That or just let car people (majority) have these areas that are good for cars and let the anti car people have their crowded little streets with no parking elsewhere.
You're talking about a road. Stroads are not good for cars. Because stroads have crosswalks, and people's driveways opening directly onto them, and many other things, traffic flow and "attentional efficiency" are both far worse than what you'd get from a real separated road with onramps/offramps.
Roads are great. Streets are great. Good city planning involves plenty of both. Just like your body needs both arteries and capillaries. Stroads don't solve either problem as well as just having both does, and they introduce tons of problems besides.
Roads — separated thoroughfares exclusively for cars, engineered to remove anything that would require stopping — minimize travel time, gas costs, and accidents. Stroads do none of those things.
There's a reason that every Uber driver who has the opportunity will take you onto the nearest real road (e.g. a highway) as soon as they can, and stay on it for as much of the trip as they can: given the same destination, driving on a road is both less work for them, while also having a higher profit margin!
Roads are for professional drivers. Streets are for people. Stroads are, perhaps, optimized for Sunday drivers. But why should anyone optimize anything for Sunday drivers?
Yes, and this is a bad thing. The point of streets is to disincentivize through traffic, so that people can actually enjoy being outside in their neighbourhoods without worrying about getting hit by a motorist.
Well-designed cities don't rely on 18-wheelers being able to pass through their suburbs. In fact, they design to prevent that. Instead, an arterial road network allows overland shipping traffic to arrive and terminate at industrial hubs and big-box stores within cities; whereupon cargo is then transshipped onto "street-sized" delivery vehicles for last-mile delivery to homes and retail shops.
Logistics architectures designed before the advent of stroads still work this way, even in stroaded cities. For example, USPS: big trucks between hubs; little slow-moving trucks for the last mile.
> a bit of compromise to ease of crossing
Perhaps "a bit" if you're imagining the goal of a pedestrian is to commute. It's not too bad to cross a stroad once a day to get to and from a train station, sure.
But many of the worst stroads, exist in place of streets in what could and should be outdoor shopping malls, transforming them instead into strip malls. "A bunch of businesses on either side of a busy road" does not invite browsing. If the goal of the businesses in that area was to congregate together to achieve the sort of back-and-forth "let's go to X while we're here" foot traffic that a popular mall receives, then the "elevation" of a street into a stroad basically ruins the whole premise.
And, of course, there's the stroads in residential areas, where in cities where these were laid out as streets, children would literally be allowed to play in the street — not crossing, but using the street itself as a place to be present in — because traffic was going at a reasonable speed to react in time to stop if they saw children playing. Today, that safe speed is reserved for "school zones." Why should the area around a school be safer for children to be present in than the area immediately outside your home?
> not even particularly much detriment to walking on a single side.
...if you trust drivers. Stroads put sidewalks in the middle of what, on a road, would be the ditch area for cars to roll to a stop on when they're out of control. On a stroad, the cars aren't going much slower (for a few minutes, between stoplights), so cars still need that ditch area. But on a stroad, that ditch area has people walking in it. Bad idea, no?
...and if there aren't features like overpasses as part of the stroad, where all pretense of pedestrian access — especially accessible pedestrian access — is usually forgotten.
...and if it's doesn't snow where you live. Stroad sidewalks are rarely de-iced the way the stroads themselves are. In fact they're often iced — snowblowers taking ice and snow and blowing it off the stroad and onto its vestigial sidewalks.
(And don't get me started on non-separated stroad "bike lanes." Often sharing the same space as parking cars, cars turning into cross-streets, or worst, the suddenly open doors of parked cars.)
When was the last time you saw a delivery to any restaurant or grocery store? They're almost all from 18 wheelers. Furniture store? 18 wheeler. Appliance, electronics...all still 18 wheelers.
> cargo is then transshipped onto "street-sized" delivery vehicles for last-mile delivery to homes and retail shops.
No, it's really not. Not in large US cities, at least.
The crosswalks are further apart - it takes minutes to reach them. (Crossing without a crosswalk is only an option for able-bodied fearless people.) Once you get there, the light cycles are slower. Many intersections do not even give a walk signal unless you arrive in time to press the "beg button" before the green light starts. If you're a second late, you must wait another whole cycle.
