of former European states that marked their boundaries with their formal shields and, when not wishing visitors to enter, would indicate so by tying a blood-red ribbon horizontally around the shield. The sign is also known as
C1, from its definition in the
Vienna Convention on Road Signs and SignalsThe Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals is an international treaty designed to increase road safety and aid international road traffic by standardising the signing system for road traffic in use internationally.This convention was agreed upon by the United Nations Economic and Social...
.
The European 'No Entry' sign was adopted into North American uniform signage in the 1970s, replacing its rectangular, white "Do Not Enter" sign, although the U.S. version retains the wording "Do Not Enter" where the European and Canadian version typically has no wording on it.
Since Unicode 5.2, the
Miscellaneous SymbolsThe Miscellaneous Symbols Unicode block contains various glyphs representing things from a variety of categories: Astrological, Astronomical, Chess, Dice, Ideological symbols, Musical notation, Political symbols, Recycling, Religious symbols, Trigrams, Warning signs and Weather.-Tables:Note: These...
block contains the glyph ⛔ (U+26D4 NO ENTRY), representable in HTML as or .
Location of one-way streets
One-way streets may also be part of a one-way system, which facilitates a smoother flow of motor traffic through, for example, a city centre grid; as in the case of
BangaloreBengaluru , formerly called Bengaluru is the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka. Bangalore is nicknamed the Garden City and was once called a pensioner's paradise. Located on the Deccan Plateau in the south-eastern part of Karnataka, Bangalore is India's third most populous city and...
,
IndiaIndia , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. This is achieved by arranging one-way streets that cross in such a fashion as to eliminate right turns (for driving on left) or left turns (for driving on right). Traffic light systems at such junctions may be simpler and may be coordinated to produce a
green waveA green wave is an intentionally induced phenomenon in which a series of traffic lights are coordinated to allow continuous traffic flow over several intersections in one main direction....
.
Reasons for being one-way
- The street is too narrow for movement in both directions and the road users unable to co-operate.
- To prevent drivers from cutting through residential streets (rat run
Rat running or cut-through driving refers to the use of secondary roads or residential side streets instead of the intended main roads in urban or suburban areas. People do it to avoid heavy traffic, lengthy traffic signals or other obstacles, even where there are traffic calming measures to...
s) to bypass traffic lights or other requirements to stop.
- Part of a one-way pair
A one-way pair, one-way couple, or just couplet is a pair of parallel, usually one-way streets that carry opposite directions of a signed route or major traffic flow, or sometimes opposite directions of a bus or streetcar route....
of two parallel one-way streets in opposite directions (a divided highwayDivided Highway is a compilation album by American rock band The Doobie Brothers, released in 2003. . All tracks are taken from the albums Cycles and Brotherhood .-Track listing:...
).
- For a proper functioning of a system of paid parking or other paid access. Traditional names for such products are: traffic spikes, tiger teeth, alligator teeth, tire spikes, and flow plates.
- To calm traffic, especially if the street is historic .
- To eliminate turns that involve crossing in front of oncoming traffic.
- To increase traffic flow and potentially reduce traffic congestion.
- Eliminate the need for a center turn lane that can instead be used for travel.
Left Turn on Red
In the U.S., 37 states and
Puerto RicoPuerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
allow left turns on red only if both the origin and destination streets are
one wayOne-way traffic is traffic that moves in a single direction. A one-way street is a street either facilitating only one-way traffic, or designed to direct vehicles to move in one direction.-General signs:...
. See South Carolina law Section 56-5-970 C3, for example. Five other states, namely
AlaskaAlaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
,
IdahoIdaho is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans". Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state....
,
MichiganMichigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
,
OregonOregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
and Washington, allow left turns on red onto a one-way street even from a two-way street.
History
The first one-way street was established in
LimaLima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...
, the capital metropolis of
PeruPeru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
. The first one-way street in London was
Albemarle StreetAlbemarle Street is a street in Mayfair in central London, off Piccadilly. It has historic associations with Lord Byron, whose publisher John Murray was based here, and Oscar Wilde, a member of the Albemarle Club, where an insult he received led to his suing for libel and to his eventual imprisonment...
in Mayfair, the location of the
Royal InstitutionThe Royal Institution of Great Britain is an organization devoted to scientific education and research, based in London.-Overview:...
