The Stroad
strongtowns.org
strongtowns.org
We should rethink why people need to travel great distances on a daily basis. Work-from-home was a major one that got the shake-up and now it's not a given that we must commute up to an hour or more each way each day.
I've always owned/driven a car since graduation, up until a few years ago. Then I decided to park the vehicle and walk/transit/uber for the incidental health benefits. I'm surprised I've not had much issue with this, though if I were to add it up it's probably costing me more time and money than driving myself. I could get a small e-vehicle or live somewhere more livable to improve that if it mattered more.
That's kinda what I concluded, these guys seem to have a relatively good point but there's no practical way to action it; in the US about half the country has already been laid down according to this template. Trying to disrupt that is just disrupting the economy and will do an infinite more amount of damage to livelihoods in the short term than good in the long term.
I'm reluctant to characterise anything as a 'wrecker' movement but... I get a bit of that vibe from them. A bit like those environmentalists that use environmentalism to disguise their misanthropic tendencies.
I really don't know why I think that about this movement, though. It's weird. Just rubs me the wrong way.
i'm a misanthrope myself. ironic that you're pointing out what's wrong with the misanthropic take.
Car dependent cities are a terrible health hazard! I get it, different strokes for different folks, but iono, have car dependent owners really experienced anything else? You warn of economic damage as if that's the only Good there is.
We can't A/B tests our lives, so we're gonna bias the life we know. So it's self perpetuating. The take isn't throw up your hands because economic damage, that can't be it? Eh that's why im a misanthrope.
That is the whole point of being against stroads - they are rotten compromise between roads and streets.
They seem to be focused on aspects that are typically less important to the rest of society.
The most head-scratching example of this that I've seen was a guy saying that people should move to Chicago because it's underrated and has a decent transportation network.
Y-yeah. But that's not the only thing that people consider when they move and let's just say the city itself has a reputation.
In my corner of the world there's a lot of putting the cart before the horse in this regard - typically via closing streets for traffic without improving public transport.
Net effect is just more congestion because people have places to go regardless how much you reduce "induced demand".
At same time. I'm pretty sure sprawl would be better with more mixed zoning. Ofc, with buffers to oil refineries... If some idiots starts that argument.
An organization with a subtly culturally imperialist name ("the cities are all fine, but all small towns are all broken everywhere") is unlikely to have your best interests at heart even if its conclusions may have some validity.
The thing that this lobby group misses is that, ultimately, most smaller towns are in maintenance mode (we soft-banned most resource extraction and what is left only requires a tenth of the workforce) and that's true to a degree for smaller cities as well. This isn't something you can easily do with a major city because the infrastructure is more heavily used and won't as gracefully degrade, but you can keep rural roads serviceable for a long time with simple maintenance.
And this is why "stroads" exist in the first place- that's already the cost-optimized solution (take 2 lane road, expropriate some front yards/front parking, now you have a 4-lane road that can support through traffic and exiting traffic), and reworking them is not going to help a town that Strong Towns claims in the same article "are financially irresponsible and don't even have enough tax revenue to sustain maintenance".
Surely, if they don't have bread, perhaps they might consider cake?
Sigh. Because roads with turn lanes CAN NOT be converted into straight roads without forcing cars to take long detours through slow streets.
This will inevitably slow down the traffic, which is the goal of these propaganda outlets. They WANT traffic to become untenable. Just read their suggestions on "improving" roads with turn lanes.
So yes, this propaganda is good for the environment and the planet, good for communities and good for individuals.
You are asserting anecdotes ("it'll make driving slower for sure!"), compared to strong towns and https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes, who are professional planners and civil engineers.
They specifically address your exact points in their videos, stroads are bad for everybody, even cars.
I just tried implementing this on some random stroad and you can easily remove more than 2/3 access points without any investments.
No, you can't. Who's going to remove these access points? Like actual physical labor. Are you going to rent heavy equipment with your own money and remove them on a 5-mile stretch of a stroad?
What's so hard to understand?
"What's so hard to understand?"
No. The current model is pretty close to the perfect one. Surface roads efficiently and _flexibly_ move people. There is NOTHING else that comes even close to them.