When you finally cross, you must vigilantly keep watch in as many as 3 directions for drivers making turns. You can never let your guard down - the drivers are not paying attention to people on foot. You must be ready to jump out of the way at any moment.
Crossing these streets is a hellish experience. It is obvious that you are not supposed to be there. Your presence is considered a nuisance.
But it's not like the human body just has the aorta and a bunch of capillaries. It has arteries of every size in between too.
The idea is that a well planned city/suburb will turn car people into people that also enjoy safely not using a car some of the time.
> let the anti car people have their crowded little streets with no parking elsewhere.
Bleh. Such an us vs them mentality. I'm suspicious of cars because I have literally gotten hit by them while cycling (edit: multiple times, thank you very much). I'm not "anti car."
Try getting hit by 2 tons of metal and see how that makes you feel about safe infrastructure.
Doesn't the "us vs. them" mentality come from the fact that most of Strong Towns' ideas will make life worse for everyone who needs to drive, without giving most of them an alternative to driving?
That's not necessarily a given:
Fewer cars on the road means less competition.
Bike lanes have more capacity to move people.
Well designed intersections and bike lanes mean that you aren't competing against cyclists and pedestrians for road space you're coexisting along just fine.
I disagree that they'll accomplish this for most people. In particular, what about all of the people who live in suburbs but work in the city?
Mixed-use zoning is much more effective. We do this in Europe, it's pretty nice being able to cycle to work and walk to the shops (not that I cycle to work personally, but almost all my jobs have been within cycling range).
ST are quite explicit that they mostly don't think that retrofitting suburbs should be a focus, because they believe that most of these will go bankrupt anyway, given a sufficient amount of time (because of too much infrastructure liability compared to the tax base), and indeed this is starting to happen all across the US. Hence their focus on areas with a solid core already, that should then be strengthened and encouraged to expand organically from there.
The only thing ST says here is "let existing suburbs be what they are", which sounds like what you want as well.
Why do you specifically need to drive and park at the exact location you're going to, especially when the land cost of the storage place of your empty car is prohibitively expensive (as they tend to be in urban CBDs)?
Because sometimes I have to go to work in weather conditions like hailstorms, thunderstorms, or freezing rain.
He has a bunch of videos that address common complaints that people who've only known car-dependent lifestyles bring up.
Here's a good example of how to design functional bicycle infrastructure for a seemingly hostile climate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU
I live in Cambridge on the Boston subway system. It’s probably (barely) in the top 5 in the US and it sucks compared to European cities I’ve visited or lived in.
> 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.)
* 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?
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.
the other reason that this is bad is this section of development is unprofitable for the city. The amount of resources it uses (road maintenance, electricity, sewage, emergency services) is far greater than the amount of taxes it brings in. This is why its mentioned at the end of the article that a place like this will inherently wither away and die.
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/05/27/compelling-evidence-t...
https://thecityfix.com/blog/bigger-isnt-always-better-narrow...
Honestly I'm a bit surprised how little this has been measured. I mean obviously setting up experiments would be difficult, but you'd think more natural experiments would occur as different places try to fit weird geometries...
Edit: And public transit-takers, of course!
I grew up in Northern Ontario, where the cities are basically long stroads. Inside of a car, they can be stressful to drive in, as they combine high-speed travel with frequent and awkward turns.
God forbid you want to walk or bike next to one of them. The noise is extreme, and the infrastructure surrounding them is horrid. Whether in a car, on a bike, or on foot, they are ugly and soul-crushing. The patio bar next to a stroad isn't going to be people's first choice.
I haven't been to the Netherlands myself, but it appears that after moving away from stroads and "car-centric" infrastructure, the driving is actually much faster and more pleasant [1]. It gives me hope at least!
I love this quote.
Are turn signals a "beg button"?
Turn signals are not beg buttons.
Why do you want to kill so many cyclists?
A more charitable way is something like: "I think X will result in Y, which I doubt is something any of us want. Have you considered that potential consequence?"