Stroad vs. Stroad: Land Use, Traffic Engineering, and What Happens When Suburban Arterials Intersect

Today we're looking at what happens when stroads, or suburban arterials, intersect, and how the design of suburban intersections is a microcosm of the kind of planning and engineering that plagues the US, particularly suburbs that developed in the latter half of the 20th century.
Our exploration will take us on a tour of:
- Suburban land uses, including big box stores and the scourge that is drive thrus in America
- Intersection operations, including signal timing and how people walking, biking, and rolling are often afterthoughts
- Pedestrian signal countdowns and push-button operations, and related frustrations
Enjoy (or loathe) this trip to the heart of terrible land use planning and traffic engineering in suburban Las Vegas!
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/ citynerd
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Twitter: @nerd4cities
Instagram: @nerd4cities
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Other CityNerd Videos referenced:
- Ped Bridges: • Pedestrian Overcrossin...
- The Stroad Ecosystem: • The Stroad: A Case Stu...
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Resources:
- ops.fhwa.dot.gov/publications...
- www1.coe.neu.edu/~pfurth/Furth...
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Image Credits:
- Confetti Video by Ranieri Alves de Araujo Ranieri from Pixabay
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Music:
CityNerd background: Caipirinha in Hawaii by Carmen María and Edu Espinal (KZbin music library)
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Inquiries: [e-mail]

[@simoneh4732]

When I moved from urban area of Toronto to the suburban area for work, a subtle change creeped in to how I treated intersections as a driver which I didn't notice until I drove in the urban area again after a few months. I had stopped regularly checking for pedestrians at intersections because I subconsciously started assuming they didn't exist. On suburban roads pedestrians are relatively rare so you get used to driving in absence of them. This results in drivers only checking for other cars to see if the way is clear for turns, and this is without slip lanes with yield signs. The hazardous design of suburban stroads is so insidious that it goes beyond physical danger and affects our psychology to make us more dangerous drivers.

[@fallenshallrise]

So true. Near my home which is downtown crossing a street at a light is fairly safe, drivers turning right do slowly creep into the crosswalk to hurry you along on occasion. Even at an unlit crosswalk most drivers will watch for people and will stop. Near my office in a suburban office park it's the opposite. Drivers who are facing you, turning left, will routinely look right through you while checking for other cars and drive straight into people in the crosswalk, people that are right in front of them, in the middle of the day because after hours and on weekends these areas have almost no pedestrians. Also terrifying is that most drivers reactions to these pressure situations is not to brake but is to accelerate and abruptly counter steer usually with one hand off the wheel in the "HEY!" gesture.

[@niobium2945]

Totally! This happened to me today.. pulled up to an intersection on my bike and a guy was trying to turn right and never once looked my way. I just waited there to make eye contact- didn't feel like being a pancake today.

[@AssBlasster]

I've been a lifelong pedestrian (I don't drive) on stroads, so this is some interesting insight from the driver's perspective and reflects my experience at intersections. I have to make eye contact with drivers before I cross, especially with driveways and right turns. If they don't see me, I normally just go behind their car. Somehow haven't been struck yet.

[@davidreichert9392]

No city in the US has anything on Mississauga or Vaughan when it comes to suburban horror.

[@knarf_on_a_bike]

I'm an urban Torontonian who commutes daily to Mississauga by bike. All I can say is, it's pretty scary sometimes. Your description of cars simply "not seeing" bikes and pedestrians seems about right. And I can't really blame the drivers, honestly. Horrible design of stroads and larger vehicles (SUVs and pick-ups) mean we just aren't picked up on drivers' radars.

[@davidbarts6144]

The #1 reason why I hate driving on stroads is how the intersections always always always just stack up the queued vehicles. You always end up sitting in traffic in Stroadville! Stroads are built for cars, yet it sucks to operate a car on one. They fail even at their intended purpose.

[@CityNerd]

Stroadville. Now I can't unsee it.

[@grahamturner2640]

It does seem ironic that building for cars first is worse for people driving. 😆

[@NewBuildmini]

Poor signal coordination.

[@mindstalk]

@@grahamturner2640 The biggest enemy of drivers is other drivers.

[@Delibro]

That's it. That's wrong what was said in the video, those intersections and stroads are worse also for cars. So why North America builds them? Keeps building them?

[@murdelabop]

What's worse is that car drivers are programmed to blame pedestrians for the obscenely high pedestrian death rate these stroad collisions have. And you just can't convince them otherwise.

[@ericwright8592]

My wife used to get so angry at pedestrians for daring to cross the road and slowing her down in her car. Now we live in a dense historic urban area where we walk and bike all the time. Now she realizes that maybe the 5000lb machines should yield to the 150lb squishy humans. And perhaps streets exist for more than just cars. When you've only ever known suburban sprawl, it doesn't even cross your mind that roads are for anything other than driving 50mph in a car.

[@bakuguardian]

One of the managers at my old job was of the opinion that "drivers aren't obligated to yield to pedestrians". She said that to me after I mentioned almost getting hit by a car on my way to work that day, when I had the right of way (the walk cycle was on cross, i looked both ways and everything). Made me question how she herself treated pedestrians during her drive to work everyday. It feels like a lot of cars will speed up if they see a lowly pedestrian trying to cross the street, almost as if they're trying to clear that gap before the pedestrian makes it to the other side.

[@sion8]

*+*

[@michaelstratton5223]

​@@bakuguardian Meanwhile there's a State Police manhunt headlining the news everytime someone throws something like a water balloon off an overpass and it hits a car. You'd think we were in feudal times or something. The penalty for harassing a royal carriage? DEATH BY A THOUSAND LASHES. >:|

[@Jiji-the-cat5425]

Car drivers are the absolute worst when it comes to pedestrian safety. Where I live, pedestrians always have the right-away. But drivers will just speed up and zip by if they see a pedestrian. Worse yet, I remember a couple years ago walking through my old town. The cars stopped for me, I began to cross the road. The driver in the other lane decided they didn't want to wait and took off as I was in the middle of crossing, and even gave me a smirk as she went by.

[@augustvonmackensen3902]

Intersections like this also make high speed vehicle-on-vehicle collisions much more likely (compared to using a roundabout or just designing the street differently) This helps fuel the “bigger car arms race” as people feel the need to own larger and larger vehicles to protect themselves from other peoples larger and larger vehicles. As a result everyone ends up spending loads of money to ultimately be no safer and pedestrians become much less safe so they start driving too, making everything worse still.

[@AaronTheHarris]

This is a great point that intersections like these are partially to blame for the bigger car arms race. @CityNerd should definitely call it out in a future video!

[@noleftturnunstoned]

Speaking of arms race, anyone notice how bright factory LED headlights have become? Sigh

[@altriish6683]

@@noleftturnunstoned I'd like some of those for my bike, just to keep up

[@lavidawithjoey]

@@noleftturnunstoned It's scary to come in contact with a new vehicle in the opposite direction at night while riding my motorcycle as the lights are blinding.

[@olavsantiago]

@@altriish6683 I have very bright LED lights for my bike, they were expensive and annoying for other people when I activate the strobe setting.

[@evantomlinson3761]

Its enough to make you sick to your stomach when you experience these expensive wastelands in person. Like not only is it all terrible, we're paying a fortune for it to be like this. smh

[@CityNerd]

The infrastructure is very expensive, the opportunity costs of what we could be doing with the land is exorbitant, and the externalities are basically incalculable

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

This stuff is bleeding the country dry.

