[HN Gopher] The Stroad
___________________________________________________________________
The Stroad
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 512 points
Date : 2021-11-21 01:44 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.strongtowns.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.strongtowns.org)
| mastax wrote:
| Not Just Bikes has a good video about this, if you can get over
| the smugness ;)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM
| mastax wrote:
| I see I'm about the fifth person to recommend NJB on this post
| ;)
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| 14 third party scripts and images don't render properly without
| them.
| gibolt wrote:
| For anyone interested in this topic, I highly recommend this
| channel's series.
| https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN...
|
| 'Not Just Bikes' has a ton of other great videos on the channel
| about what infrastructure makes a good city and what makes one
| hostile to residents.
| shusaku wrote:
| I find that channel so relaxing. Even the busy intersections
| sound like pleasant background noise.
| DeWilde wrote:
| I love the lack of background music that is common on
| channels like that.
| kblev wrote:
| Great channel, have been following it for some time, a few
| takeaways from there:
|
| - It's the cars that make the cities undesirable
|
| - I was shocked how the historical center of London, ON was
| demolished to the ground and replaced with shacks
|
| - Kids should be able to walk to school alone in safety
|
| - I live in Europe and I was baffled to learn that multi-
| purpose developments are disallowed in most of North America.
| This alone makes me reconsider my plans to move to the States.
| I love how I can just jump on a bike here and be at a large
| supermarket in 5 minutes
| dagw wrote:
| _I love how I can just jump on a bike here and be at a large
| supermarket in 5 minutes_
|
| And even when the supermarket/mall is close by in the US, you
| still can't necessarily walk/bike there. I was visiting a
| friend who lived in the Midwest and his house was less than a
| mile from the mall. I asked him how to walk over there, and
| he admitted he'd never tried. So I set out to try, and the
| only way I found was by running across a busy 4 lane street
| without any crossings.
| zonotope wrote:
| America is _very_ big. Bigger than Europe even. That means
| that there are lots of different development patterns all
| across the country. While it is true that most places are
| car dependent, there are also cities where the majority of
| people who live there don't even own a car. I lived in
| Boston/Cambridge Massachusetts for 10 years and New York
| for 8, and I have never owned a car (or bike). Walking and
| taking the subway/metro are the most convenient modes of
| travel in those cities, and you get all the benefits of
| vibrance that comes with that. For the past 18 years, I've
| had about 2-3 big grocery stores and too many smaller shops
| and fruit stands to count within a 10 minute walking
| radius. The same goes for bars, restaurants, book stores,
| coffee shops, music/dancing venues, etc. All without even
| needing to get on the subway.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| You're right that there are places like that in the US,
| but we haven't been building like that for nearly 100
| years at this point. Those places are historical
| curiosities, and not at all representative of the United
| States.
|
| And before anyone says I should just live in places that
| are like that, It's not so easy to just pick up my life
| and move somewhere else.
| [deleted]
| xputer wrote:
| The US may be big, but the majority of people live in the
| same small set of metropolitan areas.
| [deleted]
| emodendroket wrote:
| That's true but it's also true that the transportation to
| parts of Boston sucks and outside of it it quickly
| becomes impossible to get around without a car.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The "low density" of the US is deceptive. It's true that
| there are vast expanses of desert, and even that New York
| has a forest in it the size of the Netherlands, but when
| you compare the density of individual US states to
| European countries, you see it is no excuse for us not
| building broadband infrastructure and otherwise being
| sensible about things.
|
| California, in particular, has a population density of
| about 100 people per square kilometer which is about the
| same as France. Most of California is either
| uninhabitable, factory farms, or military reservations.
| The population is highly concentrated near the coast.
|
| People who haven't been there imagine that Los Angeles is
| "sprawl" but the truth it is very high density that is
| "sprawling" over a large plain that is boxed in by
| mountains. Millions of people have a line of sight to the
| Hollywood sign.
|
| (I grew up in Southern New Hampshire which is based on
| Buckminister Fuller's diabolical geometry of airports and
| subdvisions -- where getting from one subdivision to the
| next is like going from the right side of your left lung
| to the right side of your left lung all the way up to the
| fork in your trachea. That is a self-inflicted wound that
| has nothing to do with how dense the population is.)
