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How do you fix a stroad?

strongtowns.org

371–380 of 411 posts

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#371

As a fun note, I immediately recognized the location of this stroad pictured. I live relatively close to it. There's been a lot of new development there recently. They just redeveloped a large chunk of the area including launching a major Costco and an Amazon Fresh. I would honestly say it's a pretty healthy travel thoroughfare. It gets backed up during rush hour, but even interstates do here, so that's not unusual.

Here's the location, satellite view: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.7892469,-88.1325316,17z/data... The nearest true business / shopping district would seem to be downtown Naperville, here: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Downtown+Naperville,+55+S+... About 2 mi / 3.2 km from the intersection pictured.

Yes, downtown Naperville is the closest condensed shopping area. And it's extremely walkable, by design, with three major parking garages well-placed to ideally allow you to park your car on the edge of the downtown area and then walk to where you want to go. There's still car traffic, but due to the amount of pedestrians and narrow streets, drivers in the area will almost always route around it.

Meanwhile, Ogden Avenue is one of the main through-roads in the area. Usually a road you'd drive up to to avoid going through downtown Naperville, in fact.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason people like high speed roads is that it saves time, and time matters. Biking and public transit are both slow compared to cars *Cities build streets primarily around cars* You: Look! Cars are more convenient!! This isn't some iron law of the universe, that cars are faster even for basic errands happens because we choose to make it that way . When I was living on the outskirts of Munich, many short trips…

Now we have a set of existing conditions. Including a set of conditioned people, many of whom have arranged their life in light of those conditions. I think where a lot of proponents of density go wrong is they ignore telling the story of how the transition will work (meaning “not suck”). It’s the urban planning equivalent of skipping step two and just writing down “3. Profit” “It could all be better once we’ve compl…

Sure, it’s hard to get from A to B. But you can have plenty of incremental improvement along the way.

> “First we take away the parking and make these particular roads slower.” “Ok, then what?” “Then it’s ‘better’.”

Vancouver added a ton of protected bike lanes over a handful of years and doubled their bike mode share. It obviously made a big difference in how nice it was to bike there.

You generally don’t remove parking for nothing, you replace it with something else, like a bike or bus lane. Ideally, you have a coordinated plan, so that you don’t end up with one-off infra improvements that have little impact on the network as a whole.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has always been the drama of urbanism. Only a minority is pushing for it, while the rest furiously resist thanks to years of car-centric propaganda (and vested interests).

To me, I think if this generation had to choose between same day delivery and walkable neighborhoods they're going for the former. Maybe that's a false dichotomy

This generation is a lot of people, and who is to say they can't have both? Same day delivery becomes easier in densely populated areas, and densely populated areas tend to be more walkable.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#374

> Slow traffic; prioritize human movement over auto mobility; This will most probably bring extra gentrification plus damn the businesses that might need that extra road-traffic for recurring clients. Bicycle-ing in a downtown-ish area is mostly done by people like us (yuppies, more or less), the person who has to get tho his/her job at Walmart or at a logistics center at 5-6AM doesn't have time for this, and after h…

Idk man, how do you think people survived prior to 1945? We do not have to go far back into human history to see the alternative to car centric development. Were pre war cities and towns gentrified and devoid of commerce? Did everyone have no time for anything but walking? It’s always striking to me the extent to which people will take a 75 year old radical experiment (car centric suburban development) as the normal…

People had cars before 1945. My grandparents were born in the 20's, their parents had cars by then.

They were farmers. Before cars, farmers had horse drawn wagons. Do you think they walked home with their groceries from the store ten miles away? Carried 160 acres of corn into town on their backs? Horses were noisy, expensive and polluting. Progressives back then whined incessantly about those, too. Some things never change.

Work horses shit about 30 pounds a day. Large cities would have had tens of thousands of horses. Hundreds of tons a day of shit on the streets. It was almost as bad as San Francisco.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason people like high speed roads is that it saves time, and time matters. Biking and public transit are both slow compared to cars *Cities build streets primarily around cars* You: Look! Cars are more convenient!! This isn't some iron law of the universe, that cars are faster even for basic errands happens because we choose to make it that way . When I was living on the outskirts of Munich, many short trips…

I keep hearing this line about how cars are faster because cities 'choose' to make it that way. This isn't a convincing argument to me. Cars are fundamentally a faster mode of transportation. Just like walking cannot realize a maximum speed similar to bicycles, neither walking nor biking can realize a maximum speed similar to cars (at least safely). Driving is faster, first and foremost, because cars are faster and n…

No, this is incorrect.

High speed trains and planes both have a higher top speed than cars. Does that mean trains and planes are by default a faster way to get around for all trips?

No, of course not. How infrastructure is built around them matters just as much. Obviously there are trips in which they are indeed faster than cars, but plenty too where they’re impractical, or slower.

Cars have a higher top speed than bikes, sure, but they also demand far more space. Given equal space between cars and bikes, bikes will often end up fastest for trips under a mile or two — simply because drivers are more likely to get stuck in traffic. Especially since it’s easy to have walk bike cut-throughs.

Which, I know, you’ll object to as unfair, but it’s unfair in the sense that walking and biking being banned on the freeway is unfair: it’s actually just what’s suited to the transportation mode. A walk/bike cut through is a cheap, easy thing to slot in, much more so than the car equivalent.

Car speed relies on being given far more total space and money than other modes. Remove those advantages, and car utility would sink, while the utility of walking and biking would rise dramatically. Especially if zoning was loosened to allow — not force the way things are forced to the car’s advantage now, but simply allowed — higher density and mixed use areas.