[@NihongoWakannai]

You'd hope they would consider redesigning this by the end of the road's lifecycle instead of constant repair and repaving.

[@calvinbarr6919]

As someone who has worked at a manager at a double lane drive through restaurant, the madness doesn’t end at that. Every target they tell us to hit is based on car count, drive through times, door dash and mobile orders from parking spots. Maybe a couple times a year is our lobby mentioned as target, which is ofc the only place someone outside of a car can order.

[@alfredsaalo1441]

I work at a fastfood restaurant in a suburb to Stockholm. Our instore times are always worse than the drive-in times. In reality it comes down to the fact most drive orders are pointed before they are ready

[@bodybait]

This is why taco bell closes shop at 8pm for instore. And 2 am for drive thru. Like the nerd says really shows they love you in a car .

[@orangeadventure975]

That annoying feeling when you wanted taco bell during the pandemic, but you couldn't because they wouldn't open the lobby and wouldn't let you walk up to the drive thru window.

[@Kr0noZ]

@@orangeadventure975 Well it's a "drive" through... And being in a car keeps the people 2 feet away from the window at least, often just withing reach of two people stretching for the hand-off.

[@BigWheel.]

Covid probably killed what was left of people's willingness to dine in at any fast food place. I'll happily walk through a drive through to avoid the mess that waits inside.

[@Colaholiker]

This is something that I (German) had to learn the hard way when I was in the US. I was on a business trip, it was the first evening and I was back at my hotel. I wanted to get something to eat and noticed that there is a shopping mall just 1300 ft. away from my hotel, and I assumed (correctly) that they'd have a food court there. However, there was something between the hotel and me - two lanes of stroad going one way, three lanes + shoulders of interstate-like limited access highway going the same way, and a mirrored version of all these lanes going the other way. Sure, there was a bridge to cross at least the limited access highway, but this bridge simply had no footpath whatsoever. The only way to get from the hotel to the mall was to get in my rental car and drive. Checking Google Earth it seems like the bridge now has a footpath added on one side, so in this case it was obviously an afterthought.

[@justanotheryoutubechannel]

Oh my god, they built a road and didn’t actually link it up with sidewalks?

[@stink1701]

Despite the terrifying subject matter, I think this may be one of your best yet. It really puts on full display the absolute car dependent madness that is the typical US sprawling suburb, and what is the prevailing culture that most Americans seem to be aspiring to. I am grateful everyday that I can walk and bike in a small but prosperous city and never need to experience these places for myself.

[@Andrew-jb2iy]

I really don’t understand why so many Americans seem to *desire* these soul-crushing ugly places we build

[@bemorelikejeff]

These places keep getting built, and people keep buying houses there, so there must be something that folks like about them. Another thing this example illustrates is that in addition to the traffic and congestion of your commute into the city for your job, there is also a smaller traffic vortex that you have to deal with within the suburb itself, so some of the downsides of the city followed you out here. It would be interesting to see the growth rates in housing stock and population in these types of places versus others, but I would bet that these Sunbelt-style suburbs are by far the leaders in growth. I guess it's just the most affordable way to bet square footage and bedrooms for your kids while still being in reach of employment in a major city.

[@staubig]

My guess is that they don't really like them, they are addicted.

[@rinhato8453]

@@bemorelikejeff Those places keep getting built because it's generally illegal to build anything else, not because it's popular.

[@CityNerd]

This is the first video I've made that is specifically about suburbs or a suburban location. I plan to do more -- and not always negative! But usually haha.

[@mada9891]

The business park intersection in the Not Just Bikes video a couple months back blew my mind. Incredibly interesting technical breakdown. I'm looking forward to more.

[@AssBlasster]

I thought that traffic light was the best thing in that entire video too. Who cares about the business park lol

[@beckobert]

But such an intersection traffic control is only possible if you kept the traffic to a moderate level (using the well known methods to do so). If you have 100 cars, that need to cross the intersection each minute, there really isn't much you can do other than sacrificing everything to throughput. The perfectly tuned intersection at NJB is the cherry on top, but you have to bake the cake first. But a intersection with 29 lanes means you have no interest in cake, all you want are soggy french fries from the drive through.

[@hendman4083]

I think dutch traffic engineers would create a design with no traffic lights at all. A clover design maybe, but supplemented with tunnels for the bicycle and pedestrian traffic. Of course they will never have to create such a design, because there are no stroads in the Netherlands.

[@frankduff18]

@@hendman4083 might suggest you look up Tom Scott The magic roundabout.

[@hendman4083]

@@frankduff18 I doubt this 29 lane, high speed, high volume intersection can be replaced by a roundabout (not to mention that americans are horrible at navigating roundabouts). In a high speed/high volume situation like this, you want to remove points of conflict as much as possible, probably also the reason you don't see many roundabouts on highways.

[@MrChristheWise]

That was a very good ending. I'm a transportation engineer, who's worked in TN and NC. I came into this industry to try and make the world better, but to do that it feels like I have to fight this entire industry.

[@quijote9117]

Keep fighting, bro, you are a hero for those who can't do anything

[@knosis]

I live in TN man. We need your fight! TDOT just does nothing and pats themselves on the back like they are doing great work here.

[@CityNerd]

There's a lot of inertia -- "this is the way we've always done it," "if it ain't broke," and really the path of least resistance, which is just copying and pasting the same design that got approved last time. It's frustrating, but the younger people I work with at DOTs definitely understand all this much better, and the guard WILL change.

[@MrChristheWise]

@@CityNerd it's true, there is a change. And fortunately a lot of younger engineers and planners watch stuff like this and NJBs Alan Fisher and the like.

[@justcommenting4981]

I don't think it was the choice of individual engineers that got us here, unfortunately I don't think that will get us out. I wish you well in your uphill battle. I have started to become really disgusted at all the places I see destroyed not only by cars, but parking lots.

[@bonecanoe86]

As an East Coast person these massive roads out west are a bit shocking to me. Here in the Philly area it's very rare to have a road with more than two lanes on each side. We still have stroads of course, but they're a lot narrower and smaller than those in other parts of the country.

[@daveharrison84]

You can find roads like that in the Philly suburbs such as King of Prussia and Cherry Hill.

[@yuriydee]

We still have them, just not as bad and smaller. Travel anywhere else like FL, Texas, or Arizona and you find these giant ass roads where every destination is sooooo far apart. As bad as it is here in NYC area, i still appreciate it over what they have there.

[@obriaind]

Old east coast cities like Philly, Boston, NY were built before cars and have had to fit infrastructure into the space they have. Most western US cities (except SF) had space galore so just sprawled and created monsters like this.

[@alcubierrevj]

Roosevelt boulevard is exhibit A for double stroad intersections, Hardison and the Boulevard and Bustleton and the Boulevard are prime examples

[@CityNerd]

Yeah, I kind of specified sun belt at one point in the video because a lot of northeast and Midwest suburbs simply aren't built like this. Western cities are really shocking, but...Florida too. #notallsuburbs

[@kuyshina]

Las Vegas has so much potential to build out an efficient light rail system to connect the city together. If they removed just 1 lane in each direction I’m sure they could easily install a rail line.

