How do you fix a stroad?
strongtowns.org
How do you fix a stroad?
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Re: How do you fix a stroad?
#2I love that this highlights an oft-missed truth about Urbanism and shifting our urban landscape: this is going to take a long time. It's going to take many decades, and it's going to require waiting for individual human beings to literally die before we get to start making the changes we want to make.
I mean, unless we can get someone really excited about this into federal office in which case it _might_ be possible to do what we did in the US with the interstate system but in reverse, but that'd require a pretty different political landscape than the one we're in now, I suspect.
Re: How do you fix a stroad?
#3I find the premise questionable that stroads are bad. Give a stroad good sidewalks, crosswalks with signs that light up when you hit a button, and a bike path and everybody is well-served.
That or just let car people (majority) have these areas that are good for cars and let the anti car people have their crowded little streets with no parking elsewhere.
Re: How do you fix a stroad?
#4I find the premise questionable that stroads are bad. Give a stroad good sidewalks, crosswalks with signs that light up when you hit a button, and a bike path and everybody is well-served. That or just let car people (majority) have these areas that are good for cars and let the anti car people have their crowded little streets with no parking elsewhere.
Pedestrians are the majority where I live; and even car drivers end up as pedestrians some of the time.
Re: How do you fix a stroad?
#5I find the premise questionable that stroads are bad. Give a stroad good sidewalks, crosswalks with signs that light up when you hit a button, and a bike path and everybody is well-served. That or just let car people (majority) have these areas that are good for cars and let the anti car people have their crowded little streets with no parking elsewhere.
it's not people are anti-car as much as they are pro-human. the majority of people (in the states) would not be car people if they had alternatives. stroads are hostile to anyone not in a car. making pedestrians hit a beg button to cross street is just reinforcing that they are trespassing on land that is not for them.
Re: How do you fix a stroad?
#6I find the premise questionable that stroads are bad. Give a stroad good sidewalks, crosswalks with signs that light up when you hit a button, and a bike path and everybody is well-served. That or just let car people (majority) have these areas that are good for cars and let the anti car people have their crowded little streets with no parking elsewhere.
> That or just let car people (majority) have these areas that are good for cars and
The idea is that a well planned city/suburb will turn car people into people that also enjoy safely not using a car some of the time.
> let the anti car people have their crowded little streets with no parking elsewhere.
Bleh. Such an us vs them mentality. I'm suspicious of cars because I have literally gotten hit by them while cycling (edit: multiple times, thank you very much). I'm not "anti car."
Try getting hit by 2 tons of metal and see how that makes you feel about safe infrastructure.
Re: How do you fix a stroad?
#7I find the premise questionable that stroads are bad. Give a stroad good sidewalks, crosswalks with signs that light up when you hit a button, and a bike path and everybody is well-served. That or just let car people (majority) have these areas that are good for cars and let the anti car people have their crowded little streets with no parking elsewhere.
> areas that are good for cars
You're talking about a road. Stroads are not good for cars. Because stroads have crosswalks, and people's driveways opening directly onto them, and many other things, traffic flow and "attentional efficiency" are both far worse than what you'd get from a real separated road with onramps/offramps.
Roads are great. Streets are great. Good city planning involves plenty of both. Just like your body needs both arteries and capillaries. Stroads don't solve either problem as well as just having both does, and they introduce tons of problems besides.
Re: How do you fix a stroad?
#8I find the premise questionable that stroads are bad. Give a stroad good sidewalks, crosswalks with signs that light up when you hit a button, and a bike path and everybody is well-served. That or just let car people (majority) have these areas that are good for cars and let the anti car people have their crowded little streets with no parking elsewhere.
it's not people are anti-car as much as they are pro-human. the majority of people (in the states) would not be car people if they had alternatives. stroads are hostile to anyone not in a car. making pedestrians hit a beg button to cross street is just reinforcing that they are trespassing on land that is not for them.
> making pedestrians hit a beg button to cross street is just reinforcing that they are trespassing on land that is not for them.
I love this quote.
Re: How do you fix a stroad?
#9I find the premise questionable that stroads are bad. Give a stroad good sidewalks, crosswalks with signs that light up when you hit a button, and a bike path and everybody is well-served. That or just let car people (majority) have these areas that are good for cars and let the anti car people have their crowded little streets with no parking elsewhere.
putting in crosswalks on a road like that will slow down drivers and get people killed, it is an inherently unsafe place to be.
the other reason that this is bad is this section of development is unprofitable for the city. The amount of resources it uses (road maintenance, electricity, sewage, emergency services) is far greater than the amount of taxes it brings in. This is why its mentioned at the end of the article that a place like this will inherently wither away and die.
Re: How do you fix a stroad?
#10I find the premise questionable that stroads are bad. Give a stroad good sidewalks, crosswalks with signs that light up when you hit a button, and a bike path and everybody is well-served. That or just let car people (majority) have these areas that are good for cars and let the anti car people have their crowded little streets with no parking elsewhere.
Except streets and roads are designed to solve different problems:
> Streets: The function of a street is to serve as a platform for building wealth. On a street, we're attempting to grow the complex ecosystem that produces community wealth. In these environments, people (outside of their automobiles) are the indicator species of success. Successful streets are environments where humans, and human interaction, flourish.
> Roads: In contrast, the function of a road is to connect productive places. You can think of a road as a refinement of the railroad — a road on rails — where people board in one place, depart in another and there is a high speed connection between the two.
> Stroads: Stroads are a mash-up of these two types of paths. We like to call them "the futon of transportation" because, just as a futon is neither a particularly good bed nor a particularly good couch, a stroad is neither a particularly good road or a particularly good street.
* https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/10/30/the-stroad
A high-speed, high-volume thoroughfare with minimal obstructions to flow will have its per-hour capacity decimated by having to stop every couple of hundred meters by traffic lights and crosswalks. On the pedestrian side, who wants to cross an area where cars travel 60 kph (or higher): what happens if they don't stop?
This video from the Not Just Bikes channel shows the stark difference between a street and a road (using examples in the Netherlands) and stroads:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM
If you make a place easier to get to primarily by car, then you need lots of parking—which makes walking a chore because of colossal amount of space needed for spaces. Do a satellite view of the mall closest mall to you: how much square footage is for retail and how much is for parking. Sometimes parking lots are 3x (or more) of the area of the actual store(s).
If you make a place easier to get to primarily by foot (or pedalling), then there's a lot fewer parking spaces—because why 'waste' the space on that form of transportation. (Outside of delivery trucks/vans.)