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The Stroad

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Re: The Stroad

#261

Post by hef19898 »

wffurr wrote: post #254
hef19898 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Center turning with five lanes? wow, that's crazy...

The examples in the article show anywhere from 5 to 7 lanes. The outermost lanes in one of the 7-lane examples are parking lanes. There's a stroad on Staten Island that scares the crap out of me - Hylan Blvd. I have family that live on it. It's six lanes with a median, but sometimes and in certain places parking is allowed in the outermost lanes. So you can suddenly come up on parked traffic but only at certain times…

Over here we have that, well something similar, outside of towns and cities for one lane. In cities max 2 lanes, with a 50 kmh speed limit. And those are rare, street cross section have traffic lights and those from parking lots are scary enough. And slow enough, it is sometimes faster to not cross lanes and just turn around at the next traffic light.

Re: The Stroad

#262

Post by Vinnl »

TrispusAttucks wrote: post #232
mcv wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ship hasn't sailed. Yes, the roads are built, but they can be changed. New roads are constructed every day, and they could be better. And better roads will eventually save money, because of less accidents and more efficient land use. And they will bring in more money because they attract and enable more businesses and increase the value of land. It's still a good investment to look for improvement.

I have great respect for your optimism.

The good news is that the Netherlands has come a long way too. It used to be far more car-centric, but over the years has steadily made improvements as part of ongoing maintenance. And now we're at the point where we're even re-digging canals that had been paved over for a 12-lane motorway [1] in the 70s.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/14/utrecht-restor...

Re: The Stroad

#263

Post by bluGill »

occz wrote: post #222
bluGill wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 somet…

>Induced demand is nonsense. It's been shown to be real in studies upon studies - what are you trying to say here?

Sure it has been shown: because people have places they would like to get to that the city is making too difficult for them. It clearly exists, it is just a stupid excuse.

Re: The Stroad

#264

Post by hef19898 »

throw0101a wrote: post #15

Another 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.…

The DDIs he mentioned had me thinking about Cloverleaf interchanges at first, the standard interchange at German Autobahn (or roads with more than one lane when round-abouts aren't feasible, incredible for that application, lots of traffic, high speeds and so on. DDIs are close enough it seems, just worse in every aspect.

Both have in common that they suck for pedestrians.

Re: The Stroad

#265

Post by bluGill »

knorker wrote: post #208
bluGill wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 somet…

Induced demand is not nonsense at all. I don't have a car. If there were capacity to drive, I would. If a bunch of capacity to drive was added, I'd buy a car. So that's one data point. > 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. This sounds like an argument from someone who's never heard any alternative to American status quo. >…

At no point did I say what the solution was.

You incorrectly assumed I'm advocating more lanes of traffic, that is one possible solution - if you do it be prepared to go up (or down), as you will need many layers of layers over layers (bridges) that way. There are many other possible solutions though. It didn't work in Katy Texas because they didn't build enough.

Improving transit would be my preferred option.

The point is if adding a lane of anything doesn't solve your traffic problem (or makes it worse) then you are not thinking big enough.

Re: The Stroad

#266

Post by cozzyd »

captainmuon wrote: post #146
cozzyd wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only it were so simple. Building walkable places is illegal almost everywhere in the US due to onerous parking minimums, regulations about street design and restrictive zoning. It's still possible to build walkable places with highrises, but low-rise walkable areas like https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9181247,-87.6517955,3a,60y,7... are almost lost art in the US. There are entire major metro areas in the US with n…

I wonder why nobody just changes these regulations. Sure it's difficult and you won't get a majority in most places, but I find it hard to understand why not at least some cities designate a small area as a "model community" and relax zoning and parking requirements.

This is happening to some extent (e.g. Chicago removing parking minimums near transit stations, Houston removing parking minimums in two downtown-adjacent neighborhoods) but mainly only in large cities. Parking minimums are especially onerous since they almost ensure you can only build strip malls for retail.

Re: The Stroad

#267

Post by [deleted] »

zonotope wrote: post #224
dagw wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how I can just jump on a bike here and be at a large supermarket in 5 minutes And even when the supermarket/mall is close by in the US, you still can't necessarily walk/bike there. I was visiting a friend who lived in the Midwest and his house was less than a mile from the mall. I asked him how to walk over there, and he admitted he'd never tried. So I set out to try, and the only way I found was by running ac…

America is _very_ big. Bigger than Europe even. That means that there are lots of different development patterns all across the country. While it is true that most places are car dependent, there are also cities where the majority of people who live there don't even own a car. I lived in Boston/Cambridge Massachusetts for 10 years and New York for 8, and I have never owned a car (or bike). Walking and taking the subw…

[deleted]

Re: The Stroad

#268

Post by thesuitonym »

zonotope wrote: post #224
dagw wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how I can just jump on a bike here and be at a large supermarket in 5 minutes And even when the supermarket/mall is close by in the US, you still can't necessarily walk/bike there. I was visiting a friend who lived in the Midwest and his house was less than a mile from the mall. I asked him how to walk over there, and he admitted he'd never tried. So I set out to try, and the only way I found was by running ac…

America is _very_ big. Bigger than Europe even. That means that there are lots of different development patterns all across the country. While it is true that most places are car dependent, there are also cities where the majority of people who live there don't even own a car. I lived in Boston/Cambridge Massachusetts for 10 years and New York for 8, and I have never owned a car (or bike). Walking and taking the subw…

You're right that there are places like that in the US, but we haven't been building like that for nearly 100 years at this point. Those places are historical curiosities, and not at all representative of the United States.

And before anyone says I should just live in places that are like that, It's not so easy to just pick up my life and move somewhere else.

Re: The Stroad

#269

Post by timwaagh »

treis wrote: post #75
mcv wrote: post #3

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…

But this isn't how the world works. It's not Simcity where you lay down neat grids of zones and the dutiful citizens follow your orders. People will want to take advantage of cheap(er) land alongside your "road" so that they can own a house while still having reasonable access to the "street". And boom now you have a stroad. Attempting to use zoning to stop that runs into the problem that by and large people don't wa…

You might have a parallel street immediately next to the road but separate from it. That way people or business can be next to a road but will not block traffic. It's what we often do here. Those then will be connected to the road at some point via a side street. I have never seen a multi lane road with a lot of intersections and parking space next to it, immediately adjacent to stores. We don't have 'turning lanes' either. I'm really wondering whether they are cherry picking these things for badness or whether it's really very common in the States.

Re: The Stroad

#270

Post by kortex »

treis wrote: post #242
wilkommen wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's the suburbs that lack economy of scale. The walkable areas contribute far more per acre in taxes than the suburbs. They also require fewer resources to maintain per person because they're physically smaller. The suburbs have such a paucity of "economies of scale" that municipalities around the country have gone into debt to support them. The reason donuts cost more at your local walkable place is because rea…

>No, it's the suburbs that lack economy of scale. The walkable areas contribute far more per acre in taxes than the suburbs. They also require fewer resources to maintain per person because they're physically smaller. The suburbs have such a paucity of "economies of scale" that municipalities around the country have gone into debt to support them. Yes, Strong towns loves to say this too despite it being obviously not…

That's not the right metric though. Cities and suburbs are not comparable in terms of overall experience. The extra services you cite are one of the reasons why.

For one, suburbs are pretty economically difficult for low-earning households. Low earners are more likely to live in cities, therefore cities tend to have more social services.

You need to do an apples-to-apples comparison, which unfortunately is not easy.

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