[@MarloSoBalJr]

"Too expensive! Build a Elon Musk Depression Tunnel" -NvDOT

[@walterruiz-almendarez3688]

I wish this happens. Being that I live in Las Vegas.

[@lws7394]

Skip just 1 lane ?...mm you'd still have to cross 6, 7 lanes to get to the streetcar ..🤔

[@bodybait]

Light is expensive to operate (personal also) and Las Vegas (or any place in Nevada) doesn't have those funds.

[@quijote9117]

@@bodybait lol

[@marcelmoulin3335]

When I grew up in California, I absolutely loathed these hideous, depressing stroads and their outrageously off-putting intersections. I hated crossing the street because I felt as if I was crossing a stage in front of hundreds of spectators. Fortunately, I have returned to my fatherland, the Netherlands, where I live in a charming, historic, and inviting city--Middelburg.

[@AlecLomas]

having grown up in a place like this (suburban Phoenix -- lol like a urban Phoenix exists), your comment about entering the intersection during a yellow light *even when you shouldn't* rings true. both in that it's very, very common to see, and that when you're driving through the intersection at speed it can be incredibly difficult to decide if you have time to stop or time to make it through the intersection. turns out humans aren't great at making snap decisions while operating heavy machinery at 75 feet per second.

[@mrslvw]

What is the proper method? Yellow is slow down but what's guideline on going through or not.

[@davidbarts6144]

With cycle times of three minutes, you are just begging drivers to blow yellow lights. Stopping means getting punished with three full minutes of sitting at a red light. It is just one aspect of how stroads suck even at their intended purpose of managing motor vehicle traffic.

[@stevengordon3271]

@@mrslvw The guideline is that if you are scared to go through on the Yellow, buy a bigger vehicle.

[@altriish6683]

@@stevengordon3271 bingo! Bonus points if you get it lifted

[@mrslvw]

@@stevengordon3271 lol nay in this economy and with these gas prices, I'll stick to my little fuel efficient clown car.

[@machtmann2881]

I avoid getting into a drive through if I can help it. Especially during busy times, I find it faster to just park the car and order food inside for take-out if I really want it on the go. It's not really any different from getting Chinese take-out and those places almost never have drive-throughs. Being locked in a line of cars isn't exactly my idea of convenience.

[@mrslvw]

When my kids were young and both in car seats (which I used as long as possible bc vehicle collisions are main cause of death for children) it was easier to use a drive thru especially if off times like midafternoon between lunch and dinner, pre- rush hour. By the time I parked, got out of car with my bag(s), unbuckled both kids, corraled them inside, etc. it could be longer than driving thru especially since have to get them back out to car safely then buckled in.

[@Joesolo13]

@@mrslvw That is a scenario where it's faster, but most people in the line aren't bringing 2 kids in with them. And the line would be faster if more of them didn't use it. Kind of the same story as cars in general really. Fewer people should be in them, and it's improve things for the few who actually do need them.

[@mrslvw]

@@Joesolo13 oh I completely agree but can be good reasons. I suspect a lot of ppl use drive thrus just to avoid leave temperature controlled car lol. I would love more pedestrian friendly areas. I've had ppl shocked when I'd walk a block to the corner CVS store with the kids. Um it's literally so much easier than loading up the car to drive 1 minute:/

[@machtmann2881]

@@mrslvw Oh yeah that is definitely a scenario where I would change my mind. Getting kids in and out of car seats is not a quick and easy task. But if it's just me in there, then typically it's faster to go in. It's still climate controlled in the restaurant too lol. Personally, I like that I can walk around while bored and waiting for my order rather than being stuck in my seat

[@enjoyslearningandtravel7957]

Plus you save gas when you are in line for a drive-through in a hot climates wasting all that air conditioning and gas money in the air conditioning.

[@bretdunham2245]

I lived in the Las Vegas area from 2001-2010 and would drive through this intersection regularly. I remember when St Rose Pkwy had one lane in each direction. I absolutely hated living in Las Vegas suburbia; since then I've lived in a very transit friendly neighborhood in Seattle and am glad I moved. This also reminds me of the other piece of horrible suburban planning that is common around Las Vegas - gated walled-in neighborhoods with a street design so complicated that it would be impossible to walk anywhere in a straightforward manner. For example - there was a shopping center (and bus stop) just across the wall from my home. It would have been a one minute walk if that wall weren't there, but it was more like a 15-20 minute walk in actuality for me to walk the incredibly convoluted street design to get there. This actively discourages anyone to walk anywhere, and for what - the feeling of security? Those gates don't really keep anyone out. Anyway - this could be the topic of a video. Terrible suburban residential planning.

[@CityNerd]

Oh that IS a good idea. I'd never seen residential design like this before I moved here, and you've described it quite accurately.

[@matthewshultz8762]

@@CityNerd Please do! Maybe touch on impact of gated or other 'private' communities that encourage blocking pedestrian's right to roam. All too often have I wanted to walk straightline to avoid intersections or roads and been forced to either hop a fence or blocked entirely.

[@a.j.santiago303]

Vegas sounds like Orlando.

[@pedrokantor3997]

I thought the Mojave climate, with its 100F temperatures, would be enough to discourage walking.

[@Skydog6301]

That’s when I’d buy a ladder lol

[@delilas2398]

It's always interesting to me when I browse the cities skylines steam workshop and see road assets with 8 or more lanes. I have never needed a road that big, nor can I even imagine a usecase.

[@PalmelaHanderson]

Obviously Cities Skylines is different, since the AI pathfinding operates entirely on a "shortest route A>B" basis and isn't very good at utilizing multiple lanes, but I don't think I've ever used more than a 5-lane road in the game. And those are only for the busiest intersections so I can have dedicated left turn lanes.

[@jasonreed7522]

@@PalmelaHanderson the AI in that game is very frustrating, invariably the biggest cause of traffic is cars visiting from off map when i have every other form of transit built. (The airport is losing money despite having a metro in the basement, but enough cars originating off map are clogging up the roads causing ambulances and trash collection to despawn) IRL this is the problem that intercity transit and park and rides are meant to fix. (Park and rides should be the interface between true rural and city and be placed at the very end of lines, all other stations should function like urban stations) And IRL i hate driving on anything with more than 2 lanes in 1 direction, if you are building a stroad it should be 1 lane each way plus a "suicide lane", this road design is being advertised as a "diet road" and is proven safer than a basic 2 lanes each way. (I can't imagine driving on a 4lane each way intersecting another 4lane each way and not dieing of stress/other drivers)

[@Jehty_]

@@jasonreed7522 road with suicide lane safer? You do know why it is called *suicide* lane?

[@jasonreed7522]

@@Jehty_ because its shared by traffic moving in both directions, but this makes people using is more cautious and it is proven to be statistically safer. (It also gets left hand turns out of the traffic carrying lane so they aren't holding up traffic increasing odds of getting rear-ended as they wait for an opening to cross 1 lane of traffic not 2 while at a dead stop in the fastest lane)

[@Jehty_]

@@jasonreed7522 "proven to be statistically safer" Could you provide a source for that? Because I don't believe you. And my guess is that you are misunderstanding or misrepresenting a statistic.

[@nitedreamer23]

I lived in Vegas for a couple of years in the early-2000s and, henceforth, whenever I encounter poor traffic planning, I refer to the engineers as having gone to the "Las Vegas School of Traffic Design".

