JACKSONVILL,E, Fla. – Jacksonville’s downtown could be heading in a new direction soon — literally.
Work is underway to turn some of the one-way streets downtown into two-way streets.
By the end of the year, Forsyth and Adams streets will go from one-way to two-way.
The goal is to make driving downtown safer and less confusing and to help businesses attract more customers.
Instead of having downtown streets that encourage driving through quickly, two-way streets supposedly will slow traffic and people to take notice of what’s available downtown.
David Temple is not so sure if the change is good.
“I saw someone driving the wrong way down the street just last week. So it happens,” Temple said. “It would probably be more confusing because everyone’s used to driving in this way now, it works fine like this right now.”
The head of the Downtown Investment Authority Lori Boyer, who was on News4JAX’s news partner WJCT’s First Coast Connect on Monday morning, said one-way streets were not good for business.
“The standpoint of cars going quickly, the synchronized singles getting downtown as quick as possible. You no longer look side to side to see what shop was there so the visibility of street front retail declined,” Boyer said.
Boyer said the change would also make the roads safer because traffic would be slower.
News4JAX talked to businesses about the change and some, like the owners of Maddy’s Restaurant across the from the courthouse on Adams Street, are not so sure.
They said it may make traffic worse.
“It’d be weird to have a two-way street going through there. Because everybody’s so used to being one way. I think it would be confusing for people at first,” Kea Baumann said.
This isn’t the first time that one-way streets have been converted to two-way streets.
Around 2006, streets in Riverside like Post Street were converted from one-way to two-way streets. That has created some problems with parking on either side making roads very crowded at times.
Boyer and others said that won’t happen downtown because the roads are wider.
This is the project’s first phase and part of a $4.6 million contract.