Stroads are Ugly, Expensive, and Dangerous (and they're everywhere) [ST05]

Charles Marohn from Strong Towns has a new book about his experiences building stroads as a traffic engineer in the US, and why he became an advocate for eliminating them: www.confessions.engineer/ You can order the book, or get more information about it on the site linked above, or if you'd like to read more about stroads on the Strong Towns website, check out this link, or the links in the video description: www.strongtowns.org/journal/tag/STROADS And if you'd like to support this channel, sign up to Nebula and get access to my videos as well as over 150 other educational creators: go.nebula.tv/notjustbikes

This is the reason why most north american residents say "there's nothing to do in my city. My city is so boring."

It's very telling that I, an American that likes to think he's pro-public transit, started this video and thought "wait, there's a difference between streets and roads?"

About 15yrs ago, one of our local politicians said the quiet part out loud. He said that some areas near businesses were made intentionally inefficient, with short traffic lights and lots of them, in order to increase revenue from the area. Basically, since the whole town is a large grid work of "stroads," they wanted to discourage travel to other stores outside of their district and have drivers sit long enough to impulse buy fast food. Shady bastards.

I was in Texas for work, and there was a steakhouse 5 minutes walk from my hotel. I didn't have a car, so decided to walk - then discovered it was on (what I now know as) a Stroad. Walking along some undulating, grassy embankment with no sidewalk and cars shooting past me at 50+ was pretty unnerving, especially after a beer on the way back. I felt like a hitchhiker. You're actively being dissuaded from walking which just seems utterly ridiculous.

The bench is for the people to rest and recover from the shock of nearly getting run over.

"Why don't kids these days go outside anymore?" The outside they have created:

In my town we had a teen die a few years ago because the bus home from work only dropped off on the opposite side of a stroad like this that he needed to cross. It was evening and that road had no cross walks and he was hit. People were sad about it for a bit but then nothing was ever done to improve the situation.

I've felt for a long time that American cities are very anti-social. Stroads are one of the reasons that make American places feel so desolate, uninviting, remote.

North American urban areas are incredibly hostile to foot traffic. Not long ago I had some car issues. I left my vehicle with the mechanic for a couple hours and went walking along one of these stroads to go find a place to eat. Not wanting to eat indoors because of the pandemic, I took my food to go. I wandered around the plaza, looking for a place to sit. There were endless parking lots, stores, and superstores everywhere. No benches. No picnic tables. Not even a patch of grass to sit on, except right next to the stroad where cars were flying by. I walked for 10 minutes and spotted nothing, until...salvation: an emergency exit staircase behind a Mark's Warehouse. I sat upon my uncomfortable, non-slip steel throne and ate my burger, staring at the pavement laneway on one side of me and a giant, blank stone wall on the other. My fries had gone cold.

"Cities in the US and Canada are covered in terrible non-places." Man, you nailed it. Every time I drive through an area like that (and they all look the same, don't they?) I just feel like I'm in the middle of nowhere, despite all the businesses around.

In other words, you have described 90% of the urbanized areas in the USA and the reason I barely ride my bike any longer. Basically every single street in South Florida is a Stroad. Freaking unbelieveable.

Between stroads, lack of public transit, and most US cities refusing to zone new developments as mixed-use commercial/residential, it's really no surprise our country has so little sense of community. When it takes 20-40 minutes to get literally anywhere in town, there's so much less incentive to shop with locally owned business, or to get to know the folks in your neighborhood, or even just to access whatever few parks/libraries/museums that are around. Our cities are designed to separate and isolate their residents, and I think that plays no small part in the mediocre mental wellness of our country.

I was at a stroad today and needed to go to the bathroom. The pharmacy I was visiting didn’t have a bathroom for customers, but I noticed a supermarket across the street and decided to walk over. When I approached the stroad *I quickly realized there was no crosswalk in sight and there was no way I could safely cross 4-5 lanes of traffic*. So instead I got into my car and drove across the street and parked over there just to pee at the supermarket 😂.

This video identified something I've hated my whole life and never had a name for. Wild

I drive for a living in the US, and you nailed the Stroads. We (Truck drivers) hate them. Most of the New England States are Stroads, which causes our ability to move to drop by between 30 and 40%. Also, as a driver, making a decent living requires the ability to avoid Stroads whenever possible. This means that often it's more efficient to go many miles out of the way because the local roads will just suck time from you. NOTE: This is still not efficient, it's just the best choice of available options.

The biggest problem where I live is that anytime something bad happens as a result of this horrible system, the "solution" makes the problem worse. For example, when I was in middle school, if you lived within a 2 mile radius of the school, you weren't allowed to ride the school bus and either had to walk or have your parents drop you off and pick you up. Lots of students walked, traffic near the school was horrible. One year there was a student who got hit by a car while walking to school. The county decided they needed to fix the problem. So they DECREASED the number of school buses for each school, and INCREASED the radius from 2 miles to 4 miles. So more students had to walk, more cars were on the road, and less buses to get the students to school safely. At least two more students got hit walking to or from school after that change. Another example is that whenever they see a problem with the transportation system, their solution is to increase the number of lanes on a stroad. So in my town there is ALWAYS road construction and ALWAYS horrible traffic. They really think they're being progressive when trying to fix a problem. But in reality they're just regressive and make every single problem worse and create new problems that they need to try and "fix."

It’s like stroads are trying to make pedestrians feel ashamed of not having a car.

As a Brit in San Diego, the only link from my hotel to the town center was a stroad. There was no public transport. It was only a couple of miles so I decided to walk. There was a sidewalk of sorts, but it had bushes and clumps of grass growing up through the paving! I realised how unusual it was to walk there when a squad-car pulled up and asked me what I was doing. It was 11:00 am on a work-day, and I'm white, middle-aged and reasonably respectable. I'd been assured by the hotel that it was a safe part of town. Apparently the very act of walking on a stroad is regarded as suspicious by the local cops. They heard my British accent and said "Oh - that explains it" before driving off... I've travelled all over Europe and never had an experience like this. It's a form of hell the US have created for themselves...

I didn’t know this was a thing, only that I hated this “feature” of living in the US. Japan has plenty of its own problems, but I appreciate that it is much friendlier to pedestrians and cyclists. Fascinating to finally understand this. Thank you!