Santa Fe Now a Two-Way Street

I love how arbitrary Argentina can be. Like when Kirchner decided to not do daylight savings time this year. And when streets suddenly become two-way after 43 years of being one-way.

When I went out on my balcony this morning to see how cold it was, I noticed that a bus was coming up Laprida towards Santa Fe. This struck me as odd, since no buses that I know of run up Laprida. When the bus proceeded to turn right on Santa Fe, in the opposite direction to the normal flow of traffic, I waited anxiously for the imminent crash. When none came, I knew something was up.

 WTF??

A little bit of research on the Argentimes website revealed that the government has decided to make Avenida Santa Fe a two-way street, after 43 years of being one-way. The change was instituted this morning and is supposed to help with traffic congestion.

However, the street is only two-way for about 17 blocks, from Anchorena (which is one block from my street) up to Borges at Plaza Italia. So I'm not sure how much this is going to help. Apparently several bus routes, including the 64, 68, 39, 12, and 152, have also been changed to accommodate this new bi-directionality. Basically all the buses that used to go down Santa Fe towards the centro, now also go up Santa Fe for these 17 blocks.

Vehicles will not be allowed to turn left off of Santa Fe during this 17 block stretch, so if you want to head up into Palermo, you should consider taking another route such as Guemes or Arenales.

Apparently the government is trying to make Santa Fe a public transportation street, with private cars taking the back streets and buses and taxis being redirected to the main avenue. We'll see how that works out.