I've always felt that the obvious way to fix stroads is to separate the two functions: the road and the street function. And for that, the ancient Dutch concept of the ventweg seems like a good fit. A road in the middle for through traffic, and a street on the sides for access to all the businesses along that road. They connect at the major intersections. It does mean that if you have to get to a shop on the opposite side of the road, you first have to go to the next intersection and then turn back, but in the mean time all of the through traffic can continue without interruption.
And if you then combine that with the Carmel-style intersections @yudderick pointed out, you've got a really nice solution.
But maybe first make sure no new stupid stroads are getting built.
But this requires a lot of space and it's expensive. The real truth is that the US and Canada are massively overbuilt. The tax base is too thin and everything is too sprawled.
Not all of it can survive, which is why Strong Towns recommends letting most stroads die a natural death. They're lined with disposable buildings. They never should have been built in the first place.
None of the following is critical of City Beautiful: he is a great guy and his video is completely accurate, as usual.
In fact, there are several things in his video that are just too accurate.
When redesigning a stroad, you can't take space from cars (except in rare situations), you can't change intersections, and you can't move any utilities.
You need to plan around the scraps left over from a stroad designed for drivers.
So the ultimately, the solution will be a big compromise.
This is why Strong Towns does NOT advocate for redesigning stroads like this. There's no point.
It will cost a bunch of money and political capital and those "bike lanes" will be used by only a handful of people (just like on Wonderland Road), which will only serve as something to point to and say, "see? nobody bikes here!"
Chuck's article, "How do you actually fix a stroad?" is useful here.
Sidewalks and bike lanes are pointless without better land use. Smaller parking lots. Slower speeds. Dedicated transit lanes. Retail near the street.
These can't be fixed except at extreme financial cost, opportunity cost, and political capital.
Focus on resuscitating the traditional neighbourhoods (as mentioned above) and maybe, if you're successful, your grandkids can redesign the stroads. Or better yet, turn them back to farmland!
@notjustbikes Road Guy Rob's latest videos are about a small US city that has been making real progress in this respect ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV0x2hNRYnU ). So far he's been focusing more on how the changes have improved vehicle traffic flow, but the next video he posts will be about the town's bike infrastructure.
But the situation there is exactly as you describe: it has taken nearly 30 years of focused political will, fighting through intense pushback, just to make what progress they have. And the result is still a car-centric city, just one that is somewhat less hostile to humans.
Any city can be fixed, given enough money and political will.
I just believe that most American cities will take generations before they are significantly improved.
Although, I'm also not totally convinced that all American cities are actually improving.
If it takes you 10 years to get a few bike lanes, but in that time, 10,000 acres of new car-dependent suburbia is built on the periphery, is that really considered "moving forward?"
@notjustbikes@yudderick
My town is like this. We have a huge stroad in front of what used to be an old GM plant, but there's no interest in intensifying the industry there.
Instead the plan is to "preserve green space" and "reduce traffic congestion" by having businesses move to the 170 empty acres on the west side of town that's 5 minutes off the highway.
@notjustbikes The other thing is, if you start connecting downtowns with transit like this, it starts to become much more viable and reasonable to suggest scooting the traditional land management out a little at a time. You won't convert the entire Phoenix metro to walkable in your, my, or anyone living today's lifetime, but if the cards are dealt just right it might happen eventually.
@notjustbikes
People who've never actually fought to change their city are completely blind to the political and physical reality. People resist change even when it's obviously good.
Related: After two years of fighting, the Scarborough extension of that Bloor bike lane is finally happening. Public Consultations (round one of two) tonight!
Hundreds of people coming to make sure it doesn't get out off again.
And this is in a city that officially supports a bike network and vision zero.
@triddles
so true about people being blind to it. I've seen some ignorant assholes online claiming that I just "gave up" on Canada without trying. Meanwhile, I was an advocate for years.
Congratulation on getting that bike lane extension! That took a while, but less time than the original Bloor bike lane (since the 70s)!
My wife and I were deeply in involved in the advocacy to make the Danforth portion happen.
These things do have a habit of picking up momentum. I hope you can keep it up!
@notjustbikes
I just learned about that advocacy after listening to your business owners and bike lanes podcast. That's why I thought you'd enjoy hearing about the huge progress. :) It'll be almost clear across the city, hopefully next year. The BIA still fighting it, of course.
Cycle Toronto has been a huge ally for us, also of course.
@notjustbikes "Smaller parking lots. Slower speeds. Dedicated transit lanes. Retail near the street."
Hey, that describes where I live! Except that store owners keep complaining the slower speeds are driving customers away, many stores are closed (maybe because of the pandemic? but they don't think about that) and many are against a second pedestrian-only road.
I think fixing stroads is possible, in most cases. Not an overnight thing, but there's lots of right of way, and they're unlikely to be nice, but they can be better, and slowly get nice:
@danbrotherston@MrLee yes, I know that, but unless the stroad is right downtown (and clearly doesn't belong) then your limited funds and political capital would be better spent elsewhere.
Eventually these roads come up for reconstruction...I think that is an opportunity for a repairative reconstruction design than simply reconstructing the same or wider bad design. There's at least two stroads in KW facing this situation in the next 10 years for example.
In any case, I wanted to challenge the idea that to fix these things we have to raze these entire corridors to the ground and rebuilt--we don't--they can be fixed in place.
The key is to create new designs (and publish them as engineering guidelines as you point out is another key strategy) that separate the roadway and street uses within the corridor. A fast roadway in the middle that is separated from more urban service roads on either side to provide access to the existing businesses and homes.
FWIW even CityBeautiful did a talk on this topic, and I think missed that key point--he simply mentioned the option of road diets and more active transportation elements, which, IMO, do very little to change the actual context of the street.
@danbrotherston yes, if a stroad is going to be redesigned anyway, better to improve the design while you have the chance, but outside of that, you probably shouldn't burn resources trying to improve stroads.
Someone else just posted a relevant Strong Towns screenshot:
@notjustbikes@MrLee Just to point to an, admittedly slow motion, version of this in real life. I grew up in Columbia MD (the James Rouse planned community) and there has been a move towards repurposing the shopping mall that is, effectively, downtown and ripping up the parking lots to instead install apartments and ground floor retail (mostly 5 over 1s but baby steps). The long term plan is to fully realign the space piecemeal the same way.
@notjustbikes
Cool! Thanks for sharing. I've been pontificating 🙂 about this stuff for a while 👇 but never came across that book. Shame you can't get the copyright 😠 it would make a good video.
And keep property owners from raising rent, and the city from constantly raising property taxes,so that people who work in the service industries there can actually live there.
In particular, nobody lives there anymore due to decades of exclusionary zoning prohibiting residential. It would be foolish to pedestrianize a street that nobody lives near.
They implement what they can and they don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
"The best thing that can happen is that they die a natural death and, in doing so, create a minimal amount of harm to the community. That's ultimately how this is fixed."
@dunks yep, exactly. There's no use throwing good money at bad investments. Better to improve everything else and let the stroads die a natural death (unless they go through the middle of the city, of course).
@notjustbikes
"Old" towns (pre-1900) and parts of towns that old, were designed for pedestrians and horses. It makes sense that those work better than areas designed after 1950 for car-centric activity.