https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/10/30/the-stroad Strong Towns Cart 0 Articles Podcasts Book Courses Action Lab Events About Become a Member [ ] Cart 0 ArticlesPodcastsBookCoursesAction LabEventsAbout Strong Towns We support a strong America full of strong cities, towns and neighborhoods. Become a Member The Stroad Help us double our readership this week. As you savor our greatest hits, take a second to share them with someone else. --------------------------------------------------------------------- If we want to build towns that are financially productive, we need to identify and eliminate stroads. A stroad is a street/road hybrid. Street Street Road Road Stroad Stroad Roads and streets are two different things. Streets: The function of a street is to serve as a platform for building wealth. On a street, we're attempting to grow the complex ecosystem that produces community wealth. In these environments, people (outside of their automobiles) are the indicator species of success. Successful streets are environments where humans, and human interaction, flourish. [image-asse] Roads: In contrast, the function of a road is to connect productive places. You can think of a road as a refinement of the railroad -- a road on rails -- where people board in one place, depart in another and there is a high speed connection between the two. Stroads: Stroads are a mash-up of these two types of paths. We like to call them "the futon of transportation" because, just as a futon is neither a particularly good bed nor a particularly good couch, a stroad is neither a particularly good road or a particularly good street. Besides being a very dangerous environment (yes, it is ridiculously dangerous to mix high-speed, highway design geometry with pedestrians, bikers and turning traffic), they are enormously expensive to build and, ultimately, financially unproductive. The following is a short video that will help identify STROADs and how then convert them to either a productive street or road: Nationwide, our state departments of transportation (DOTs) are functionally insolvent, swamped with liabilities yet holding out hope that someone will ride to the rescue with an outrageous level of funding. Since that is not going to happen, we need to get serious about triage on our highway systems. Eliminating stroads is the low hanging fruit in this conversation. Even more than DOTs, local governments are the worst stroad offenders. Retrofitting the local transportation system to eliminate stroads is the great task of the next generation of local engineers. Those that can figure this out will not only be leaders in the profession but, by building community wealth instead of simply creating more expense, they will attract the most resources. And we don't even have to talk about money to make this change. Stroads are incredibly dangerous. We can justify a lot of stroad repair using a health, safety and welfare rationale. Let's turn our stroads into streets or roads and put our country back on a path towards being financially productive. If this message matters to you, share it with someone. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Related stories Featured Oct 28, 2021 John Pattison A Stroad Called "Wonderland" Oct 28, 2021 John Pattison This new Not Just Bikes video features an Ontario stroad that's anything but wonderful. Oct 28, 2021 John Pattison Oct 4, 2021 Michel Durand-Wood Traffic Deaths Aren't "Meant to Be" Oct 4, 2021 Michel Durand-Wood Our broken transportation system wasn't pre-ordained; it was built out of the choices we've made. And we need to start making better ones if we want to fix it. Oct 4, 2021 Michel Durand-Wood Sep 27, 2021 Tiffany Owens The Hidden Inequity of Car-Based Design Sep 27, 2021 Tiffany Owens For significant populations of people in the U.S., the requirement to drive is a major barrier to participating in city life. Sep 27, 2021 Tiffany Owens Sep 7, 2021 Daniel Herriges We Need a New Conventional Wisdom About Streets Sep 7, 2021 Daniel Herriges We're at a tipping point in how we design and think about our public streets. And things can tip the right way, once we confront the bankrupt ideology guiding our transportation system. Sep 7, 2021 Daniel Herriges --------------------------------------------------------------------- Featured Charles Marohn Charles Marohn--known as "Chuck" to friends and colleagues--is the founder and president of Strong Towns. He is a professional engineer and a land use planner with decades of experience. He holds a bachelor's degree in civil engineering and a Master of Urban and Regional Planning, both from the University of Minnesota. Marohn is the author of Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity (Wiley, 2019). He hosts the Strong Towns Podcast and is a primary writer for Strong Towns' web content. He has presented Strong Towns concepts in hundreds of cities and towns across North America. Planetizen named him one of the 10 Most Influential Urbanists of all time. Engineering Profession, Roads and Streets, Transportation, Urban Design, Top Story, Top EvergreenCharles MarohnOctober 30, 2017STROADS , streets Facebook0 Twitter LinkedIn0 0 Likes Previous Fine-Grained vs. Coarse-Grained Urbanism Andrew Price, Small Scale Developers, Urban Design, Top Evergreen Andrew PriceOctober 30, 2017small business, granularity, fine-grained, coarse-grained, page highlight, Economic Development Next Romancing the Stone Age Marohn, Growth Ponzi SchemeCharles MarohnOctober 30, 2017suburban experiment, traditional development pattern, illusion of wealth Become a Member | Sign Up for Email Staff | Advisory Board | Blog Roll | Employment FAQ | Pitch a Story | Action Lab | Strong Towns Book Privacy Policy | Comment Policy | Shop | RSS Feed | Contact Us [88x31] Strong Towns is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Our work is performed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please share with others to use for good. 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