Forward
Many urbanists and transportation advocates are now familiar with the concept of a stroad: a street-road hybrid that functions very poorly as either a street or a road, yet is found all over North America. But why is it so common? And how can we remediate the stroads within our towns, without rebuilding our cities from scratch?
Reference: Strong Towns: What's a STROAD and Why Does It Matter?
You’ve probably heard the term ‘stroad’ before. It’s been featured by many popular urbanist and transportation YouTubers and bloggers. You’ve probably even seen a picture of the now famous ‘everywhere’ highway interchange in Breezewood, PA:
Coined by Chuck Mahron of StrongTowns in 2013, a stroad is a hybrid of a road and a street. The immediate question that follows from this is, what’s the difference between a road and a street? Stroads are so ubiquitous in North America that many people don’t even know that a street should be different from a road. We often use the words interchangeably now.
A street is a place, a place where people live, where they work, where they shop. It is a destination, a place of commerce, of activity. A road, on the other hand, is a link between two places, a means of getting somewhere, with few places in between, often with limited access. Obviously these definitions are not absolute, people on a street are also going places, and eventually a road reaches a destination.
The definition has more to do with the intention and focus of the place. On a street, the majority are not merely passing through, and the design focuses on enabling the activity on the street, rather than facilitating through traffic. The reverse holds for roads.
One of the challenges with this definition is that our streets have become so ‘stroadified’ that often people wouldn’t call a street a street, they’d use other words, like plaza or pedestrian space.
But a stroad, is a combination of the two, a ‘compromise’. And as a result, it neither facilitates fast, rapid, and safe transportation, nor activity in a place. Unlike a ‘compromise’ where we improve the situation on average, everything is made worse. Destinations on the road suffer because of the traffic noise and pollution (who wants to sit on a patio and smell fumes from 6 lanes of traffic, what conversation can you have over that noise, to say nothing of the risk of a crash). And through traffic on the street is slowed by many other users accessing destinations. And safety goes out the window. While streets and roads form a spectrum, the closer a corridor is to one of the two, the better that corridor will serve its users.
But if they’re so bad, why do we build them?
Historically, there wasn’t a good reason to avoid them. When most people are walking or on bikes or riding a horse with a cart, a stroad functions reasonably well in all but the most congested scenarios. It is only when we add in high speed motor traffic that we really begin to create problems.
Stroads also mean no-one has to make difficult choices about whether a piece of land should be a street or a road. This would involve either controlling what people do with their land i.e., should people be allowed to build businesses, run stores, do commerce on their land, and thereby make the corridor a street–a place where things are happening–or should they be forced to limit that activity or at least orient it away from the corridor so that the corridor functions as a road instead.
This isn’t a new problem—mainline railway rights of way, for example, are almost always transportation only. You rarely have shops and homes facing onto a railway line, because it would be disruptive to people’s homes and businesses and delay the trains.
A famous counterexample—the Maeklong Market Railway in Bangkok—while unique in its own right, is rather the exception that proves the rule. It is rather disruptive to both the market and the railway line, and is notable only as the exception, not as a well functioning system. Ironically, there is another example in Guelph where the GO Transit line runs right in front of some people’s homes. Right now, Metrolinx is desperately trying to increase the separation between the trains and the homes in order to facilitate faster transit. Although until they are willing to electrify the line, it will only increase the disruption to the residents on the street.
But for whatever reason, when it comes to vehicles, we are often unwilling to make the hard decisions and segregate uses. In many ways, individual interest is in conflict with common interest. Businesses have a strong interest in being visible and accessible on major through routes. Individual travelers do not want to take a longer route around a business area—and may even see access to businesses as a benefit as well.
But it is an example of the tragedy of the commons, these interests lead to a situation where places and mobility are both degraded.
How do we fix it?
Charles Marohn, an transportation planner and urban activist in the US talks a great deal about how to fix stroads. And his solutions are very thoughtful. He rightly understands that things must change, and that change is hard.
Reference: How do you actually fix a stroad?
Roads and businesses are fixtures of the built environment that are hard to change systematically. Marohn talks about gradually moving a stroad either towards a road, by gradually reducing and limiting access and increasing separation from bikes and pedestrians thereby reducing the complexity of the stroad and making it into a road.
On the other hand, a planner can gradually slow traffic, reroute traffic, reprioritize and refocus the stroad and make it a street.
But both of these are long term difficult projects that take a lot of political will. A planner can not force a major rerouting of traffic overnight, and elimination of all destinations on a six lane stroad would be equally unthinkable to many.
It’s not to say it cannot be done, or that it isn’t done—controlled access highways are a great example, but it is difficult, expensive, and often inequitably—historically those with little political power cannot stop a road being bulldozed through their community.
Unfortunately, even when we do build controlled access roads they often include stroads on their interchanges. Businesses still want accessibility, and without comprehensive policies to manage stroads they’ll form where they can.
Is there another way?
Can we have our cake and eat it too? Could we make a single corridor serve as both a destination and a through route? Given the magnitude of the problem, we really cannot have enough tools.
And as is often the case, the Netherlands provides instructive examples that are worth exploring.
A stroad is essentially a street and a road in the same corridor of space. But just because those things exist in the same corridor, doesn’t mean they must be combined into the same roadway.
Service streets can provide access to destinations at the edge of major through roads. Because these service roads are smaller, and provide a buffer from traffic, they improve the environment for places on that street. Sidewalks are comfortable and can be shaded.
On the other hand, the roadway, because it lacks destinations, can be safer and more efficient, with fewer turning movements.
In this way, a road with service street provides the same function that a stroad seeks to, but does so far more effectively. It’s a true compromise, where we get something better on average for everyone.
It isn’t perfect of course–it’s still a compromise; crossing the road can still be difficult—so we end up with two half streets, instead of a fully connected place. There is still noise and pollution. But compared with a stroad, it’s a world of difference.
You may think this would take much more space, but that need not be the case. There are fewer turning movements so less space is needed for turn lanes, and there are fewer intersections and since intersections and turning movements are the limiting factor on throughput, fewer through lanes are needed to carry the same through traffic.
There are many specific design trade-offs: how do users get in and out of the service road for example, and we will look at those details in the next article.
A final note on complete streets.
There is an ironic tendency right now in traffic planning in North America. Complete streets have become very popular. And why not, they sound great. However, their implementation leaves much to be desired. Often, the way “complete streets” are done is by adding more. A council will say “oh this four lane road is dangerous for pedestrians, cyclists, and has poor transit options, it should be a complete street”.
Engineers will then come back without solving the fundamental issues, and instead present a new nine lane road, with bus lanes, bike lanes, and wider sidewalks. Adding more things does not solve our problems. Saying no is what we must learn to do. And yes, cyclists and pedestrians and transit riders have heard no for decades and we want to start hearing yes, but not all compromises result in a positive outcome. Removing cars is just as important as adding bike or bus lanes.