What Is a Stroad and Why Is It So Dangerous?

[@smileyeagle1021]

I'm seeing this discussion happening more and more outside of traditional urbanist circles and it makes me so happy.

[@electricerger]

I love that kinda idea: "Crumple zones and air bags don't decrease road death when the thing you hit is a person".

[@diggoran]

The number of times I hear that someone totaled their car and was so well protected from the crash that they bought the same car again, and totaled it again…. Isn’t it wonderful when the driver feels so safe driving poorly that they never have to learn to drive safely?

[@pedrosgarden]

Thank God for Charles Marohn and all the good work everyone at Strong Town does.

[@evanflynn4680]

Changing stroads to boulevards. Makes it a much more complex environment, you can make public transit lanes, bike lanes, pedestrian walkways, replace a lane with trees to keep the bikes and pedestrians separate from the vehicles, regular crosswalks, etc. It's still a really wide road, but it can serve more people and keep them safer from each other.

[@jonatanwestholm]

I think rather than saying "make drivers feel unsafe" we should be saying "remove drivers' false sense of safety"

[@idromano]

Very good point. "Make drivers feel unsafe" is fuel for Twitter-style hysteria.

[@chow-chihuang4903]

Some of those engineering solutions should be applied to off-ramps from highways before they get to local streets because a lot of drivers continue to want to drive at highway speeds for a minute or so (often longer) after getting onto local streets. It’d be better to transition them into the local street mindset before they get onto them.

[@definitelynotacrab7651]

Glad to see a news network tackling these types of stories.

[@obligatorysignin]

100 years after we collectively decided to prioritize cars over people and 80 years after we finished ripping most of the streetcar systems out we're finally ready to push back against a policy of maximizing & de facto requiring car use. But won't it still be a fight against the same interests that instituted those policies in the first place?

[@ghosthunter0950]

It will be, but they don't have as much propaganda power with the internet around. Mostly those part of "political cults" with their leaders getting paid off which will fall for it. they're not few whatsoever though. They're also gonna have the money to pay off your local governors. Which is probably gonna be one of the most difficult parts to overcome.

[@unconventionalideas5683]

The institutions fought the same policies of prioritizing cars. It can be done, but it will be a long haul, long term civic process.

[@PoliticalEconomy101]

Great. Finally, someone else realized a huge problem. I live next to a university and the speed limit is 45mph, that means drivers are actually drive 55. A student gets killed there every year. There is actually a memorial on the side of the road for one victim. Doesnt slow anyone down though. Also, I figure it was the asphalt companies that lobbied for those deadly bike lanes. I think those have contributed significantly to fatalities.

[@tonyclemens4213]

The university I went to had the same issue. Eventually there was a protest and the students shutdown the highway for 5 days. We got a tunnel and two covered overhead crosswalks.. Today one of the campus buildings actually goes over the highway.

[@Mr_Wallet]

Bike lanes? What bike lanes? OHHHH you mean the rain gutters, which also serve as clear zones to space cars away from the sidewalk? The ones that have a little bicycle painted in them as an afterthought?

[@dukeloo]

Awesome interview! Thank You

[@Sparticulous]

We need to end the 50s stroad design and make American great again with safe streets

[@JustinSchroeder29]

Such a tough battle in a car centric economy and culture

[@tonyclemens4213]

Isn't part of the problem also that today's cars are bigger, higher and heavier so a vehicle/person or bike interaction is deadlier

[@Syncratci]

Cars are bigger and heavier today because the street environment increasingly supports them. Make lanes narrower, introduce more complexity in the street design, and larger cars will be less viable.

[@legatus_newt]

@@nunyabidness3075 Geometry and materials are one thing but simply the height of modern vehicles on the road makes them deadlier. Two cars the same mass, the taller vehicle will be more deadly because of where it strikes the pedestrian. Combine that with the fact that the most popular electric vehicles sold in the US are electric SUV's which are heavier than ICE SUVs we're going to have a very "deadly" transition to green energy in America. The people who will suffer will those without the political power to change their neighborhoods to be safer.

