41–50 of 351 posts
This feels like saying that we should only have supercomputers and low-power embedded devices, and nothing in between such as regular desktop computers.
No, its like saying that a kitchen surface should have clear femarcation between a stove for cooking and a prep surface, and wen you mix them you get molten chopping board and house fires
Cool seeing strongtowns here. Not Just Bikes is a YouTube channel that has helped popularize them recently, and has a lot of other videos about what makes living in the Netherlands so great (i.e. it’s not just bikes, although that’s a big part of it). Here’s Not Just Bikes’ video about Stroads: https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM
I can't find the exact video right now but I remember one where he compared a horrid stroad with a lovely Dutch street. The Dutch version contained two single lane streets, bike lanes, a lightrail line and lovely shade from all the trees. And ironically the second had a higher carrying capacity because single-occupant vehicles are just terrible at moving people.
I'm not sold. I live on a so-called road, it's comprised of a single lane of paved dirt that stretches on for 3/4ths of a mile. On top of that, the very first line is just utterly comical: > If we want to build towns that are financially productive, we need to identify and eliminate stroads. You're missing the point on why they're made. They're built to facilitate expansion in confined areas. I'd argue that it's more…
You don't live on a road, you either live on a street or stroad. A road by definition does not have building access. Maybe your backyard faces a road, but you couldn't drive onto it with a car from there.
I couldn’t agree more with the article. Unfortunately as for America I think people wouldn’t be very happy with turning their stroads into streets. There is a very toxic self centered car culture here; any impediment to it real or imaginary will make people very angry.
The cognitive dissonance is wild. The busiest and most economically vibrant areas in the US are the ones that deprioritize cars (main streets, downtowns, outdoor malls, bar districts). But if you try to change an existing area into a less car friendly area people absolutely lose their heads
I couldn’t agree more with the article. Unfortunately as for America I think people wouldn’t be very happy with turning their stroads into streets. There is a very toxic self centered car culture here; any impediment to it real or imaginary will make people very angry.
I don't think this article is making the point veey clearly, but it is a very important point: roads are for long distance connections at speed, streets are for local traffic: reaching houses, shops, people. These stroads try to do both and fail at both because the goals are contradictory; you can't have high speed traffic with lots of side streets and crossing traffic, bikes and pedestrians. It will be too slow for…
We have lots of slow and calm streets in American suburbia, and we love them that way. We value this calm so much that we refuse to admit shopping or even multi-family housing to them, for fear of disturbing it. These uses have to go somewhere, so they go where there is no presumption of an entitlement to low traffic, and that’s the road. The businesses hardly complain; they love to be where the greatest numbers of e…
Cities are moving toward "30 [mph] in the city" laws, moving stroads back to streets.
Anytime I leave the city and spend a few days getting around by car I’m amazed at just how completely exhausting it is to go shopping or run errands in suburbia. I am not sure why exactly, after all I’m just sitting there, but I think all the stop-and-go and waiting 10 minutes at lights trying to get across a stroad intersection to a shop I can see the whole time is a big contributor.
In a proper (that is, probably not North-American) suburb you can do errands walking or cycling.
I couldn’t agree more with the article. Unfortunately as for America I think people wouldn’t be very happy with turning their stroads into streets. There is a very toxic self centered car culture here; any impediment to it real or imaginary will make people very angry.
If we’re fighting stroads, those have to become roads. One way to get this done is simply banish the businesses. But this strains capacity on the arterials even worse, since you now need to leave the suburb to go shopping.
The other way is to push businesses down the tree, closer to houses, more decentralized. But the residents won’t abide that either, on the theory that businesses will attract traffic to their sub-trees.
To that I say: get over it. It’s utterly insane to have a whole street for the private use of a few dozen families. It’s literally impossible to make arterials big enough to compensate. You can have your street slow, but it’s going to be part of a network and it’s going to be used by more than just the hyper local community.
But of course they don’t see this as particularly less bad than total isolation, so they won’t allow it either. The whole thing is fucked.
At midnight, they actually functioned as good roads; I probably averaged 47mph.
During the day, I averaged about half of that because of all the lights -- even when I didn't stop at a red, the traffic in front of me did.
I'm not sold. I live on a so-called road, it's comprised of a single lane of paved dirt that stretches on for 3/4ths of a mile. On top of that, the very first line is just utterly comical: > If we want to build towns that are financially productive, we need to identify and eliminate stroads. You're missing the point on why they're made. They're built to facilitate expansion in confined areas. I'd argue that it's more…
You don't live on a road, you either live on a street or stroad. A road by definition does not have building access. Maybe your backyard faces a road, but you couldn't drive onto it with a car from there.
While the cropping of the image obscures what is at the end of the laneway, it most likely does have a building. As you can see there is a 911 number plate, which usually don't get issued in Ontario unless there is a building on the property. Additionally, it appears to be a recycling bin at the end of the lane under the Canadian flag, which further indicates that a building is present.
Moreover, we can find plenty of examples of buildings, including houses, that have direct access to that road.