[@CityNerd]

Ooohh, that's good

[@psychic_beth]

"Left to their own devices, traffic engineers will always build New Jersey" - Justin Roczniak, Well There's Your Problem podcast

[@TheEngineerd]

"And worst of all is how this impacts people walking, biking, and rolling through the intersection." I enjoy his bursts of optimism.

[@NatiiixLP]

Living in the centre of Tokyo has taught me a simple fact of urban transportation design. If going by car is the most convenient option, you've already lost. I don't even think I've ever seen a road with more than 4 lanes here, and those are almost always one-way streets. The US have a serious transportation problem.

[@littlestenographer]

Reminds me a stroad/highway intersection in my hometown in Southern Ca. Had a friend visiting from NYC once who wanted to cross against the light because that's what she did at home. Horrifying. The speed was posted at 50 along the highway which meant huge fuck-off trucks were frequently blowing through at 70. This was literally right next to our charming historical (and walkable) downtown, but people were constantly wondering why more people didn't want to spend time there. Geez, what a mystery.

[@CityNerd]

The different norms about observing walk-don't walk signals in different parts of the country are kinda charming to me, but yeah walking like a New Yorker in a Sun Belt suburb probably isn't advisable

[@mindstalk]

@@CityNerd Living in Cambridge/Somerville MA, I noticed that putting yield signs in the middle of a block was an excellent way of allowing more pedestrian crossings. I gather that wouldn't work in other places...

[@MSTS33]

Even for drivers these intersections are awful...and crazy dangerous. I wondered why traffic engineers don't just put a big patch of concrete in the middle and bunch left-turning cars next to it (allowing two-stage phasing) like it sometimes happen in Europe. I got my answer : with a 90 km/h approach speed, there would be to many rear-endings...

[@Robbedem]

AFAIK all crossings in Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, France,... have a maximum speed of 70km/h, guarded with red light - and speed camera's. And even when you wouldn't find crossings this large in Europe. (I suspect 5x5 lanes, including turn lanes is probably the biggest you'ld find) Even then though governments try to remove these type of crossings as much as possible because they are so dangerous. One of the solutions is to make tunnels or bridges for through traffic and/or split the stroad into a road and one or two streets. But since that's expensive, other cheaper options are to reduce the speed limit, cut traffic in other places to reroute traffic away from these intersections, discourage the usage of cars by reducing the amount of parking and charging money for parking,...

[@jintsuubest9331]

@@Robbedem Any improvement of US land? (both urban and suburbans sucks) probably have to start with rebuild failed mall/strip mall.

[@CZsWorld]

I always imagine the entire little league field that can fit in these giant intersections.

[@renatocruz4511]

Hey what's your favourite weezer album?

[@ApexSyndicate]

West Palm native here. While watching your video on stroads, my girlfriend and I specifically mentioned State Road 7 and a few of it's intersections there in Royal Palm Beach that make living out there miserable. Suburban Florida is stroad hell.

[@Benz2112]

That is one hideous piece of car infrastructure. It makes me think of the times when I want to leave my office for a coffee break. I can take a 5 minute drive to Dunkin, or walk about 5 blocks to a nice local cafe. More often than not I pick the latter, and I am punished for it. Between crossing one side of the street to the other, and then crossing a stroad, my walk becomes this sad journey. This kind of land use is a combination of ambivalence, self loathing, and maybe nihilism.

[@ericwright8592]

I live in a dense urban area where they post "no right turn on red" signs at every intersection (because that's when the pedestrians cross). The number of suburban commuters that ignore this is astonishing. Then, when they almost hit you, a pedestrian, they look at you baffled what you were thinking walking in front of their car...

[@urbanderek]

I would have enjoyed this a month ago when I was studying for my Highway & Transportation final. Also the mattress store comment got me.

[@MelGibsonFan]

I’ve become increasingly interested in how we tackle this problem. People like Not Just Bikes (as he’s admitted), mock and scorn suburbanites, other people enjoy talking about ways to punish car dependent people with higher tolls, congestion pricing etc. What I’ve come to realize is that this is something of a class issue. As inner cities have become more desirable, the wealthy move into them and enjoy the close proximity to opportunities, the walkability, mass transit etc. Often working class people get stuck having to travel for work… what am I saying? How do we incentivize a move towards urban living for EVERYONE and move away from car dependency on a systemic level.

[@butteredmap9064]

I'm glad I never got into the habit of getting fast food via drive-thrus which is in large part because that's how my dad did it when I was growing up. Not that fast food restaurants are amazing, but it's more enjoyable overall to order food inside. It's way easier to read the menu, you can easily ask questions, get refills, get ice, use the bathroom, get the condiments you want, and sit down for a bit, and eat on a horizontal surface. As opposed to sitting boxed in at a line at the drive-thru ordering thru a $1 speaker. Then you can either juggle through the bag in the car or wait until you stop to eat when your food will be cold.

[@mikafoxx2717]

It's also like grabbing a coffee versus sitting down in a coffee shop. You get the atmosphere and subtle human interaction that we really need, especially these days. The car centrism has really cut out community interaction beyond your bubble.

[@AaronTheHarris]

Unfortunately a ton of restaurants have been closing interiors entirely, citing "staffing shortages" and only serving drive-thru customers. So you have to bring your $30k hunk of steel to order a $2 fries. Only way around it is to use their app which of course tracks and mines you for data. Gatekeeping to the max!

[@mikafoxx2717]

@@AaronTheHarris Well, that's when I put my money where my mouth is and don't give them my buisness. If they've actually got staff shortages all the time, they either aren't paying enough or have shitty people in charge.

[@CityNerd]

The dining room at In-N-Out (just about the only fast food place I ever go to) is usually pretty full at lunch. Which I think is not the norm at a lot of these places!

[@sabretooth1997]

I've always despised drive thrus because of the all too high probability to get your order messed up. My [relatively] recent disdain for automotive dependency keeps me out of them. Frankly, I think they should be outlawed, and in some (but all too few) jurisdictions they actually are.

[@dingymon]

I'm finishing up living in Switzerland for 3 years. Amazing differences to intersection design - priorities to mass transit, priorities to pedestrian & bicycle, as well as motor vehicle cultural respect to mass transit, bicycle and pedestrian.

[@sierranexi]

I live in San Francisco. I went out to Dublin, the newest large suburb in the area, and had an immediate fit of rage at how difficult it was to get across their stroads. SF and Dublin are different planets for pedestrians. I couldn't believe how this new suburb was ALL WRONG.

[@vikaloseva6996]

My hometown :') the city has been developing like crazy, too... And not all of the new developments are any good. Only the stuff around Bart is nice and dense, but lacks retail.

[@reinderdejong22]

everytime i come upon the intersections on St .Rose and Blue Diamond I'm just shaking my head. massive intersections which as a European are just unimaginable... After living in Las Vegas for 5 years it still baffles me.

[@CityNerd]

The logic of it makes sense if you just assume everyone is always going to drive everywhere!

[@barnbuild27]

I lived in Henderson, Nevada, 2004-2015. I bicycled thousands of miles around Henderson, Las Vegas, and Lake Mead. I rode with a club for safety. Cyclists and people standing at bus stops around the area get killed frequently by motorists. I’ve ridden through the intersection of St. Rose and Eastern many times. Except for North Las Vegas there isn’t an area I haven’t cycled in the Las Vegas area. Thanks for this video of an area so familiar to me. If you want to do some cycling with a great club in Henderson, check out Green Valley Cyclists.

