One-Way Traffic

a method of controlling road traffic by using the entire width of a street or highway for vehicular traffic in only one direction. Sometimes one-way traffic is organized in such a way that express buses or trolleybuses can still move in the opposite direction; in certain cases the one-way traffic mode is introduced for specific times. When one-way traffic is introduced, the traffic capacity of the roadway and the traffic speed are increased by an average of 10–12 percent, and the number of accidents is substantially reduced.

Streets with one-way traffic existed as long ago as in ancient Pompeii. In 1906 one-way traffic was introduced in Philadelphia, USA. One-way traffic is used extensively in many cities. For example, in Paris about 30 percent of the streets are one-way. It is also used in a number of the cities in the USSR, including Moscow, Leningrad, Riga, Vilnius, Baku, Kuibyshev, and Gorky.