[@Cyrus992]

Protest new construction on the outward areas. We also need more roundabouts

[@ShroudedWolf51]

I'll be honest, I'm not completely sure how protesting the construction zones will help. It's not like the contractors paid to build the things are responsible for the planning and management decisions that have been made weeks or even months prior in some board room.

[@Cyrus992]

@@ShroudedWolf51 Banners?

[@801oap]

Roundabouts are great. Able to get place to place without any stops in-between...a higher average speed a too.

[@PoliticalEconomy101]

Why arent there separate lanes for semi trucks and dump trucks with a full load. I seen a Honda civic get smashed like a soda can and the person died on the hwy. Also, we just had a gas tanker crash and explode killing people and spewing toxic fuel into the air.

[@vu4y3fo846y]

Great segment ✌️

[@TheEulerID]

"pesky level of death"; the word "pesky" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here...

[@JamesTsividis]

Great interview!

[@TheRJRabbit23]

Why don’t you convert highways into railways?

[@darkhelmet12e47]

Because that skips a step. People who be more ok with a reduced highway than a large highway removal.

[@darkhelmet12e47]

@@موسى_7 Massively disagree. Ambulances can stay local and never need to move across highways, and trucking containers can easily be replaced with trains.

[@darkhelmet12e47]

Tf is that formatting?

[@jamalgibson8139]

@@darkhelmet12e47 Arabic is written from left to right. When you copied the name, it must've copied the language convention.

[@darkhelmet12e47]

@@jamalgibson8139 interesting

[@diggoran]

Shtreet!

[@jobansand]

Making drivers insecure probably isn't a great way to word that. Unhelpfully antagonistic.

[@thegreentimtam]

"Removing drivers false sense of security" is a better way of wording this.

[@chadx8269]

ST wishful thinking. Driver are on their phones and don't sense the danger of the narrow lanes. They drive fast despite your idealism.

[@DutchLabrat]

This man makes so, so, so much sense but.... The distinction he makes between a road and a street is idiotic and really takes away from his sound arguments. A road is what you ride on (....) and a street is a hardened road(latin stratum). What he means is that a "stroad" is a mix of a local access road and a highway.

[@lws7394]

Lmao. I rate his knowledge of english and road design higher than yours. Words are more than just your wisacre etymology argument. An A to B road and a built up street in towns , with sidewalks are common concepts in English. And fyi , also in de Van Dale : Straat (de; v(m); meervoud: straten)1geplaveide weg tussen twee rijen huizen in een stad of dorp:

[@DutchLabrat]

@@lws7394 A street IS a road in English. Most famous Roman road in England: Ermine STREET..... Same thing. Semantic trickery gets you the same stupid arguments about weight and mass, or if a tomato is a fruit. Don't redefine a word to make an argument, i just creates opaque jargon that confuses people.

[@jan-lukas]

@@DutchLabrat weight and mass are just not the same. And yes, in everyday life you don't care, but in an argument on the topic? Absolutely!

[@jamalgibson8139]

This is actually well defined in Dutch planning. They have three levels of automobile infrastructure: street, road, and highway. A street is very narrow, with low speeds and fronts places that people interact with, such as a store or home. A road connects two points through relative high speeds and can intersect with a street. Roads are typically not grade separated and allow mild interaction with pedestrians and other road users through intersections. A highway is typically grade separated and has very limited access, usually through on/off ramps and other barriers. Not that a highway and a road take on similar functions, but have different operating conditions and design elements.

[@DutchLabrat]

@@jamalgibson8139 No, they don't. First mistake is off course arguing the Dutch government would write legislation in English. I mean, seriously you think that??? They don't and the words they use are stroomwegen, gebiedsontsluitingswegen, en erftoegangswegen. (Literal translation: Flow roads, regional access roads, estate entrance roads. Yes, all three are ROADS because it is what people RIDE on.) Clearly descriptive terms that Do Not Redefine Common Words for Jargon. There was no re-using of rijweg (*), straat, pad, etc... because that would be pointless. (*Yes, that is the Dutch cognate for road. The original English term was roadway. Shakespeare I think :D )