[@CityNerd]

Thanks! In a lot of ways, Henderson is great for biking. Lots of paths and trails, and you can start to see buffered bike lanes on some of the newer or retrofitted arterials. There are just too many intersections like this, though.

[@sailingaeolus]

I cycled Valley of Fire road one Saturday - and was constantly harassed by Harley Davidson riders, who travel wolf pack style btw. Even the new bike lane on Hollywood Blvd is pretty bad for exhaust smells with plenty of Ford F250 quadcab duramax diesels to be seen. I ended up going mountain bike and stay away from polluted, dangerous roads.

[@michaeloreilly657]

Another problem with multi-lane junctions with long wait times. When the lights eventually go green, drivers get into race-start mode. My car has a V8. Mine has launch-control. Mine is one of those EVs that do 0-60 in 1.99 secs. Mine has pedals!

[@mrslvw]

I heard the MarioKart start noise as I read this lol. Kinda wonder how video games have affected driving perceptions...

[@TimothyHalkowski]

A special form of hell. You're doing a good job pointing out the insane failures of urban road design. Thank you.

[@8stormy5]

I learned to fear the Stroad when I almost got hit twice crossing a T-junction once. Both times the drivers just blew past without a care in the world.

[@PhillipRPeck]

Everything about that built environment is madness

[@lifestain]

I fucking hate it. I'm glad these are not as big here in Quebec, but they are still there and as ugly.

[@angusb99]

Being from New England it's kind of strange to see stroads like this. In my hometown, a city of 120,000 people (about the same size as West Palm Beach), the largest possible road had two lanes in either direction, and widened out to add a left turn lane at intersections. Huge stroads like this seem to be mainly a Southern/Western phenomenon. Thoughts, CityNerd?

[@jasonreed7522]

As a NYer (upstate) i agree, nothing in the north east is as bad as the intesection in the video. And i consider our 4 lane total stroads unpleasant enough to drive on. I'm thankful my home county is running a bus service with the bare minimum population to make it work before the population grows and we end up like a vegas hell hole. (For reference 100,000 people, towns of 10,000 or less, and density of 40/sqmi. I mean barely possible and yet some cities with more people claim to be too small for transit) Someone on the county board has to be either a transit fan, or knows its the only reasonable way to provide transportation aid to the needy. (Based on the website they know all their problems and want to do better, its honestly impressive for a rural, republican/conservative county without an Interstate or money)

[@CannedFishFiles]

Your town was designed before cars were invented probably.

[@destronger5313]

this is what i liked about staying in plymouth, ma as a kid. many lanes still 2 lanes. having visited vermont, new hamshire, upstate new york; i recall an older areas with limited size roads.

[@38snipshow]

Much of the same in Ontario. Our worst sttoads are usually only 4 or 6-lanes wide. And these are in our post-war, suburban areas. These massive roads in the vid are plain nuts. Def seems to be more of a south/southwestern US thing

[@someweeb3650]

Oil industry.

[@6ixof135]

Stroad intersections are a complete nightmare when you're not in a car, but I find them quite unpleasant even in a car. Perfect lose-lose situation.

[@jeromemckenna7102]

I've often found these intersections frightening when I am driving, I cannot imaging walking through one of these.

[@EMD3384]

New Englander who just found your channel via Not Just Bikes. I'm also a newbie to city planning as I'm in the beginning stages of advocating for complete streets in my city. Excellent video! As other people have mentioned, a typical stroad here has two lanes of through traffic with additional turning lanes popping up at intersections. A roundabout is called a rotary where I'm from and during rush hour they can really back up. I now feel more grateful to live in a region developed before cars with acceptable public transportation and great local restaurants. I can get by most days without extensive travel on stroads and haven't eaten at a chain restaurant or drive through in at least a decade! Of course we could always do better but progress is happening and I hope we continue getting our cities back bit by bit.

[@CityNerd]

The cities in the northeast are built much differently! The Sun Belt is a whole other world. Glad you're putting energy into advocacy, we need more of it!

[@TheSpoovy]

As an English planner and highway engineer all this totally baffles me. 25 years ago at university all this was taught to us, its was accepted knowledge even back then. The real interesting question for me is why do north American highway engineers refuse to move on from 1960s thinking? I'm sure they're smart, well trained and aware of the problems, so why is it?

[@fallenshallrise]

My favorite (sarcasm) details that let me know that nobody cares are how they build the islands that are there for our safety with rounded off curbs that make it easy for cars to drive up and over them. Rims > humans. Same with painted lines, rumble strips and fold over bollards designed to suggest lightly that cars and trucks stay out of bike lanes or pedestrian space but do nothing to stop them. Watch a semi-trailer hit a squared off curb on a right turn, the inside tire will scrub across the edge and then drop down into the road again. On a rounded curb even a regular car will have traction to drive up and over the island with ease.

[@johnathin0061892]

It also keeps tires from accidentally hitting a steep sharp curb and popping the outside sidewall of the tire (did that once... not fun.)

[@GODDAMNLETMEJOIN]

Thinking of the difference between a stroad and an actual proper road, my last commute was seven kilometers down a stroad, and my current commute is 20km down a highway. The 20km commute is usually quicker.

[@clayton97330]

In Texas all red time is definately still travelable as is two seconds into the following green.

[@robertcartwright4374]

"Thank you Jesus! Thank you Lord!"

[@bethk1402]

I can confirm this. I feel like I have to give a quick glance in the rear-view mirror before stopping on a yellow (greater Houston area) if I don't want to get rear-ended. Yellow-red running is absolutely commonplace here. A flagrant red is somewhat less common.

[@wenkeli1409]

In Houston, I saved myself from a serious car accident a few times by looking to clear the intersection after the light turned green. I definitely don't trust other drivers.

[@clayton97330]

@@wenkeli1409 I've run a lot of Houston intersections that were on the red side and looked in my rear view to see at least one car went through the light hehind me.

[@colormedubious4747]

It almost seems that intersecting stroads make the businesses near the intersection virtually inaccessible. Another win for traffic engineers!

[@CityNerd]

I'm going to have to do a whole video on the tyranny of "access control."

[@colormedubious4747]

@@CityNerd I'm in!