| jeffbee wrote:
| The population-weighed density - the density experienced
| by the typical American - is also much higher than you'd
| think. For example California is expansive and empty-
| seeming on paper, but half of the state lives in L.A.
| Population-weighting makes more sense than dividing the
| gross population by the gross area.
| zonotope wrote:
| My comment about how big America was had nothing to do
| with density. I only mentioned the size of the country to
| highlight that there are a lot of different jurisdictions
| with lots of different development patterns.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I've wondered for a while how you would do that.
|
| One approach is scale-dependent (divide the area into a
| grid of square kilometers, sort by population, pick the
| square kilometer where the median person lives.) but you
| would get different answers if you picked different
| scales.
|
| The median of "How far away is your nearest neighbor?"
| seems parameter free at first but it is absurd if you
| live in an apartment. (e.g. ignores all the space around
| your apartment.) I guess you could look for the median
| (or other decile) of "What is radius in which N people
| live?" where N might be 100-10,000 but then you're back
| to having a spectrum instead of a single number again.
|
| Maybe you can't avoid that.
| jeffbee wrote:
| There's a bunch of literature on this if you start with a
| search for population-weighted density. There isn't one
| true way to do it, and scale matters greatly.
| osullivj wrote:
| Boston/Cambridge and NYC were initially built during
| colonial times, before cars and railroads, so were
| originally built for navigation by foot or horse.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > I was shocked how the historical center of London, ON was
| demolished to the ground and replaced with shacks
|
| Does anyone have more details on this in written form? It's
| annoyingly difficult to google for because it's the other
| London.
|
| Various British cities have been guilty of this; Bradford had
| a "hole" for about a decade due to an unbuilt shopping
| centre. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bradford/content/articles/2009/
| 08/27/b...
| flycaliguy wrote:
| Everything about this channel is great except the way he
| leans into London so hard. It's his hometown and as a life
| long Londoner... I get it.
|
| That said, I drive this mess everyday and my 25 min cross
| town commute makes Torontonians cry. I don't bike or bus
| though, so I do ultimately agree with him.
|
| Regarding downtown. You won't find more information on that
| shack thing because it's not real. Besides a couple
| historic floods and fires I can't think of what he means.
| yabones wrote:
| It's fair because London is a horrible city. (Rant alert)
|
| It's not just bike and transit unfriendly, it's bad for
| cars too. There's no easy way to get from one side to the
| other in less than an hour during the day, short of
| taking a helicopter.
|
| Compare London to nearby Kitchener/Waterloo. They
| essentially have a ring road (hwy 85), PLUS a light rail
| + bus rapid transit system. It's still absolutely full of
| stroads, but at least it's more accessible and things
| actually move around.
|
| In London, Oxford is essentially a 10 KM long parking lot
| every day at 9 AM, and Adelaide spends about two hours a
| day blocked by freight trains. Every attempt to fix the
| city frankly makes it worse. I don't know if it's because
| of poor planning, inept council, the lack of geographical
| constraints, or some other factor, but this city is the
| absolute show piece for failed urban design.
|
| So yeah, I think it's completely reasonable to lean into
| London ON, it's the perfect case study in bad north
| american cities.
| rubidium wrote:
| Move to an older part of an urban city or small town and your
| experience is totally doable in the states. Just don't move
| to a suburb with million dollar McMansions.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| Right, move to a city center with million-dollar studio
| apartments instead.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > I love how I can just jump on a bike here and be at a large
| supermarket in 5 minutes
|
| If you live in a large US city, this can still be very
| manageable. There are two large grocery stores and a small
| one as well as a Target and a metro line within a 5 minute
| _walk_ of my house. Apart from the metro line, we didn 't
| really prioritize the grocery stores, etc when looking for a
| house. That said, there are many downsides to living in big
| US cities as well.
| znowcone wrote:
| Doesn't sound like a lot to be honest. This is what I'm
| used to in Germany, say around 1km radius, everything
| walkable:
|
| * 1x big REWE, 3x small REWE, 1x Real, 1x Netto, 2x ALDI,
| 3x LIDL, 1x Turkish grocery store, 1x Asian grocery store
|
| * Too many kiosks too count (tobacco, drinks, snacks, maybe
| like a convinience store)
|
| * Too many bakeries to count
|
| * 2 tram/metro stations, soon to be 3
|
| * 5 bus stations (not counting the weird ones)
|
| What they probably meant was they can hop on a bike and be
| in /any/ supermarket they fancy in this time.
