I hate driving to the city because I loathe these stroads but I don't see a way out. The ship has sailed, the roads are built. I don't think there is enough money to build ourselves out of this. This is the problem I see with most infrastructure in US. We overshot so much that the burden of maintenance is too great. It's easier to build once than maintain indefinitely.
The Stroad
191–200 of 351 posts
Re: The Stroad
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great channel, have been following it for some time, a few takeaways from there: - It's the cars that make the cities undesirable - I was shocked how the historical center of London, ON was demolished to the ground and replaced with shacks - Kids should be able to walk to school alone in safety - I live in Europe and I was baffled to learn that multi-purpose developments are disallowed in most of North America. This…
> I love how I can just jump on a bike here and be at a large supermarket in 5 minutes If you live in a large US city, this can still be very manageable. There are two large grocery stores and a small one as well as a Target and a metro line within a 5 minute walk of my house. Apart from the metro line, we didn't really prioritize the grocery stores, etc when looking for a house. That said, there are many downsides t…
Doesn't sound like a lot to be honest. This is what I'm used to in Germany, say around 1km radius, everything walkable:
* 1x big REWE, 3x small REWE, 1x Real, 1x Netto, 2x ALDI, 3x LIDL, 1x Turkish grocery store, 1x Asian grocery store
* Too many kiosks too count (tobacco, drinks, snacks, maybe like a convinience store)
* Too many bakeries to count
* 2 tram/metro stations, soon to be 3
* 5 bus stations (not counting the weird ones)
What they probably meant was they can hop on a bike and be in /any/ supermarket they fancy in this time.
Your city seems pretty good compared to what we're usually seeing from city planning in the US though.
Re: The Stroad
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Currently the 15mph / 20mph disjunction means that some idiots still try to squeeze their cars past relatively fast-moving e-bikes (which then often catch up with the car at the next set of lights...) To be fair, this behaviour isn't one-sided. Often bicycles, e-bikes and motorcycles squeeze through small gaps between cars moving slow'ish in packed traffic. Now, of course car drivers should remain vigilant and cont…
> To be fair, this behaviour isn't one-sided. Often bicycles, e-bikes and motorcycles squeeze through small gaps between cars moving slow'ish in packed traffic. The speed is the issue. A collision at low speeds is much less likely to be fatal [0]. Being closely overtaken by a car when you're going at 20-25mph on a bicycle is 1) a scary experience and 2) unnecessarily dangerous for the cyclist (and not at all for the…
Instead of digging through that PDF, the charts on this post show how a higher speed can drastically increase the odds of fatalities:
* https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/05/31/3-graphs-that-explain...
Remember from physics class that kinetic energy is generated proportional to the square of velocity. Doubling speed quadruples energy.
Re: The Stroad
#194Another article that may be useful: > Americans do not understand the difference between a road and a street. [...] > The value of a road is in the speed and efficiency that it provides for movement between places. Anything that is done that reduces the speed and efficiency of a road devalues that road. If we want to maximize the value of a road, we eliminate anything that reduces the speed and efficiency of travel.…
A thing that you can often see in the Netherlands is frontage roads. When a road with houses on it needs a speed upgrade, it gets split into a fast road and a parallel frontage/access/service road for access to the adjacent houses. Possibly even on both sides. This is something that was already being done way back early in the 20th century. (Edit: found a reference to the Dutch word, "ventweg" ("hawking/peddling road…
We have a major one of those in NYC, queens boulevard, and it’s a disaster. It’s dangerous to cross, and wide enough that it’s inconvenient to get across, so it effectively divides neighborhoods in half.
Re: The Stroad
#195Another article that may be useful: > Americans do not understand the difference between a road and a street. [...] > The value of a road is in the speed and efficiency that it provides for movement between places. Anything that is done that reduces the speed and efficiency of a road devalues that road. If we want to maximize the value of a road, we eliminate anything that reduces the speed and efficiency of travel.…
A thing that you can often see in the Netherlands is frontage roads. When a road with houses on it needs a speed upgrade, it gets split into a fast road and a parallel frontage/access/service road for access to the adjacent houses. Possibly even on both sides. This is something that was already being done way back early in the 20th century. (Edit: found a reference to the Dutch word, "ventweg" ("hawking/peddling road…
I think I've come across references that those "ventwegen" existed even back in the 19th century.
