Re:How do you fix a stroad?
by jimmaswell on Thursday December 09, 2021 @08:35PM
(#29505454)
I've seen the video, it just didn't resonate much. I drive those areas often enough without issue. I've walked through them too. They feel like an acceptable compromise for the most part but they could do with protected bike lanes and flashing crossings like I mentioned.
Re:How do you fix a stroad?
by throw0101a on Thursday December 09, 2021 @08:58PM
(#29505598)
You're telling me that a stroad where, along a 1km/1mi stretch of mostly strip malls, of which >70% of the surface is parking spaces, is comparable to a street such as:
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/Queen+St+W+%26+Tecumseth+S...
That cycling and walking on a highway-like path is comparable, at all, to a pre-WW2 street?
Have you ever tried living life without a car—without even being driven by someone like you parents when you were younger—in an area where stroads are the basic building block of transportation?
This is such a limited perspective. I've been in 200+ different towns over the past few years in the US with my RV. Using either our car (if we brought it with), walking, bikes, or scooters. It's amazing how horrible some rural places are for pedestrian or bike/scooter traffic. No way to get from where we are staying without hitting roads with no pedestrian paths at all and 40+mph (~64+kph) speed limits. When in the RV for months long trips, we don't have the car with us most of the time, so I've come to hate these designs that make no overtures to people not wanting to drive absolutely everywhere. They are just flat out hostile.
When we do find an area that has well designed ways to navigate, it's just more enjoyable and I want to go out and see what the area has to offer.
> 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.)