they're talking about stroads. the anti-stroads people aren't against cars or roads or streets, they're against stroads in particular, because they combine all the worst things about streets and roads, and kill all their benefits.

i think the anti-stroads people are right but naive: stroads are bad, but how did we get them? and in light of your answer to that, how can we expect them to be fixed? undoing stroads will be a huge expense that will only benefit the overwhelming mass of people. it'll never happen.

The use of the word "stroads" is the giveaway. This is a word that is exclusively used by anti-carrists.

The term came from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM

yeah, i've seen the video, it's against stroads, not cars or streets or roads.

> This is a word that is exclusively used by anti-carrists.

No, it is used by folks who like proper design:

> 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

People who use the word "stroads" want society to stop building stroads and go (back to) building streets and roads. See the ten-minute mark of the video you posted on how The Netherlands does it: stroomweg (highway), gebiedsontsluitingsweg (road), erftoegangsweg (street).

See also his video "The Best Country in the World for Drivers":

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k

You get stroads when people put businesses on roads rather than on streets. When a road is "well-designed", that is, functioning as a route rather than a destination, it seems like a clever place to put a business, because people can get there quickly. But once you build a lot of commercial uses along a road, traffic gets worse because people are slowing down to enter parking lots, and it usually gets widened, making it more dangerous to cross: now you have a stroad. The "obvious" solution is not to allow development along roads, instead pushing this to streets (which may require building more streets), but the lure of tax revenue and short-term thinking is often too strong.