|
| Your city seems pretty good compared to what we're usually
| seeing from city planning in the US though.
| hef19898 wrote:
| That does sound like the Ruhrpott if I had to guess!
| znowcone wrote:
| I feel like it could be an elaborate social engineering
| attack, but yes bingo :)
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Oh, that wasn't an exhaustive list, just the places my
| wife and I go. We also have various american, african,
| asian, and middle eastern corner stores and a dozen
| restaurants, Dollar Store type shops, liquor stores, and
| some other things I'm forgetting. But I also live between
| a large park and a body of water so there's presumably
| less area in my "1km radius" than yours. Either way, my
| point wasn't that my US city is better than European
| cities, but rather that it's more walkable than most
| American cities.
| x3iv130f wrote:
| Those places tend to be unafordable longterm for anyone
| making even twice the median salary.
| paledot wrote:
| That is ultimately a problem of scarcity. No one is
| building walkable communities, so the only remaining
| walkable communities are the "historic" ones that,
| surprise, everyone wants to live in because the
| alternative sucks. Elastic demand, inelastic supply.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| The channel mentions regularly that this isn't because of
| a lack of demand, but because of restrictive zoning laws
| and building codes that forbid it.
| rubidium wrote:
| Not in the Midwest.
| dagw wrote:
| What are some nice, livable and affordable cities you can
| recommend in the Midwest where you don't need a car?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Any college town, to a fair approximation.
|
| Also Carmel, IN for some reason.
| selectodude wrote:
| Chicago
| keawade wrote:
| As someone who has lived in the Midwest for the past ten
| years I think you'll be hard pressed to find this. In
| Lincoln NE, for example, all new housing for at least the
| past 30 years has been in car-dependent suburban
| developments which has resulted in all but the Haymarket
| district of downtown being car dependent.
|
| That district has been mostly livable without a car for
| the past couple years after a grocery store was built
| there. I say "mostly" because as soon as you want to do
| anything outside of The dozen or so blocks of the
| Haymarket a car quickly becomes required again.
|
| This is a common theme of walkable areas in the US and
| Canada. They do still exist but because of the
| development patterns of the past 30+ years they are small
| islands in an ocean of cars. Their scarcity also drives
| up prices and makes them less affordable than surrounding
| areas.
| kgermino wrote:
| I'm in Milwaukee, WI. Houses in my neighborhood are a bit
| expensive - starting around $300k for a SFH - but you can
| live a very full life without a car. For myself: we have
| a car for visiting people outside the city and going to
| the lumberyard, but groceries, schools, parks, hospital,
| etc are all in walking distance and downtown is about 10
| minutes away on the bus
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Jobs in those places also tend to pay a lot higher than
| the median salary.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Similar video (but then an hour long) that I always post
| together with that channel: What can Seattle learn from Dutch
| street design? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0GA901oGe4
| pensatoio wrote:
| Not Just Bikes is one of my favorite channels. So happy to see
| recognition on HN.
| timwaagh wrote:
| Better promotion for nl doesn't exist
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Are there any rankings of US cities (not just the major ones)
| based on some quantitative analysis of these kinds of design
| principles?
| crispyambulance wrote:
| Yes! The "walkability index/score" summarizes a bunch of
| criteria like density of groceries, retail, public transit,
| schools and entertainment.
|
| It's easily accessible on real estate websites (like Redfin,
| https://www.redfin.com/how-walk-score-works), and now I see
| there's a publicly available dataset as well:
| https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/walkability-index.
|
| Walkability that is commonplace in many towns in Europe,
| roughly match up with very high 90's (98+) walkability scores
| in the US.
|
| IMHO, anything below mid-90's is somewhere I would never
| live. The score is necessarily skewed towards US style living
| where walkability is relatively rare. So the difference
| between, say 70 and 40 is almost meaningless from the point
| of view of a walker.
|
| As far as street design and urban planning goes, the key word
| is "complete streets" which is an umbrella term that covers
| rationale, design principles and practical guidance for how
| to implement a street layout
| (https://www.transportation.gov/mission/health/complete-
| stree...). This work is based on studies and data, but I've
| not looked into it.
| knorker wrote:
| It's a great channel that puts words to just why American
| cities are so dystopic.