We just need to push self-driving cars, and then start working on the REAL problem: dense cities. They should be deconstructed and un-densified, except for selected historically-significant areas.
gotta say i never met any human describe US car infrastructure as "perfect" no matter where on the car lover spectrum they fall.
disclaimer: i'm a bike bro as you call it
I loved Houston, TX. Its road system and zoning are freakishly well-designed, and it allows people to have commutes that are far more comfortable (and shorter!) than in dense cities.
In fact, Houston ("Greater Houston Area") had shorter commute time than ANY European city of a comparable size!
I moved out of there because I couldn't tolerate the climate. My second-favorite city is Salt Lake City.
> disclaimer: i'm a bike bro as you call it
Well, duh.
do you ever wonder why dense cities are dense though? we're all fooled? slaves? red pilled or whatever color the saying is
There are no conspiracies, just pure market forces. Dense cities are more efficient for _companies_ because they allow access to larger talent pools. Basically, if you are Google, it might make sense to open an office near Amazon's campus, and hire away some of Amazon's engineers.
This has an externality: more people will have to commute into that small area, resulting in longer commute time. Alternatively, they can move to live closer to that workplace, downsizing their living space and/or increasing the real estate price (more people competing for an inherently limited resource).
We also know the market way to fix that: price the externalities via taxes or cap-and-trades. In this case, the density needs to be treated in this way.
Not so much: https://www.builderonline.com/money/economics/80-percent-of-...
I also found this[^4]: Apparently Europe's cities with the longest commute time have about the same commute time as Houston. Not to mention that Paris and Budapest have populations many times the size of Houston.
^1 https://houston.innovationmap.com/houston-worst-traffic-comm...
^2 https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/transpor...
^3 https://houston.culturemap.com/news/city-life/03-04-19-houst...
^4 https://www.mynewsdesk.com/eurofound/news/budapest-paris-and...
The average commute time for Berlin is 31 minutes, London is 47 minutes (https://www.timeout.com/london/news/london-is-only-the-sixth...), Paris area is 32 minutes, Madrid is 31 minutes.
Population: Paris area is 12 million, Berlin is 4 million, Houston Area is 7.5 million, Madrid is 6.5 million.
What am I missing?
Also, the article you linked draws from an irrelevant page on businessnamegenerator.com (???). Is this a troll?
Houston is famous for its nonsensical zoning and inefficient infrastructure. It's difficult to react to Houston being "freakishly well-designed" with a straight face.
I've been to Houston and it's just a terrible place to visit, even considering the oppressive weather.
Absolutely not.
I moved from the Midwest - small to medium sized towns (populations of 3k to 60k) - to a larger city in Northern Europe. It wasn't safe to walk in the US, and if I walked at the wrong times, there was always police presence and occasionally harassment. Things weren't close: Even in the small city, I couldn't safely walk to every store.
I never really knew freedom until I lived here without a car. I walk to the grocery store and places that are 30-50 minutes away. I use public transportation. The two of these mean I get a lot more physical activity than I ever would in the US and this is without having to do special exercise.
I'll never be stuck in the house due to poverty again. Other folks aren't as likely to get stuck in the house due to disability either. I like living in the countryside, but it is a trap unless you can travel. In general, this means you have to drive and pay for a reliable vehicle.
I disagree. The current model looks to be awful in most ways to me. I don't see how self-driving cars address most of the problems with it.
I grew up in rural California and dirt roads were quite common not far out of town, it's a different way of driving and one that'll make you wonder why you aren't using a mountain bike, if you aren't hauling a bunch of kids or gear.
This all said I am beyond biased, I escaped the bay area to London at least partially because I don't want driving to be a part of my daily life. But I understand opinions vary and people back home love their cars and TV ;)
This has been shown repeatedly to be false, but folks who blindly believe it.
That said, their model of change is murky. On one hand, they seem to want to be governmental consultants and on the other hand, they want to educate the citizenry on how to advocate for more robust city design. The middle road they’ve taken between those two doesn’t really fit anyone.
Is suboptimal branding really something that should keep you from being engaged with important things? What does it say about us that this is normal behavior now?
The bad naming of strongtowns is just a passing comment on the jargon.
Sometimes something just has a weird... vibe... for want of a better word, and this gives that in a big way.
Trending awareness: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...