Re: The Stroad
#196Another article that may be useful: > Americans do not understand the difference between a road and a street. [...] > The value of a road is in the speed and efficiency that it provides for movement between places. Anything that is done that reduces the speed and efficiency of a road devalues that road. If we want to maximize the value of a road, we eliminate anything that reduces the speed and efficiency of travel.…
A thing that you can often see in the Netherlands is frontage roads. When a road with houses on it needs a speed upgrade, it gets split into a fast road and a parallel frontage/access/service road for access to the adjacent houses. Possibly even on both sides. This is something that was already being done way back early in the 20th century. (Edit: found a reference to the Dutch word, "ventweg" ("hawking/peddling road…
There's a few of these around the suburb-y metro Detroit area. They're nice to bike on, and they haven't seemed awful to drive, but they do still do "divide neighborhoods" quite well, which is unfortunate
Re: The Stroad
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mixed use medium density is my urban nirvana. Anywhere I have been with it just makes so much sense for daily life at person scale. Cars tricked us into thinking life can be comfortable spread across large distances and I think we are suffering in various ways for it. I am reminded of that cartoon where aliens arive on earth, and assume that cars are the dominant species, since so much of our world has been dedicated…
Suburbanites hate cars too, and that’s why they’ll never let you have mixed use. It would perhaps eliminate the snarl in commercial areas, but it would also bring some portion of that traffic into what are now quiet residential sanctuaries.
Generalizing a bit, it seems that suburbanites hate other people’s cars, but are OK needing to drive everywhere, whereas urbanites hate having a car-dependent lifestyle.
Re: The Stroad
#198For anyone interested in this topic, I highly recommend this channel's series. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN... 'Not Just Bikes' has a ton of other great videos on the channel about what infrastructure makes a good city and what makes one hostile to residents.
It's a great channel that puts words to just why American cities are so dystopic. It really helps understand exactly what "induced demand" means. If you add another lane, some of the people on the bus will take the car, and thus the new lane is almost immediately full again. If you remove the bus lane, bike lane, sidewalk, same thing. Adding capacity for cars actually makes travelling by car worse . It also gives hop…
Induced demand is nonsense.
If people leave the bus to drive it indicates your bus system is providing bad service.
If more people drive it indicates that your city isn't filling its purpose as being a place where there are a lot of things to do.
Cities need to figure out how to get ahead of induced demand not how use it as an excuse to be a worse city.. sure, this is a hard problem, with many options that make something else work, but induced demand is still a terrible excuse to be a bad city.
Re: The Stroad
#199Wow, that's a really weird coincidence, I was literally watching (listening) to this video on youtube when I saw this pop up. One thing strikes me though: there's network effects to "Stroads"; in the USA if you designed a shopping district or neighbourhood as being "roads to streets" with limited parking (as is suggested) then the people operating businesses or living in that neighbourhood would be worse off... becau…
Also sadly the moment all the parking is removed from businesses and concentrated in public lots do you really believe it will be free to park? If you’ve ever been to a town like Gatlinburg, Tennessee you’d understand just how nerve-wracking it is to feel comfortable parking on the edge of town. “Oh this is 3 hour parking will we make it back in time”, “oh this lot is $7/hr wow”…
Parking is a limited resource and probably should be expensive if we want to limit the number of cars on the road.
Parking can be free if the citizens of said city decide to issue a bond and build a bigger garage. But there’s no free lunch, you pay for it one way or another.
In order to de-car American life, it’s going to take some frustration with this situation to drive people and businesses to locations better suited for fewer cars. Driving is only going to keep getting more expensive until this happens.
Re: The Stroad
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
A thing that you can often see in the Netherlands is frontage roads. When a road with houses on it needs a speed upgrade, it gets split into a fast road and a parallel frontage/access/service road for access to the adjacent houses. Possibly even on both sides. This is something that was already being done way back early in the 20th century. (Edit: found a reference to the Dutch word, "ventweg" ("hawking/peddling road…
We have a major one of those in NYC, queens boulevard, and it’s a disaster. It’s dangerous to cross, and wide enough that it’s inconvenient to get across, so it effectively divides neighborhoods in half.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110923155641/http://wiki.coe.n...
There's a picture of one here, and the main road is a single lane in both directions. Which is as far from Queens Boulevard as you can get.
The 2 lanes to be crossed makes crossing safer. Further, the side roads are differentiated to make it clear that they are primarily for biking/walking (they are a different color, and are tiled).
Also:
> Service roads are purposely constructed to be discontinuous sections of road, meaning that through traffic cannot use it to get from one main street to another. Since the only traffic on it will be cars accessing the houses or shops along the service road, traffic is substantially lower that on the main roads, and speeds are kept down due to the short segments of roadway
Queens boulevard is a highway masquerading as a road.