|
| It really helps understand exactly what "induced demand" means.
| If you add another lane, some of the people on the bus will
| take the car, and thus the new lane is almost immediately full
| again. If you remove the bus lane, bike lane, sidewalk, same
| thing.
|
| Adding capacity for cars actually makes travelling by car
| _worse_.
|
| It also gives hope. Like just because a city was destroyed to
| make it more car centric doesn't mean it can't be fixed to be
| livable again.
|
| There's more to strongtowns than this, but it's all
| interesting.
| bluGill wrote:
| Induced demand is nonsense.
|
| If people leave the bus to drive it indicates your bus system
| is providing bad service.
|
| If more people drive it indicates that your city isn't
| filling its purpose as being a place where there are a lot of
| things to do.
|
| Cities need to figure out how to get ahead of induced demand
| not how use it as an excuse to be a worse city.. sure, this
| is a hard problem, with many options that make something else
| work, but induced demand is still a terrible excuse to be a
| bad city.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I agree that induced demand is nonsense, but for a
| different reason. Demand either exists or it doesn't. It is
| either fulfilled or unfulfilled. Building more lanes into a
| road doesn't "induce" demand. It fulfills it. People use up
| that road space because they genuinely get a benefit from
| it. It's really that simple. After all, if you built 100
| lanes there wouldn't magically be 100 lanes of traffic.
| Demand is fulfilled only up to the point that the demand
| exists. There's no magical induction that urbanists vaguely
| gesture at.
| knorker wrote:
| > I agree that induced demand is nonsense
|
| It's not. This is a fact. It sounds like you are trying
| to reason about this from pure logic, and are not aware
| that this is an empirical fact.
|
| You can only go so far armchair guessing about how city
| planning "ought to" work.
|
| > Demand either exists or it doesn't.
|
| To get to the place, yes. To get to the place _in a car_
| , no.
|
| If you double the capacity of a road network, that means
| more people will choose to drive.
|
| Example: If the city I live in doubled the car capacity,
| I would buy a car and drive it. But since everyone else
| would too, it'd actually stabilize to the same
| congestion. (I forget, but the actually observed
| phenomenon has a name)
|
| Or let's say you had some billions of dollars to improve
| the situation of the I-101 in California. What do you
| think will happen if you add a lane? More people who
| currently take a tech company shuttle will start driving
| instead. More people who currently take Caltrain will
| start driving instead.
|
| And then you're back. I'm not guessing, this is
| established knowledge. No matter how hard people try to
| double down on a failed strategy (see Katy Freeway), it
| just doesn't help traffic. It just makes more people
| drive.
|
| Now spend those billions on making the Caltrain
| experience better, and you'll start seeing existing lanes
| on the 101 free up.
|
| > After all, if you built 100 lanes there wouldn't
| magically be 100 lanes of traffic.
|
| A 100? Maybe not. But apparently 26 lanes is not enough
| (Katy Freeway).
|
| But there are other aspects to this too, other than roads
| and transit. E.g. zoning. It greatly reduces traffic on
| existing roads if you can just walk over to the store to
| buy some groceries, because it's a 5min walk. Instead of
| driving and being stuck in traffic for 10 minutes because
| it's too far to walk and crosses an 8 lane highway.
|
| Every person who went shopping in the local store is
| another car not on the road, both ways.
|
| > Demand is fulfilled only up to the point that the
| demand exists.
|
| This is only true in the sense that it's irrelevant. If
| you widen every street and avenue in NYC to 26 lanes,
| then maybe that's enough. But only because there will
| barely be any houses left to go to.
|
| > There's no magical induction that urbanists vaguely
| gesture at.
|
| That's not what's happening.
| bluGill wrote:
| Why are you assuming you have to use a car to solve the
| problem. The problem is people want to get someplace in
| your city and currently it is inconvenient for them to do
| so.
|
| If people leave your transit system for a car it is
| because your transit system sucks. Fix that problem.
| (hint, trains can easily reach speeds 3x faster than
| cars, stops should not take too long, and there should
| always been a train almost here for when you missed the
| last one - running good transit isn't easy)
| knorker wrote:
| > Why are you assuming you have to use a car to solve the
| problem.
|
| That's the opposite of what I'm doing.
|
| > The problem is people want to get someplace in your
| city and currently it is inconvenient for them to do so.