[@bryanCJC2105]

In cities like Las Vegas, transportation planning is a misnomer for how it's practiced. It's not about transportation. It's about cars. Cars are transportation but transportation is about more than cars. First of all, buses have to stop 500' from the intersection. If you have to transfer buses, that's 500' to get back to the other street and that bus probably has to stop 500' down that street. Include the 200' to cross that huge street, and you're walking 1200' just to transfer buses. That's almost a 1/4 mile. It's not very far but in the Las Vegas heat w no shade, it's miserable. So "transportation" is not what these people are planning. The problem is that once the cities are built out this way, if they someday come to some kumbaya and try to build an integrated transportation system, they will have a hard time because the streets aren't built to accommodate that. By that I mean, the streets are only barely walkable. Mega streets, fast traffic, no sidewalks, no shade, nothing but parking or sound walls facing the streets, to to name a few things. They spend a lot of money landscaping the street for cars but not for people. The streets are not built at people scale. They're built at truck scale. A lot of roads will need to be shrunk and people won't like it. It will be hard to change the nature of those streets. Chicago is a great city to use transit. The streets are small for one thing. No wide streets. Traffic is slow. Lots of stop signs. There is plenty of shade on most streets. Store fronts along the sidewalks. The city is built at people scale. Getting to your bus or train station is fairly pleasant even if it's 1/2 mile away. Buses and trains are frequent. Walking a mile or more in Chicago is a breeze and doesn't feel like it. I'm reminded of Los Angeles which has had a kumbaya on transit and is building out a vast mediocre rapid transit system. People often say LA is not a dense city but it is and demand for rapid transit in such a huge city is there. Whereas in cities like Chicago, NYC, and San Francisco, people of all socio-economic classes take transit together, I don't think that will ever happen in Los Angeles. One big reason is that the streets are miserable to walk on. Little shade, lots of parking lots, wide streets, fast traffic, etc. Most who have a choice would rather sit in traffic than walk a 1/2 mile on one of those streets to a station or wait for a bus or two to complete your commute. The city just isn't built to facilitate walking and taking public transit. You can build a large mediocre transit system but if getting to it is unpleasant, well then, you've limited it to those who have to use it. Even walking around Century City can feel dystopian. It isn't pleasant. I think I would prefer a root canal to walking down Sepulveda Blvd for 1/2 mile.

[@marcchapman6812]

I'm not sure how you can discuss las vegas suburbs like this without constantly screaming. Something else I thought was interesting about Las Vegas is the amount of flooding the roads get in the fall. Not sure if thats more because of the monsoon season Vegas gets or the fact that it may have more pavement per square mile than Manhattan in comparable regions.

[@augustvonmackensen3902]

When you have that much asphalt per capita then building and maintaining proper drainage is probably financially difficult in the long term. Ah well, at least when the roads flood people have lots of options besides driving.......

[@bernardfinucane2061]

And yet the import water to the city. Madness.

[@CityNerd]

There's a truly incredible amount of impervious surface. I've been here when there's a downpour and it's biblical

[@mrslvw]

Loving the bunnies in the parking lot landscape lol! Pls include more animal sightings:)

[@justgoodpop]

I went to middle and highschool near saint rose and eastern! It’s crazy to see how much this area has changed throughout the years. I love the video!

[@dr.briandecker496]

When I first moved to Vegas from the east coast, I loved the infrastructure here. To me it seemed very efficient, and minimized traffic for how many people live here. It also seemed like they weren’t afraid to spend big on good infrastructure, compared to the dilapidated infrastructure of many eastern cities. It took me a couple years to realize the danger of these intersections. At first I loved how these massive roads “felt” far less congested than out east, which was a less stressful/frustrating driving experience as you weren’t sitting in stop and go traffic. I actually lived a block from the eastern-st rose intersection in the vid. It was great having so much to do so close to home. Sooo many great food options. It took awhile for the unsafe feeling to kick in and has put a damper on my love for living in Vegas. I’m definitely extra observant at these massive intersections.

[@CityNerd]

Great comment. I do have to say, you don't see much congestion in Vegas at all (relative to other places I've lived). But you do have to plan on sitting at signals for quite awhile!

[@micosstar]

hey it's the Vegas School of Traffic Design after all@@CityNerd

[@01296501923654]

My condolences, America

[@augustvonmackensen3902]

4:54 Is that a cycle lane? If so then wow! Of all the places to find one!

[@AssBlasster]

Yup that's a 2-way cycle path.

[@CannedFishFiles]

Decent bike paths wind up along these kinds of stroads, but when you actually ride them you have to be extra careful at all the driveways.

[@codegame027]

@CityNerd I can tell you that I HAVE actually used the bicycling lanes to cross that SR7/Forrest Hill BLVD Intersection a few times. I'm a seasoned road cyclist so I'm not phased by much but I've only crossed it early on a Saturday or a Sunday morning.

[@tomreingold4024]

Very good video as always. Thank you for using “stadia” as the plural of “stadium.”

[@johanna7254]

And it's always these intersections where people run red lights, because everyone knows how long it takes for your light to turn green again. They don't want to wait so they just go for it. My town is notorious for this.

[@DanielSpiegel]

I feel like for the vast majority of people once your eyes have been opened there's just no going back. Intersections like this are almost unbelievable for me now.

[@steven.l.patterson]

It’s not often I go out to the suburbs, but I hate crossing two intersecting stroads in my power wheelchair. I do encounter slip lanes and beg buttons in the city - hate both. MoDOT builds a channel in the islands so I have to travel in it, even when littered with debris from car accidents. Sometimes they place the beg button too far away, or on the opposite side. The other thing I hate is when I’m barely started crossing a street and the countdown timer begins almost immediately.

[@DerrickJolicoeur]

The slow zoom out at the end was great... and maddening! Each additional suburban neighborhood just make me scream "WHAT IS THAT!?" repeatedly.

[@drpepandpepper]

What's your opinion of "Michigan Lefts?" Those stroad designs where you must drive straight through the intersection and make a U turn just to go left. The justification seems to be that they are safer and reduce conflict points, but are they? My experience is that they can often overfill and can cause backups, leading to an even longer wait. They do seem slightly better for peds because they require a substantial median, creating a larger island at the crossing.

[@GegoXaren]

Or you could do what we do in Sweden : ban U-Turns (well I have never seen anyone do it, and I have never done it, and my driving instructor told me to never do it), and design the roads to accomidate turning around some other way. (roundabouts or side roads that you can drive in on and get turned around using a three-point turn or a turning area.)

[@MohondasK]

I'd love to see a City Nerd video on non-traditional intersections (Michigan Lefts, Roundabouts, Continuous-Flow, etc.). Are any of them actually better? Or do they just create a different set of problems?

[@BaronBytes]

In Quebec City there'S a road with those and they built the bike lane straight in the middle with yield signs we absolutely cannot expect anyone to respect.

[@dominiccasts]

@@MohondasK I would not be surprised if there was a city in the US that embraced roundabouts but then made them 2-way roundabouts that go 3 lanes each way, as if they got someone who wanted to work on particle accelerators to design it.

[@Nota-Skaven]

@@dominiccasts then other cities use that as an example of why roundabouts don't work and never build one themselves 😭 side note, I have never seen a Michigan left, and I live in Michigan 🤨, just conceptually sounds terrible though so I'm glad I haven't

[@JonZiegler6]

I live in Central Europe and people have a hard time believing the contents of vids like these are even possible even my students, who are mostly going to be carmechanics or autotronic mechanics are shocked at the level of car deoendancy...

[@Joh447]

love this kinda stuff. my mother is Canadian and my father Norwegian, so living in Norway this sort of roadwork is all but foreign to us... even visiting relatives in Canada I haven't been on roads larger than around 3 or 4 lanes on one side...

[@oscaruglyface]

I moved from NYC to the sun belt and these videos are really helping me understand why I hate going outside here LOL

[@Patrick_from_Youtube]

When I look at the stroad infrastructure in the US, I fully appreciate how much we deserve the coming climate collapse

[@lipschitzlyapunov]

I also hate how America influenced the world to think that their shitty transportation infrastructure is the way to go, causing many developing countries and developed countries alike to do the same.

[@yuriydee]

And the current gas prices to punish us for building literally all infrastructure based around cars....

[@axelnils]

@@yuriydee Still like 50% off on gas compared to Europe….

