Stroad

In 2011, the American civil engineer and urban planner Charles Marohn, founder of Strong Towns, coined the word "stroad" as a portmanteau of the words street and road to illustrate what he characterized as failures in the North American pattern of development. The concept of the stroad was popularized in large part as a result of an April 2021 short documentary by the Canadian-born, Amsterdam-based Jason Slaughter of the urban planning YouTube channel Not Just Bikes. == Definition ==

According to Charles Marohn, a stroad is a combination of two types of vehicular pathways: streets and roads. Mahron describes a street as "complex environment where life in the city happens". Streets are lined with buildings, such as houses, stores, and offices, whose entrances and exits open onto the street. As such, streets must accommodate both cars and pedestrians, through-traffic and entrances/exits from adjacent buildings, and temporary parking and delivery vehicles. As this complexity greatly increases the risk of accidents, an ideal street will have low speed limits, enforced by traffic calming features such as narrow lanes. == History ==

Stroads began to emerge in the United States and Canada in the aftermath of World War II, as car ownership became widespread and suburbanization accelerated. Some stroads were created when streets were expanded or widened, often with the aim of improving mobility. This was often done without proper access management, and under the influence of engineering codes that emphasized speed and traffic flow over safety, resulting in the street becoming a stroad. Other stroads were created when developers began adding private accessways onto roads. As the number of accessways increased, so did congestion and collisions on the road, requiring traffic control additions such as traffic signals. Dutch urban planner Willem Zurborg argues that this conversion of streets and roads into stroads was a consequence of local governments designing their roadways to serve as flow roads, distributor roads, and access roads (i.e., streets) simultaneously. Dover and Massengale make a similar argument, noting that the general public is often not aware of the functional distinction that engineers make between streets and roads. In the English-speaking world, street names often end with 'road' and vice versa due to historical reasons; this may be misleading and not align with the current de facto traffic situation. == Criticisms ==

Safety risks , known in New York City as the Boulevard of Broken Bones, alternatively as the Boulevard of Death, for its frequent pedestrian injuries and deathsBy combining the high speeds of roads with the complexity of streets, stroads put both pedestrians and drivers at elevated risk. A 2021 report by the Governors Highway Safety Association found that 60.4% of pedestrian fatalities from motor vehicles in the United States occurred on stroads. Stroads in the United States and Canada typically have legal speed limits between . But since the design speed is much higher, motorists frequently drive at up to . Therefore, reducing the posted speed limit (PSL) with a traffic sign, a widely adopted strategy, will not work. "If the road [design] ... suggest[s] that the PSL is too low, drivers may simply ignore it". This is a problem because the frequent entries and exits onto stroads create many points of conflict and potential collisions for drivers to navigate. Driving at higher speeds reduces the time drivers have to react to hazards, increasing the risk of a crash. It also means any collision will have a much higher kinetic energy, increasing its severity. Lack of protection for pedestrians in Lynn, Massachusetts) The quality of sidewalks next to stroads is often poor. Many stroads do not feature any sidewalks at all. In the case of stroad-like suburban residential streets, sidewalks are sometimes deliberately left out by design in order "to further the rural image". Sometimes there are only "painted sidewalks" next to a strip mall, without curbs or traffic bollards to protect pedestrians against vehicles that may deviate from the road. Stroads also often lack other pedestrian safety features, such as crosswalks and adequate street lights. By trying to be "all things to all people", stroads end up failing at the functions of both. Walking for a distance of along a stroad (Farm to Market Road 1960 or Cypress Creek Parkway) in Houston motivated Jason Slaughter of Not Just Bikes to reflect upon and criticize the design of the roadway, and explore how urban planning could be done in a more safe and efficient manner (for example, by improving walkability and reducing car dependency). The rather narrow sidewalks, and in the middle section (crossing a bridge and a railroad) no sidewalk at all, were right next to fast-driving vehicular traffic ( , creating an extremely unsafe and unpleasant environment for pedestrians. Yet, the fact that the grass where one would expect a sidewalk was well-trodden, as well as Google Street View images which also appeared to show regular use, was evidence to Slaughter that a significant number of pedestrians apparently saw or had no other option (such as taking a car, taxi or bus) than to walk along this dangerous stroad to get to their destinations without basic pedestrian protections. He argued: "There is no excuse for this. If you have enough room for 7 lanes of car traffic, then you have enough room for a sidewalk. Or a bicycle path." == Improving stroads ==