|
| I agree. And we already know that "add more lanes" is a
| very costly (especially maintenance forever. Again, see
| Not Just Bikes), and we already know it doesn't even
| help.
|
| > If people leave your transit system for a car it is
| because your transit system sucks.
|
| No, not sucks. They just have to be subjectively a better
| choice for the individual.
|
| So yes, then we agree. Money should be spent on improving
| alternative transport, not car infrastructure.
| knorker wrote:
| Induced demand is not nonsense at all.
|
| I don't have a car. If there were capacity to drive, I
| would.
|
| If a bunch of capacity to drive was added, I'd buy a car.
|
| So that's one data point.
|
| > If more people drive it indicates that your city isn't
| filling its purpose as being a place where there are a lot
| of things to do.
|
| This sounds like an argument from someone who's never heard
| any alternative to American status quo.
|
| > Cities need to figure out how to get ahead of induced
| demand
|
| Wait, you said it's nonsense?
|
| I'm starting to think you're misunderstanding me. Induced
| demand is not an excuse, it's an antipattern no be avoided,
| and it's not irreversible.
|
| It's about how adding lanes to a road doesn't help traffic
| (see Katy, Texas).
|
| Or the I101. Adding a lane, or improving the Caltrain?
| Clearly the latter will improve 101 traffic more.
| bluGill wrote:
| At no point did I say what the solution was.
|
| You incorrectly assumed I'm advocating more lanes of
| traffic, that is one possible solution - if you do it be
| prepared to go up (or down), as you will need many layers
| of layers over layers (bridges) that way. There are many
| other possible solutions though. It didn't work in Katy
| Texas because they didn't build enough.
|
| Improving transit would be my preferred option.
|
| The point is if adding a lane of anything doesn't solve
| your traffic problem (or makes it worse) then you are not
| thinking big enough.
| knorker wrote:
| You did say "Induced demand is nonsense". And it's not.
|
| > It didn't work in Katy Texas because they didn't build
| enough.
|
| The Katy Freeway is literally the widest highway in the
| world.
|
| The biggest in the world. Adding lanes doesn't help. This
| is not controversial.
|
| > Improving transit would be my preferred option.
|
| There are many solutions, and you don't have to pick just
| one.
|
| Better transit. Dedicated bus lanes. Mixed zoning (so
| much this). Separate bike lanes. Etc.. etc..
|
| It's not that we should force people to use the bus. It's
| that if you're stuck in traffic and had a magic wand that
| could turn 30 cars into one bus, would you use it? Well,
| clearly yes. Many times. Ok, so now that this driver
| agrees that they want other people to use the bus, it's
| just a matter of making the bus experience better, so
| that they do.
|
| But yes, that falls under (as you say) "improving
| transit". But there's more.
|
| Anyway, "Not Just Bikes" says this so much better than I
| could.
| occz wrote:
| >Induced demand is nonsense.
|
| It's been shown to be real in studies upon studies - what
| are you trying to say here?
| bluGill wrote:
| Sure it has been shown: because people have places they
| would like to get to that the city is making too
| difficult for them. It clearly exists, it is just a
| stupid excuse.
| knorker wrote:
| Adding lanes has been shown (as you agree) to not help
| the people who want to use the road, as is just induces
| more demand.
|
| So how is it an excuse? If spending billions on new lanes
| doesn't actually help anyone, that's just government
| waste.
| bluGill wrote:
| > Adding lanes has been shown (as you agree) to not help
| the people who want to use the road, as is just induces
| more demand.
|
| Only when you don't add enough lanes. It hurts some
| people who are already using the existing lanes, but it
| helps other people who previously found the trip so
| painful they didn't take make it at all, but now the
| level of pain is low enough that they make it. Focusing
| only on those who are already using the road isn't the
| answer, we need to focus on everyone.
| LeChuck wrote:
| I agree with you. I think people are downvoting you because
| they misunderstand your first sentence. Using the concept
| of induced demand to justify building fewer roads is
| bullshit, if you don't figure out why there's so much pent
| up demand to begin with. The way forward should be making
| all the alternatives more attractive, so that the demand
| for cars disappears.
