{"id":346795,"date":"2025-11-01T00:48:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T00:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/346795\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T00:48:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T00:48:13","slug":"city-may-soon-approve-a-new-traffic-study-for-reverse-lanes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/346795\/","title":{"rendered":"City may soon approve a new traffic study for reverse lanes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PHOENIX \u2014 For decades, the \u201creverse lanes\u201d on 7th Avenue and 7th Street have been one of the more controversial features of Phoenix\u2019s road network.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve lived in Phoenix since 1960, I\u2019ve lived in this house for 50 years,\u201d said Dwayne Witten, who lives off 7th Avenue.<\/p>\n<p>The noise of the passing traffic can easily be heard from Witten\u2019s house, and sometimes that traffic has come too close to home.<\/p>\n<p>Now, after years of debate, and months after a petition to remove them reached the City Council, the city is set to vote on a new traffic safety study.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve had to rebuild the fence here twice that I can think of because of accidents that have occurred,\u201d Witten said.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.phoenix.gov\/administration\/departments\/streets\/initiatives\/projects-studies\/7th-street-7th-avenue.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">First introduced in 1979 on 7th Avenue, then on 7th Street in 1982<\/a>, Phoenix\u2019s reverse lanes turn the center lane into a southbound-only lane in the morning, and a northbound-only lane in the evening, a system designed to ease rush-hour traffic.<\/p>\n<p>But for Witten, he says that the system has come with serious safety risks as drivers often don\u2019t know or don\u2019t follow the rules.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d like to see them go away,\u201d Witten said.<\/p>\n<p>An <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.endreverselanes.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">online petition<\/a> calling for the end of the reverse lanes gathered more than 5,000 signatures this past spring, and it\u2019s not just homeowners who want to see change. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll be on my computer doing my normal thing, and you can hear the screeching, the crash,\u201d said Shahe Koulloukian, who owns Mazvo Car Care Center on 7th Street.<\/p>\n<p>Koulloukian says the problem isn\u2019t just confusion over lane direction, it\u2019s the speed and danger that come with the setup.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cForget being reverse, forget not being able to take a left or right turn, it\u2019s that center lane during those times is considered to be a fast lane, and it\u2019s not the biggest problem,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>In response to a community petition, the Phoenix City Council will likely vote in November on how to move forward with a new study of the reverse lanes to assess safety impacts.<\/p>\n<p>If approved, the Street Transportation Department says results from that study could be presented in 2026.<\/p>\n<p>But some, like Koulloukian, believe the solution doesn\u2019t need more analysis, just observation from city leaders.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn a perfect world, I would love to see them go away,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>In a <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.phoenix.gov\/administration\/departments\/streets\/initiatives\/projects-studies\/7th-street-7th-avenue.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">previous traffic study<\/a>, the City found that reverse lanes reduced travel times by 40% and said it decreases crash risks at busy intersections due to no left turns being allowed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX \u2014 For decades, the \u201creverse lanes\u201d on 7th Avenue and 7th Street have been one of the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":346796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,1589,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-346795","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-phoenix","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115471692780606225","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}