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How do you fix a stroad?

strongtowns.org

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Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#61

Post by saghm »

bee_rider wrote: post #46

"Stroad" seems to be a recently popularized by strongtowns. I'm curious if anyone has actually managed to measure this sort of thing? My suspicion is that it "stroads" are essentially to-wide streets, and it should be possible to find research indicating that streets should be narrower, because widening them causes people to drive too fast. I was only able to find the following, coverage, though: https://usa.streetsb…

> "Stroad" seems to be a new made-up word by strongtowns

Thank you! I clicked the link and then scrolled through several top-level comments thinking that either this was some sort of internet joke that I wasn't previously aware of or I somehow managed to not learn word that everyone else has always known.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#62

Post by alanbernstein »

JetAlone wrote: post #48
jimmaswell wrote: post #3

I 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.

Anti-stroadism is a deluded locus of control for detached intellectuals that will lead us into the fresh horrors of a dark age yet unseen. Without the strong stroadlandians to remind us of the importance of danger and adversity, we would have small walking communities of sensitive, dependent pedestrians who gradually get cut off from one another as the roads fall into disrepair.

The point is that we're already in a dark age, brought about by transforming the environment to work for cars instead of humans.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#63

Post by josephcsible »

jcranmer wrote: post #55
josephcsible wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> such that most people don't need to drive I disagree that they'll accomplish this for most people. In particular, what about all of the people who live in suburbs but work in the city?

Bus systems can work well to move commuters to rail-based mass-transit that bring them into the city. If the suburbs sprawl too far out, you can also plop down park-and-rides at the terminal stations of the mass transit system. Why do you specifically need to drive and park at the exact location you're going to, especially when the land cost of the storage place of your empty car is prohibitively expensive (as they t…

In places that have good mass transit for their suburbs, sure. But what about all of the places that don't?

Because sometimes I have to go to work in weather conditions like hailstorms, thunderstorms, or freezing rain.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#64

Post by bee_rider »

beaconstudios wrote: post #50
bee_rider wrote: post #46

"Stroad" seems to be a recently popularized by strongtowns. I'm curious if anyone has actually managed to measure this sort of thing? My suspicion is that it "stroads" are essentially to-wide streets, and it should be possible to find research indicating that streets should be narrower, because widening them causes people to drive too fast. I was only able to find the following, coverage, though: https://usa.streetsb…

the argument is that streets and roads serve fundamentally different purposes and thus have different design goals, and stroads do both and thus fail at both. Roads are for transit, getting cars a long distance between interest points, and streets are for navigating within a point of interest like a neighbourhood. Roads want to optimise for higher cruising speed and streets are to optimise for parking, mixed-use with…

I get the idea, and I'm in favor of removing stroads. I think it would be more compelling if it was backed up by some data. Finding actual data on stroads is basically impossible because it is not a term-of-art as far as I can tell.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#65

Post by takk309 »

beaconstudios wrote: post #50
bee_rider wrote: post #46

"Stroad" seems to be a recently popularized by strongtowns. I'm curious if anyone has actually managed to measure this sort of thing? My suspicion is that it "stroads" are essentially to-wide streets, and it should be possible to find research indicating that streets should be narrower, because widening them causes people to drive too fast. I was only able to find the following, coverage, though: https://usa.streetsb…

the argument is that streets and roads serve fundamentally different purposes and thus have different design goals, and stroads do both and thus fail at both. Roads are for transit, getting cars a long distance between interest points, and streets are for navigating within a point of interest like a neighbourhood. Roads want to optimise for higher cruising speed and streets are to optimise for parking, mixed-use with…

Traffic engineer here. Generally there is a hierarchy of roads called functional class. It goes local street - collector - minor arterial - major arterial - freeway. From local to freeway the speeds increase and the land access decreases. Good urban design should connect only roads one "step" apart, that is local roads should only connect to collectors and so forth. Reality is clearly different.

I would imagine everyone can think of a local road that is more convenient than another route therefore attracting high traffic volumes. These roads become problematic without improving the proper route. The other side of the coin is an arterial that is built but too many accesses are allowed to connect to it. In my home town this has happened when the city council caved to developers and allowed residential construction on a major arterial because nobody wanted to build commercial developments at the time. Jump ahead 10 years and there is now a strange neighborhood with driveways directly on the busiest street in town.

Changing roads is very tricky due to the funding sources. Usually local roads are only eligible for local funding where as arterials are eligible for federal funding. There are exceptions and it is much more nuanced than can be explained in one paragraph.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#66

Post by alanbernstein »

jimmaswell wrote: post #3

I 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.

In my city, stroads were created, presumably by agglomerative ad-hoc decision making as the population exploded for several decades straight. Now, in the majority of places, there is no width left in the right-of-way to add good sidewalks or bike paths. I don't know if the situation is similar elsewhere, but here it's clear to me that the concept of the stroad is useful, and that it's something to be avoided as much as possible in the future.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#67

Post by ryukafalz »

reportingsjr wrote: post #54
jimmaswell wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big, climate controlled, pedestrian-only space packed full of different kinds of shops isn't pedestrian-friendly? Give me a break. On the subjective side I think a lot of them look pretty nice.

Have you ever tried to walk to a mall from where you live or work?

Sure have, from both home and the office. It has several transit lines connecting to it. Easy peasy. Here it is:

https://g.page/FashionDistrictPhiladelphia?share

Right smack dab in the middle of the city.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#68

Post by takk309 »

bee_rider wrote: post #64
beaconstudios wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the argument is that streets and roads serve fundamentally different purposes and thus have different design goals, and stroads do both and thus fail at both. Roads are for transit, getting cars a long distance between interest points, and streets are for navigating within a point of interest like a neighbourhood. Roads want to optimise for higher cruising speed and streets are to optimise for parking, mixed-use with…

I get the idea, and I'm in favor of removing stroads. I think it would be more compelling if it was backed up by some data. Finding actual data on stroads is basically impossible because it is not a term-of-art as far as I can tell.

Try the terms "road diet" and "traffic calming", they will yeild more results. While not exactly the same concept, they are terms that have been in use within the industry for much longer.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#69

Post by [deleted] »

lelandbatey wrote: post #2

I 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…

[deleted]

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#70

Post by noahtallen »

wilkommen wrote: post #20
lelandbatey wrote: post #2

I 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…

I think a true shift towards Urbanism in our cities may be only possible if there's a whole lot of money in it for somebody with political leverage. But who? I'm not sure. Real estate developers? They're already making money hand over fist building our cities in the shitty car-centric way. When the US made its shift to car-centricity with the interstate highway system, there was a ton of money in it for oil companies…

One of strong road’s arguments is that denser neighborhoods bring in much more tax revenue compared to strip malls and stroads. Take a classic, large mall. You could instead house hundreds, maybe thousands of people in the same space, as well as scores of small businesses. The tax revenue there would be much higher than if most of the space is a parking lot that, on average, is rarely fully utilized.

The main point of their argument is that strip malls and stroads and suburbia is unsustainable because it can’t generate enough tax revenue to support its infrastructure.

I think this means that entities do stand to gain from better planning, but it’s over the long term. You can’t build it in a year and expect it to be immediately full, but you can expect it to survive the long term (unlike the mall).

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