[@CityNerd]

Take me, sweet meteor of doom

[@ILovePancakes24]

I consider it funny how Europe is on the brink of collapse now that Russia wants to cut their fuel supplies. Virtue signaling won't fuel your economy.

[@elizabethdavis1696]

Do a video of most walkable universities!

[@Ferrichrome]

I love your top 10s but I think your videos like this that go a little more in depth are great, keep it up!

[@knightlygains8934]

Your videos are so good and I'm so glad I found this channel. Thanks for your work on this video.

[@Tomapella]

On the one hand, I hate the word "stroad", but on the other it's as crappy of a word as the thing it's describing deserves so I'll live with it.

[@markunderwood219]

My "favorite" slipway behavior is when visibility is bad enough for cars trying to make the turn that most drivers practically feel compelled to pull forward onto the pedestrian crosswalk going to the pork chop and stop there to check for oncoming traffic, because that's the only place that they can see it. As a cyclist trying to cross that crosswalk, I always find it hilarious when the driver notices me, then waves me forward to cross the pedestrian crossing that they're currently sitting on. Like, the poor bugger is so unused to pedestrians/cyclists being there that they don't even realize they're asking me to do something dangerous or even impossible depending on the sidewalks. My reaction is usually to mutely point at the crosswalk, and wait until they leave. I wonder if they feel like I rudely turned down their courteous offer of allowing me to cross.

[@CityNerd]

This happens to me constantly. Like I need to be able to wheel my bike up onto the ADA ramp, and you're blocking it, dude. Just clueless.

[@91kap]

In central florida there's several stroad intersections where full fledged highway overpasses have been built at what should be a regular intersection.

[@lavidawithjoey]

Another quality video!

[@Cyrus992]

I’m so glad you are exposing Las Vegas. I live here and my videos have been addressing planning with new alternatives. We should meetup

[@benjaminrei1319]

you have some troubling videos, such as the video filming random black people on the street with the title “animals” and a monkey emoji.

[@IanZainea1990]

11:39 I've been walking more and more lately, and having been a driver for the past... 16 years... I have been paying attention to how I handle each intersection type as a driver, and how the road is designed to help me *ignore* pedestrians as a driver. And just how car-centric our culture is that basically means cars always take right of way and anything in your way is a nuisance. Anyhow. On an intersection with slip lanes. I am *always* checking traffic approaching from my left, I *may* see a person appraoching from the left too, but almost no way am I going to see someone approaching from my right! I know the slip lanes are supposed to be safe, and some are even signalized, but if you're a driver, you know that no one cares about anything except themselves (yourself included when you're the driver), and so people approaching from the left, may need to get into the slip lane exit lane in order to get to their destination or to get ready for the next intersection which is probably also packed. Anyhow. Slip lanes anywhere near pedestrian traffic should not happen. Drivers will 100% of the time be focused on oncoming traffic. Unless the slip lane has 400m of bollards keeping the two lanes separate past the intersection, then *maybe* the driver turning right on the slip lane won't look left... better yet, put up a wall to prevent them. And on the wall write "watch for people!"

[@CityNerd]

It's just a terrible design, especially when there's a pretty well-used multi-use path across one leg of the intersection. Everything but cars is an afterthought.

[@freelancer42]

Clicked because I'd never heard the term stroad before, was not disappointed by the content. Really interesting, infrastructure design and planning is so fascinating! I live in Sweden but I've done many roadtrips in the states, and somehow I'm always surprised by how many lanes y'all have everywhere.

[@tristanridley1601]

Stroad (and the definitions of street and road used to create it) is made up by the organization Strong Towns and its founder Charles Marohn. The best description of it is by the NotJustBikes youtube channel. In Swedish is there a different word for a destination access route vs for a high speed connection between distant places?

[@tristanridley1601]

@A S Not a lot of newer larger cities in that part of the country, eh?

[@bwuppy]

This is my first video of yours and I just gotta say I love your mix of lucid commentary + sassy takedowns. Go offfffff

[@Nico_M.]

3:16 Here's a prime example of the car-centric approach of suburbs. There's a bus stop at S Eastern Ave & Coronado Center Dr, but if you live at Fresh Pond Ct, you have to walk 1300 feet/400 meters to get to a place at 125 feet/40 meters "as the crow flies".

[@r.williams8349]

Had to cross one of these on foot or bike on my way to and from work for 4 years (not as huge but it still sucked!). The ped islands are terrible, in the heat you have to wait there in the middle of all the black asphalt with no shade and zooming cars two feet away, its truly miserable. I think its probably at least 10 degrees hotter on the island than the ambient temp, which is a big deal if its 100 F out (common in the summer at the intersection i crossed, and im sure more common in las vegas!)

[@CityNerd]

Yes, a literal heat island effect

[@r.williams8349]

@@CityNerd Yes!!!!

[@dmroberts8]

I stumbled upon your channel, and I really fascinated by you content!

[@theelectricwalrus]

It never ceases to amaze me that complete streets finding funding actually goes to these kinds of intersections, as if they aren't aggressively hostile!

[@CityNerd]

They're complete...ly awful

[@daederosss]

The problem with slip lanes and right turns (or left turns in left-hand drive areas) in general is that the traffic a car will be turning into is coming from the left so most drivers will focus to their left and not see the pedestrian or bike coming from their right. Slip lanes exacerbate this by giving a "safe" space for the car to wait that is usually ahead of the pedestrian crossing. This means that most drivers will still be going a decent speed (20+ kph) when they slam into that pedestrian in the crosswalk (or even faster if they see no traffic in the lane they want to turn into). Even though I try to be careful when crossing intersections I have still personally be hit as a pedestrian three times in five years while crossing suburban stroads. In each of those cases it was from a driver that was stopped at a red light who then went for it when they saw no traffic coming from the left, hitting me who had just started walking on the green. Fortunately I came out of these just with some bruises and lost skin.

[@CityNerd]

It's really nervewracking crossing these things. I want some sort of assurance the driver is aware of my existence before I start crossing, but it's really hard to see through glare and distance and identify facial expressions. Such a flawed system.

[@josephfisher426]

It's bad enough just for cars---my first accident was because Florida Man, driving in front of me along a slip lane into a clear road, stopped at the yield sign while I was looking to see if there was any traffic to yield to. On a very wide road the slip lane will shorten the uninterrupted pedestrian crossing distance. But on the very few intersections where the crossing distance is a problem, a right-turn signal could be added.

[@tinfoilslacks3750]

Another, less acknowledged issue of right on red is that it means the car needs to creep into the cross walk in order to observe the oncoming traffic from the left, obstructing pedestrians.

[@machtmann2881]

If you're looking for bad intersections, I'd take a glance at the triangle intersection by Eden Center in Falls Church, VA. Only time I have ever seen one in my life as far as I can tell and the thing seems designed to just choke traffic. The Vietnamese food is worth going for but damn does that intersection make me think twice about it

[@rajnadar6555]

Seven Corners has been a mess for a long time...they are looking to improve it, but the plan won't be finished for many years...🙁

[@CityNerd]

Haha, had to look. That is complete madness.

[@hagelslag9312]

Wtf is that abomination...

[@drewcox2103]

Or to make it more fun (or dangerous), how about the 6-way, star-like stroadesection of Scott Blvd/N Decatur Rd/Medlock in N. Decatur, GA. Now that's a real bear to drive and turn through. They really should've made it a no left on red at each point to make thru traffic safer.

