A Toronto councillor thinks it may be time to change direction downtown … as in change Yonge and Bay streets to one-way streets in opposite directions, south of Bloor.

According to Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, converting Yonge and Bay into one-way streets would be good for drivers and cyclists.

“You can also actually make way for a separated bike lane, you can have room for transit and you can have room for cars to travel very quickly,” Minnan-Wong explained. “It could go as far north as Bloor and as far south as Front Street or down to the waterfront.”

Minnan-Wong cites New York as a city where the one ways work.

Councillor Adam Vaughan told 680News he thinks it would just make things worse.

“They cause amazing gridlock. They force you to drive around the block to turn the corner. The experience in Hamilton and Vancouver is that they kill retail,” Vaughan explained. “They’re bad for pedestrians and they’re really bad for motorists.”

Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam doesn’t like the idea either and said one-way streets move people away from storefronts.

“It does not allow people to stop. It does not allow folks to come out to shops,” Kristyn Wong-Tam said. “It is only designed to facilitate one objective and that is to move cars as quickly as possible.

Wong-Tam is proposing a redesign of Yonge that would allow specific drop-off points, since right now downtown Yonge is a no-stopping zone.

“If we’re going to curb urban sprawl, then we have to make the streets more livable and sustainable and we have to build complete neighbourhoods,” Wong-Tam said. “One directional four-lane road is not good city building.”

The downtown Yonge Business Improvement Association has told 680News they have no official opinion at the moment.

City staff are currently in the middle of a downtown transportation study and Minnan-Wong said once they’re finished he’d like them to look at the one-way option.