One way streets can be the best part about your neighbourhood!  Or the worst…if you follow.

There are a few areas of Toronto where the one-way streets are simply out of control, and it makes driving around incredibly frustrating.

Today I’d like to examine what it’s like living in Riverdale…

My brother and his wife live in Riverdale with their daughter – my precious niece, Charlotte.

It seemed like the perfect location, but it took some convincing at first.

There was early discussion of looking for houses up at Lawrence & Avenue Road, but I was persistent in my feelings that they’d be the youngest young-couple by many years.  At 27-years-old, and with a child on the way, I didn’t feel that Avenue/Lawrence, Yonge/Lawrence, or even Yonge/Eglinton would be a good fit for them.

Riverdale seemed perfect.

The couple that lives next door has a one-year-old child, and there are about a dozen children under the age of ten on their street alone.

Withrow Park is a stone’s throw away, and my sister-in-law walks up to the Danforth every night to meet my brother on his way home from work.

Which way does she walk?

Well, north, of course.  Or “up,” if you will.

Walking, you can go anywhere in any direction.  The sidewalks are open for business!

Driving, on the other hand, is an entirely different story in Riverdale.

Maybe I’m just overly-critical because I drive all the time, and I don’t know what the letters “T.T.C.” stand for.  But driving around in Riverdale is my own private nightmare.  Every street is one-wayand making a wrong turn could cost you ten minutes if you have to zig, zag, and then zig back again.

Take a look at the streets just east of Withrow Park:

Look at all those arrows!

These streets are all one-way!

Cavell Avenue goes west, and then Strathcona goes east.  Wroexter goes west, Frizell east, Dingwall west, and the trend continues as you go south with Bain, Withrow, Riverdale, Langley, and Victor.

Travelling north or south means taking either Logan Avenue north on the west side of the park, or taking Carlaw Avenue south on the east side.

Clearly, the urban design of this area is no coincidence, and the results have both pros and cons (although clearly I sit here complaining so I tend to self-pity as I look at the cons).  But let’s start by examining the pros, shall we?

If Riverdale is one of the most child-friendly areas in the city, and such an incredible place to start your young family, then clearly the children and the families are the area’s priority.

One-way streets create less through-traffic and also eliminate the possibility of “cutting through’ the area instead of taking the main streets like always-busy Danforth Avenue, Gerrard, and Dundas.

There is far less speeding in the area as it seems that you’re always a stone’s throw from a stop sign – especially as you go north/south on Logan/Carlaw.

And perhaps it could be argued that since driving around is more difficult, then people often leave their cars at home for short trips.

This is the greatest benefit to the one-way maze of Riverdale.

No matter the time of day (or the temperature outside!), you’ll always see couples pushing baby-strollers, or Dads pulling their kids on toboggans as they head home from Riverdale Park.  In talking to my brother and his wife it seems as if they truly walk everywhere!  Their car sits in the garage for days on end, and the thought of piling in the ole’ Corolla for a short jaunt up to The Danforth never enters their minds.

Now maybe this has less to do with the one-way streets, as I’m arguing, and more to do with the people who live in the area of Riverdale itself.  But even for people that don’t live in the area, it forces them to use their damn legs!

Case in point: my experience this weekend with a couple of open houses on Harcourt and Wroxeter.

Harcourt Avenue is one-way going east off Carlaw, and then once you hit Pape, it’s one-way going west!

If you need to get to a house about ten houses in on Harcourt Ave off Pape, and you’re coming from Riverdale, you have to go north on Pape, east on Danforth, south on Jones Ave, and then west on Harcourt.

You basically have to go around in a giant circle.

So what people were doing instead on Saturday was parking on Pape Avenue and actually walking along Harcourt Avenue to get to the open house.  Maybe physical fitness wasn’t the goal in mind when the traffic Gods created Riverdale and it’s associated maze of one-way streets, but the logistics of driving around on two very busy streets to get to a house on Harcourt Avenue just don’t make it efficient.

After seeing the house on Harcourt Avenue, we went south to see a home on Wroxetor, which is actually a two-way street – but only because it’s a dead end!

Wroxeter is one-way in between Carlaw and Pape, but then it’s two way as you go east of Pape.  You can see from the image above that Wroxeter is a dead-end, thus why you have no choice but to allow two-way traffic.

In fact, the only streets in the area that have two-way traffic are streets just like Wroxeter where you’ve got no choice but to allow it.  Everything else is one-way.

For somebody like me, I find the one-way maze rather frustrating.

But ask the residents of the area and you’ll find that they actually prefer it.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter what I think.  I’m just a real estate agent who spends a whole lot of time in his car and who drives around to see houses in the area.  I don’t really think I get a vote.

Now if I lived in the area, how would I feel?  Would it be annoying to have to drive across Withrow, down Broadview and over on Riverdale just to get to my house?  Yes, but perhaps the inconvenience is hugely offset by the decreased amount of through traffic in the neighbourhood, and how much more child-friendly it is by result.

After all, people buy into a specific area not because of the traffic flow patterns but because of the neighbourhood, and all it has to offer.  The people, schools, parks, recreation, churches, shops & restaurants – and all that is present in Riverdale.

Neighbourhoods with a giant maze of one-way streets aren’t exactly uncommon in Toronto.  Just ask the good folks of Cabbagetown, as seen below…