Arguing that stroads represent a poor return on investment and a safety hazard, Charles Marohn suggested that stroads should either be converted to a street, for land access, or a road, for mobility. Conversion to a street would involve slowing traffic, prioritizing people over cars, and encouraging complex community interactions and solutions. Conversion to a road would involve separating the road from shops and reducing the number of access roads. To help people comply with the legal speed limit, traffic engineers need to design roads, and streets so that they are self-explanatory. This is called traffic calming. Roads and streets that implement traffic calming measures may use physical and perceptual cues to subconsciously trigger drivers to drive slower and more cautiously due to perceived danger. Examples include "narrower lanes, tighter corner radii, gateway treatments, changed roadway surface materials and appearance, mini roundabouts and other speed management techniques" such as speed bumps. According to Charles Marohn, the famous Champs-Élysées in Paris was effectively a stroad as recently as 2001. In the middle of the avenue were three automobile traffic lanes in either direction, ostensibly fulfilling the function of a road. A wide buffer of trees lined both sides of the road, separating the roadway from slip lanes for slow-moving traffic. These slip lanes fulfilled the function of streets, providing access to parking, sidewalks, shops and restaurants. Because the street and road areas of the Champs-Élysées were physically separated, this stroad environment achieved some success, allowing both safe, high-speed traffic (up to ) in the center roadway and a productive street environment on the sides. , the slip lanes are fully pedestrianized, while the center roadway functions as a true road. and St. Louis, are reshaping their fundamental street design and reworking traffic laws so that safety is prioritized. , the city of Boston is studying how to minimize pedestrian traffic deaths by lowering speed limits with traffic calming using road diets. After several stroads were replaced by more efficient roadways in Boston, vehicular fatalities fell from 21 in 2016 to 10 in 2018; simultaneously, pedestrian fatalities halved from 14 to 7. This partial success motivated Bostonian locals to demand the complete elimination of the remaining stroads by implementing better road design. == Examples ==

Canada , just south of the Elbow River in Calgary • Wonderland Road in London, Ontario, has been identified as a five-lane stroad by Jason Slaughter of Not Just Bikes, who grew up next to it. viewed from above at night • California State Route 82, part of El Camino Real, has been characterized as a 43-mile-long stroad between San Francisco and San Jose. • Lancaster Avenue in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, has been identified as a stroad, because it is a street designed like a road with expensive infrastructure, low return on investment, and unsafe traffic conditions for both drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians. • The Las Vegas Strip is an infamously clogged stroad in Clark County, Nevada, that forms part of the Las Vegas Boulevard (part of Nevada State Route 604). According to Ray Delahanty (From the YouTube channel 'CityNerd'), the Las Vegas Strip "is the ultimate stroad", and the word "strip" was a commonly used term to describe "stroads" before Marohn coined the latter term with a specific definition. Marohn stated: 'While many engineers have tried, it is impossible to make a stroad safe. State Street in Springfield has one of the highest crash rates in the state of Massachusetts. The only way to improve safety on a stroad is to convert it into a street or a road.' • Fruitville Road in Sarasota, Florida. In downtown, this stroad is four-lanes before widening to six lanes as it continues east before reverting back to four lanes after the junction with Interstate 75. The road has been subject to traffic signal-induced congestion and frequent incidents of reckless driving. Other countries • Deagon, Queensland's two main avenues – Sandgate Road / Braun Street (south-north) and Board Street / Depot Road (east-west) – serving as immediate arterial links to the Gateway Motorway, have been identified as 'typical stroads'. • Thailand , described by author Korawich Kavee as a stroad. == See also ==