It has come up in a few places including successful articles in Vox (e.g. https://www.vox.com/23178764/florida-us19-deadliest-pedestri... - I heard about this from a podcast episode completely unrelated to this subject area). It has a Wikipedia page - this concept did not have a Wikipedia page before this concept was coined.
And it doesn't matter how wikipedia defines them or whatever, nobody needs to bother pointing out their definitions, my point is that colloquially I certainly grew up using them completely interchangeably. So now you're stuck both re-educating me on words that I've used incorrectly for decades while introducing a brand new mashup word. Then you have to start teaching why the mashup word is useful.
I'm perfectly fine to accept it and move on myself, but I think in the larger scheme of things this argument is going to land on some obstinate fucks who will just drag people into arguing that "streets are just roads, so the term stroad is stupid". And generally we're stuck in this country between people who enjoy precision and exactness and fairness in language and think its the foundation on which everything is built, and other people who don't see the importance. Since we both speak English we miss the fact that we're not talking the same language and attempts at persuasion aren't working at all.
"Stroads" are roads for all users, not just bike bros. And roads are absolutely beautiful, they allow people to move. As a result, well-designed car-oriented American cities are _far_ more efficient than nicely-looking but horrible-to-live European cities.
If you want to use pejorative names, then I propose: "slumhive" ("slum beehive") for any high-rise building and "broads" ("bike bro roads") for bicycle lanes.
Moreover, removing "stroads" does NOT reduce fatalities! Boston's accident rate went up from 16 vehicular deaths in 2016 (before they drank the KoolAid) to 26 this year.
The attacks on surface roads by groups with an agenda (push people into dense cities) is predictable. They want traffic to become untenable, so they just lie and insinuate.
The latter _can_ be a solution for some roads, but it necessarily lengthens the trip and significantly increases its time because you have to make 3 right turns instead of one left turn.
Sure, hyper-dense cities are not ideal, but neither are spread-out asphalt wastelands where cars are the only means of getting around. This is terrible for anyone who can’t drive (children, people with impaired vision, people who can’t afford cars). I have also lived in Houston (without a car) and I found getting around absolutely miserable. Even when I had friends pick me up with their cars, the distances were huge and a lot of the time, this would be because of parking lots creating gigantic empty space everywhere. (At least, this was my impression.)
This is the only rational argument against cars. I especially want children to have more autonomy.
Yet it'll be far better solved by self-driving vehicles. They already exist, and they work.
But having been in the us only once it was very obvious the us has a problem with safety for drivers. There were cars at the side of the highway (Orlando to Tampa) everywhere, presumably from accidents. Of course traffic wasn't moving. I wasn't driving on holiday and I was glad about it.
It's possibly to do with the fact that Americans all need to drive, ensuring lax standards for driver tests. Maybe if you guys would embrace bike lanes you could also embrace real driver certification. Just dump people who can't drive on second tier transportation like bikes, ebikes, escooters and trains and ensure everyone else gets proper training.
Maybe there is more common ground between you and Strong Towns than you'd think? They don't just advocate for "bike bros." Here everyone bikes from kids in elementary school to their grandparents. The key is having separate car infrastructure (roads, highways) and biking/pedestrian infrastructure (streets, bike lanes, pedestrian-only areas).
The net effect is that many people here choose non-car transport (public transport, biking, walking), which reduces traffic. This also makes getting around by car more efficient, for destinations where you need to use a car, because there is less traffic.
If you want to live in a single-family home in the suburbs and own a car, you can do that here too. It's fine because there are roads to get around the country. Not stroads though, so no need to worry about pedestrians or cyclists when you're on a road, so they allow moving faster.
If you want to live in an apartment in the city without owning a car, you can do that here too. It's fine because there is public transport, proper bike lanes and streets to get around the city. Not straods though, so no need to worry about cars.
I'd say it's both nicely looking and quite efficient. Not sure by what metric would an American city be more efficient, but generally I wouldn't want to trade places.
> Maybe there is more common ground between you and Strong Towns than you'd think? They don't just advocate for "bike bros."
Yes, they do. They literally do. All their "solutions" just accidentally ALWAYS make traffic worse and push people into dense cities.
"Stroads" are roads for cars. They are terrible for everyone else.
Personally, I hate them. They're chaotic, prone to accidents, ugly and well, everything TFA talks about. Well built infrastructure makes it better for everybody.