This will only be of interest to people who live in Los Angeles. Currently under consideration is the idea of turning Pico Boulevard and Olympic Boulevards into one-way streets. Olympic would be only westbound whereas Pico would be only eastbound. I drive a lot on both roads and oddly enough, I probably am more likely to be westbound on Olympic and eastbound on Pico…but I still think it's a sucky idea. It may not be quite as sucky as allowing those streets to get even more sucky at rush hour than they already are. That, however, does not make the idea unsucky.
What bothers me is that those streets are actually quite easy to drive on when it's not rush hour. Four or five hours per day, they're rough in some sections to the point where some of us have learned not to be on them then. So we're talking about making it less convenient the rest of the day for everyone in order to make it more convenient during the busiest hours for those who must drive then.
Another question that occurs to me is what kind of parking they're thinking of retaining on these streets. The above-linked article talks about moving some parking meters but perhaps eliminating some to allow for bus lanes going in both directions. There are some areas where eliminating a lot of street parking would cause major hardships. And if they're talking about leaving the street parking but switching directions…well, I'm guessing there are less than a hundred people in Southern California who know how to parallel park on the left hand side of the street. Don't believe me? Just go to Beverly Hills where there are a few such avenues and watch the attempts.
I think they're missing the obvious solution which is to make all the east-west streets westbound and leave them that way. Eventually, the traffic crisis will be Santa Monica's problem and we'll all know not to go to Santa Monica.
See? I have answers to problems. But somehow, they never call on me.