Or consider an indoor mall vs a strip mall. One uses cars more heavily, one uses walking. Which one is more efficient to visit and browse stores?

The thing about car dominant spaces is that they force things to spread out, which reduces efficiency. That efficiency reduction is then ‘solved’ with the same thing that caused it: with cars. Which works out okay for cars, but everything else works horribly in that context, which is why US cities usually have extreme car dominance, with other options being hilariously ineffective. And some people cheer on this lack of choices, even as their waistlines expand and government budgets explode.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#376
post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we'd only drive there, despite it being, again, directly across the street That is just bizarre. And it's important to understand how inefficient this is to need a car to cross the street; you need parking space on this side, parking space on the other side, you need to get on and off the stroad, causing wear, interfering with and slowing down the other traffic, which is mostly through traffic that's not interested…

I'm not sure what you're imagining, but this is probably the location being discussed: https://goo.gl/maps/UJr6wGZ6GEhQypWg9 If not that particular market, there's similar ones along either direction of the stroad. The whole area is designed for cars, it's not walkable. Yes it's inefficient, but totally understandable why OP drives to cross a street.

Correct. Also, when I lived there, they didn’t have those lights. There was a crosswalk, but crossing vs 3 lanes of traffic each direction with no pedestrian island felt like playing chicken with every driver at once. Did it a couple times to try and make walking work, but it was clearly dangerous.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing this line about how cars are faster because cities 'choose' to make it that way. This isn't a convincing argument to me. Cars are fundamentally a faster mode of transportation. Just like walking cannot realize a maximum speed similar to bicycles, neither walking nor biking can realize a maximum speed similar to cars (at least safely). Driving is faster, first and foremost, because cars are faster and n…

No, this is incorrect. High speed trains and planes both have a higher top speed than cars. Does that mean trains and planes are by default a faster way to get around for all trips? No, of course not. How infrastructure is built around them matters just as much. Obviously there are trips in which they are indeed faster than cars, but plenty too where they’re impractical, or slower. Cars have a higher top speed than b…

> The thing about car dominant spaces is that they force things to spread out, which reduces efficiency.

In an already built city (or neighborhood), removing space for cars isn't going to snuggle the existing buildings together. It will rarely permit another building to be built between existing buildings where that's not possible today.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#378
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the nice thing about southern Texas is that we don't have to worry about walking/biking, not gonna happen in 105 degrees. I'm so much more comfortable in here compared to Seattle. Car AC is great for my allergies, and I'm no longer a sweaty mess.

To be honest 40C is quite doable, as long as you have shade (trees) water features (lakes/rivers) and a distance of a couple of km - I’ve cycled like that for fun, not just to get to a destination. Now I would never do that on such an asphalt desert of course, a car is way more comfortable, the question remains why would you turn a lush greenery (as I’d imagine a texan climate could be) into something you’re only com…

Texas in the summer is not only hot, but humid. Humidity on a typical summer day falls in the range between "miserable" and "oppressive".

Physical exertion when the dew point is in the upper 70s is simply unhealthy. It's a bad idea.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk man, how do you think people survived prior to 1945? We do not have to go far back into human history to see the alternative to car centric development. Were pre war cities and towns gentrified and devoid of commerce? Did everyone have no time for anything but walking? It’s always striking to me the extent to which people will take a 75 year old radical experiment (car centric suburban development) as the normal…

People had cars before 1945. My grandparents were born in the 20's, their parents had cars by then. They were farmers. Before cars, farmers had horse drawn wagons. Do you think they walked home with their groceries from the store ten miles away? Carried 160 acres of corn into town on their backs? Horses were noisy, expensive and polluting. Progressives back then whined incessantly about those, too. Some things never…

Sure conveyances existed prior to 1945. What did not exist prior to 1945 was cities and towns designed such that the only effective means to get around was a car. Yes, I grant that the car is a useful invention for the rural farmer. It is not a useful invention for someone living in a town or city because it does not scale to a population the size of a town or city; the only reason a car may appear useful is that post war towns and cities are so badly designed that a car is the least worst option. The beauty of a well designed town or city is that everything you need for daily life is within a five minute walk of your home, a walk in which you often bump into friends and neighbors; work is a couple mass transit stops away at most, and a traffic filled commute is not eating hours of each day. A car cannot improve upon this mode of life; it can improve the life of a farmer, but it only detracts from the life of a town or city dweller. Unfortunately, people can’t imagine an alternative to the “convenience” and “freedom” of being stuck in traffic, fighting for parking, and paying for gas.

Re: How do you fix a stroad?

#380
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it actually more efficient for others to access that market? The market needs a massive parking lot to accommodate those cars, which means they need a lot of ground. That too is inefficient. I've seen a comparison of two commercial blocks close together; one was old, had a row of old shops along the street and hadn't really been changed much since the 1920s or so. The other was new, modern, had a parking lot s…

> But is it actually more efficient for others to access that market? The market needs a massive parking lot to accommodate those cars.... See my point about the train. Sure people who could formerly just walk across the street or tracks lose but those pieces of infrastructure make the destination far more accessible. You turn one person's 1min trip into a 15min trip but you also turn hours long trips into 15-25min t…

Of course the road has a benefit, as does the train. But this gets to the central issue: the train doesn't stop at every shop; it stops only at the station. It gets you very efficiently to the station, and from there you walk to the shop, and there are generally multiple shops at easy walking distance near that station.

The road could do that too, but instead, it stops independently at every shop, while simultaneously also trying to be the thoroughfare that gets people from far away. And it's that combination that makes it a lot more complicated and more dangerous. And inefficient.

Centralise the stops, and put the stops closer together so you can walk there.

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