[@kriserts]

Thank you. I always experience rising panic when I watch your videos, especially one like this, and at the end I’ve doubled down on my vow to move to Europe.

[@matthewmeadows208]

Just wanted to say I really enjoy your videos! Keep it up.

[@augustvonmackensen3902]

3:34 Drive-Thru banks?! I mean I guess it’s only natural on a stroad, but it’s still not something I’d ever considered might exist. Even banks I’ve seen in before retail parks weren’t drive-thru.

[@thatpersonsmusic]

As someone who lives on the edge of the St Louis suburbs, I struggle to think of a bank without a drive through unfortunately Edit: seriously, in a quick search on google maps, I ran into 22 banks with drive through a before deciding to give up on finding a bank without a drive through Edit again: ok, on the 27th bank, I finally found the first bank without a drive through

[@machtmann2881]

The only time I have ever not seen a drive through bank in the States is in some downtown area in the middle of a city. They seem to be mandated for car convenience here

[@augustvonmackensen3902]

@@thatpersonsmusic I had no idea it was so common. It's alien to me. It's surely so much more efficient for people to park their cars and then just go into a building? If everyone is in their cars then the perimeter of the building becomes the determinant of its capacity rather than its floorspace, almost certainly reducing capacity.

[@thatpersonsmusic]

@@augustvonmackensen3902 but then you’d have to get out of your car and walk about 20 ft! So much work! The US is so backwards

[@elizabethdavis1696]

I’m 45 and I remember sitting next to my mom in the car when I was a toddler and she used the drive threw bank Because I was little I was so impressed with the vacuum tube

[@Droxal]

About Pork Chops: They seem designed to be horrible to bike across. My city has great bike paths, but whenever I have to cross a stroad intersection it's always depressing to have to navigate onto the pork chops, which are usually very bendy and such in a way you can't just bike straight through it and sometimes have to even dismount your bike. I understand this may be on purpose, but if our goal is to fight climate change why are we building bike and pedestrian infrastructure that make people not want to bike or walk.

[@CityNerd]

100%. It's never a straight path through he pork chop (often blocked by a signal pole too) and then to compound it there's often a queued right-turning vehicle in the slip lane, blocking the ramp you need to bike onto.

[@rossmann611]

i learn so much from watching your videos. its often disheartening, infuriating and frustrating but knowing im not alone (or crazy) somehow provides some reprieve. thanx.

[@VideoGamer110]

I'm glad this popped up in my recommended. I'm a resident of Las Vegas and I could literally hear you talk for hours about how crappily this city was designed.

[@katbryce]

Those roads are way bigger than anything we see in the UK. The most I've seen in an urban road that isn't a motorway [highway], is 3 lanes each direction, two is far more common, and almost always, one of the lanes would be a bus lane. Also, a junction like that would have a roundabout. Speed limits would be 40mph for an urban clearway, or 30mph otherwise. The money-laundering outlets here are American Candy stores, which sell out of date stuff at approx 20x what you pay at Walmart, and about 10x what we pay at the world food section in our equivalent supermarkets. Nobody ever shops in them, yet there's an epidemic of them spreading everywhere.

[@CityNerd]

It really is a different world

[@vnixned2]

It's with a kind of morbid curiosity that I watch videos like these ... for it is honestly impossible for me to understand people think these kinds of road designs are acceptable. Then again, I'm Dutch. Our roads look nothing like this

[@ratias0]

Thank you very much for this. You gained a new subscriber

[@icarus313]

I'm just over a minute in, I think you're funny, and I've already subbed. Well done dude.

[@QemeH]

Listen... you can argue a lot about how wide a road needs to be and how much lanes are sufficient, etc... But one thing is for sure: If you need a "yellow" light [or any other indicator that the light is "about to" turn red] on a freaking *pedestrian* signal - your road is too wide. Period.

[@JuanGarcia-tj4pg]

How about a video on major cities without public transit? I just learned that Arlington, TX does not have public transit despite being in the middle of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area and is home of tourist destinations like AT&T Stadium and Six Flags Over Texas.

[@blackhole9961]

Arlington is practically a giant suburb.

[@JuanGarcia-tj4pg]

@@blackhole9961 True. I know residents of the city voted against adding transit in favor of building the AT&T Stadium.

[@TheTaxGeek]

I'm experiencing these crossings in all their glory during my stay in Anaheim this week. Roads aren't quite as wide but the speeds are right up there and the cycles from "walk" to "walk" are long. However I have to be grateful for them because without them, I'd be stuck on the same block for the next four days.

[@jackcarver1629]

I like seeing case studies like this! When you know what's wrong it is easier to articulate what needs to change. The only thing I'd like see more of is what could be done to fix this intersection. Great video as always though!

[@nickbenton3545]

Can you do a video about accessibility of public transit in the US? I recently visited New York and though I really loved the city and subway system, I use a wheelchair and found only a tiny bit of it (mostly in Manhattan and Brooklyn) to be actually accessible. Hell, I live in Oklahoma City and our tiny streetcar lines and bus system and BRT lines they’re working on putting in are (at least technically) way ahead of the mta subway in terms of wheelchair accessibility.

[@unconventionalideas5683]

That is more because the subway system is exceptionally old. The core dates to very early in the 20th century, and a majority of the current system (almost all of it as I think) was built before WWII. This means that it was mostly built in a time when people really did not think much about wheelchair accessibility, and labor was cheap enough that attendants could have been provided to help those who needed it anyway. Also, usage at this time was so intensive throughout much of the day that the Subway was forced to employ people to squash the crowds of people into the train cars in order to provide sufficient capacity. In that kind of environment, attempting to provide for wheelchair users and those with accessibility problems is a lost cause anyway. Because of how the city and system interact with one another, retrofitting the stations is extremely expensive, meaning that doing it all at once is absolutely out of the question. It has been done in various places throughout the system, and the new stations are all built with accessibility in mind, but it is a difficult and slow process. Some stations might need total demolition and reconstruction to facilitate wheelchairs, for example, which is not something that is at all straightforward. So it will be a long, steady phasing in of accessibility. A similar situation exists on London's Underground and other old subway systems globally.

[@Hexaroot785]

I actually used to bike through the sr7 forest hill intersection before I got a car (I live in wellington) I used the sidewalks cause the bike lanes are too dangerous state road 7 might be the most dangerous road for pedestrians I have ever seen.

[@Windruzhed]

I was wondering how any cyclist would survive that road... Why even bother building it, that's complete madness. I was genuinely shocked when I saw this.

[@nancylindsay4255]

Why do I love this guy so much?

[@sammyrice1182]

You follow your vision and don't pander. Another very fine video! Keep up the great work! James Howard Kunstler ranted about many of the same issues in his eloquent and punchy (yes, both) book "The Geography of Nowhere."

[@DaryleTilroe]

I was already growing increasingly aghast throughout most of the video until we hit the speed limits and then I kind of freaked out.. 45 I thought man that's fast and then 55 holy s*** - that's faster than many of the urban freeways in my town. This is a dangerous abomination.

[@julianyerger133]

If you think that's bad, I've driven on highways in West Virginia where there are stoplights on roads with 65 mph speed limits, signs posted for that speed before and after the intersection. Pretty crazy to go under a traffic signal at that speed, really warps your perception. I can't remember which highway it was, I was just passing through from PA to FL (long drive)