---
title: "One-Way Street"
url: "https://commonwaysystem.org/patterns/arterials/one-way-street/"
id: "ART-OWS-06"
description: "An Arterial Typology, Situational/Discouraged status, retaining the base modal hierarchy despite a design tendency to encourage speeding."
updated: "2026-09-10"
---

# One-Way Street

`ART-OWS-06`

Situational / Discouraged Arterial

One-Way Street

An Arterial operating one direction of travel only, typically paired with a second one-way Arterial carrying the opposite direction nearby.

Typical at: Compact Urban Core

Suburban is an edge case. Undeveloped and Rural are unlikely pairings.

Caution

One-Way Street carries Situational/Discouraged status. It tends to encourage speeding, since drivers no longer need to watch for oncoming traffic.[1]

## Speed and modal hierarchy

Design speed & speed limit

\[SPEED LIMIT 30\] \[SPEED LIMIT 35\] \[SPEED LIMIT 40\]

Follows the Arterial density-tiered baseline for its typical Compact, Urban, and Core contexts.

See [Design Speed & Speed Limits](https://commonwaysystem.org/guide/design-speed.md).

Modal hierarchy

Transit > Pedestrian > Bicycle > Vehicle > Freight

The modal hierarchy is retained at the Arterial base order rather than reassigned, a deliberate choice that signals the conflict between the pattern's real-world speeding effect and its nominal priority order, rather than papering over it with a different hierarchy.

## Design notes

Discouraged status here does not mean the pattern is banned; it means adopting it requires weighing the speeding tendency against whatever benefit, often traffic flow or signal progression, motivated the one-way conversion in the first place.

## Related patterns

[Default (No Parking, No Direct Property Access)](https://commonwaysystem.org/patterns/arterials/default.md) (ART-DEF-01) (the two-way form this page's own citation, Riggs and Gilderbloom's evidence-based research on two-way conversion's livability gains, supports converting to, rather than the base order this pattern deliberately retains without reassigning)

## References

1.  Evidence-based [Riggs, W. and Gilderbloom, J., "Two-Way Street Conversion: Evidence of Increased Livability in Louisville," _Journal of Planning Education and Research_ 36(1), 2016.](https://www.urbanismnext.org/resources/two-way-street-conversion-evidence-of-increased-livability-in-louisville)