. It was designated London's first one-way street because the public science lectures were so popular there.
http://www.simonsingh.net/media/articles/maths-and-science/stars-in-whose-eyes/ The first one-way streets in
ParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
were the
Rue de Mogador and the
Rue de la Chaussée-d'AntinThe rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, in the IXe arrondissement of Paris was the street that gave this new quarter of Paris its generic name. It runs north-northwest from the Boulevard des Italiens to the Église de la Sainte-Trinité sited to provide a focal object at its upper end...
, created on 13 December 1909.
One story of the origin of the one-way street in the United States originated in Asbury Park, NJ. On 9 September 1934, the on fire SS Morro Castle
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/09/film_shows_famous_1934_sinking.html was towed to the shore near the Asbury Park Convention Center, the sightseeing traffic was enormous. The Asbury Park Police Chief decided to make the Ocean Avenue one-way going North and the street one block over (Kingsley) in one-way going south creating a circular route. By the Fifties this cruising the circuit became a draw to the area in itself since teens would drive around it looking to hook up with other teens. The circuit was in place until the streets went back to two way in 2007 due to new housing and retail development.
One-way traffic of people
Sometimes there is one-way walking for people, for smooth traffic flow, or in the case of entrance checks (such as
ticketA ticket is a voucher that indicates that one has paid for admission to an event or establishment such as a theatre, movie theater, amusement park, zoo, museum, concert, or other attraction, or permission to travel on a vehicle such as an airliner, train, bus, or boat, typically because one has...
checks) and exit checks (e.g. the check-out in a shop). They may be outdoors, e.g. an extra exit of a
zooA zoological garden, zoological park, menagerie, or zoo is a facility in which animals are confined within enclosures, displayed to the public, and in which they may also be bred....
, or in a building, or in a vehicle, e.g. a
tramA tram is a passenger rail vehicle which runs on tracks along public urban streets and also sometimes on separate rights of way. It may also run between cities and/or towns , and/or partially grade separated even in the cities...
.
In addition to just signs, there may be various forms and levels of enforcement, such as:
- personnel
- a turnstile
A turnstile, also called a baffle gate, is a form of gate which allows one person to pass at a time. It can also be made so as to enforce one-way traffic of people, and in addition, it can restrict passage only to people who insert a coin, a ticket, a pass, or similar...
; turnstile jumping is possible
- a High Entrance/Exit Turnstile (HEET)
- a door or gate that can only be opened from one side (a manual or electric lock, or simply a door that is pushed open and has no doorknob on the other side), or automatically opens from one side; with help from someone on the other side, it can usually conveniently be passed in the "wrong" direction. Examples:
- entrance of a shop
- an emergency exit
An emergency exit in a structure is a special exit for emergencies such as a fire: the combined use of regular and special exits allows for faster evacuation, while it also provides an alternative if the route to the regular exit is blocked by fire, etc....
; it may activate an alarm, useful both for proper and improper use of the door
- an escalator
An escalator is a moving staircase – a conveyor transport device for carrying people between floors of a building. The device consists of a motor-driven chain of individual, linked steps that move up or down on tracks, allowing the step treads to remain horizontal.Escalators are used around the...
; the escalator can be passed in opposite direction, climbing up or down the stairs faster than it moves
- a one-way revolving door
A revolving door typically consists of three or four doors that hang on a center shaft and rotate around a vertical axis within a cylindrical enclosure. Revolving doors are energy efficient as they prevent drafts, thus preventing increases in the heating or cooling required for the building...
Sometimes a "soft" traffic control system is supported by personnel keeping an eye on things.
Sometimes a door or gate can be opened freely from one side, and only with a key or by inserting a coin from the other side (house door, door with a coin slot, e.g. giving entrance to a
pay toiletA pay toilet is a public toilet that requires money payment of any individual to use. It may be street furniture or be inside a building, e.g. a mall, department store, railway station, restaurant, etc. The reason for charging money for using toilets usually is for the maintenance of the...
). The latter can be passed without paying when somebody else leaves, and by multiple persons if only one pays (as opposed to a coin-operated turnstile).