| knorker wrote:
| > Using the concept of induced demand to justify building
| fewer roads is bullshit
|
| Well, you don't have infinite money, or space. Adding a
| bus lane _and_ a car lane clearly will add more capacity
| than doing just one of them, but adding a bus lane will
| likely reduce traffic so much in the other lanes that you
| don 't even have to add another car lane.
|
| And adding just a car lane means people would rather be
| stuck in their car, than stuck in the bus, in the same
| lane, and we have tragedy of the commons.
|
| So adding a car lane just means emptier busses, but same
| slow traffic. So what value did adding the lane add?
|
| It'd just be government waste.
| bluGill wrote:
| > Adding a bus lane and a car lane clearly will add more
| capacity than doing just one of them, but adding a bus
| lane will likely reduce traffic so much in the other
| lanes that you don't even have to add another car lane.
|
| The first is true, but the second doesn't follow. For a
| bus lane to make a difference you need more than a lane,
| you also need good bus service using that lane. Bus
| service in many cities horrible and so nobody sane will
| ride it. A lane of empty buses running around helps
| nothing. If you propose a bus lane you need to do it with
| all the service that will happen so we can evaluate it.
| xorfish wrote:
| To avoid induced demand, you need to make other modes of
| transport more attractive than driving.
|
| So if there are two routes from A to B and one is longer,
| then the shorter route should be reserved for the modes
| of transports that have a higher capacity. (That usually
| means banning cars)
|
| Another really good option is to have dedicated bus lanes
| so buses don't get stuck in traffic.
|
| As a car driver you massively benefit if other people
| take the bus or bikes instead of their car. Plus you and
| especially the ones who are to old, young, poor, disabled
| to drive a car have good options of getting around.
| aimor wrote:
| Where are the details to back up this call to action? I want to
| see how much more financially productive it is to replace a
| stroad with a separate street and road. I see these commercial
| through roads all over, they handle so much traffic compared to
| streets, it's hard to believe they decrease value in medium
| density population areas.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I'm not sold. I live on a so-called road, it's comprised of a
| single lane of paved dirt that stretches on for 3/4ths of a mile.
| On top of that, the very first line is just utterly comical:
|
| > If we want to build towns that are financially productive, we
| need to identify and eliminate stroads.
|
| You're missing the point on why they're made. They're built to
| facilitate expansion in confined areas. I'd argue that it's more
| dangerous and less financially productive to have a street there,
| and _incredibly more dangerous_ to put a road there. So, what 's
| the solution?
| novok wrote:
| You don't live on a road, you either live on a street or
| stroad. A road by definition does not have building access.
| Maybe your backyard faces a road, but you couldn't drive onto
| it with a car from there.
| cozzyd wrote:
| There are people who live on roads in rural areas (typically
| at the end of a long driveway that functions as a street,
| effectively).
| smoldesu wrote:
| Take that up with the city authority. The stretch leading up
| to my house is labelled as a road, and barring any radical
| legislation it will probably stay that way until the day I
| die.
| quadrangle wrote:
| these aren't simple absolute definitions; go around
| determining what is what, and you bump into reality. There
| are definite roads that have a few businesses and homes on
| them, particularly rural roads. They are still roads. It
| becomes a stroad when it's trying to still be for distance-
| travel but has _constant_ homes /businesses/intersections.
| Between that and limited-access freeways, there's a fuzzy
| middle that is road-enough without being a stroad yet.
| maxerickson wrote:
| That isn't the popular definition of a road, at least not in
| the US.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| That is the definition used by the article being commented
| on.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Barely (it doesn't say anything about _no_ building
| access).
|
| In any case, if that is the point, it's better to say it
| that way, to talk about the distinction the article is
| making (like the sibling comment to the one I replied to)
| rather than saying "by definition" with some expectation
| that the conversation is being carried out with whatever
| precise set of definitions you've chosen.
| jschwartzi wrote:
| The US definition sucks.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Okay, great, we've really moved the conversation forward
| here.
|
| The vague implication, that 2-lane state and federal
| highways shouldn't have driveways on them, is not and
| will not be the situation for the foreseeable future, so
| there's a pretty good case for using some nuance instead
| of insisting on some particular technical definition.
| randomdata wrote:
| From the link, there is a visible laneway near the end of the
| merge land on the right in the picture it presents as a road.
|
| While the cropping of the image obscures what is at the end
| of the laneway, it most likely does have a building. As you
| can see there is a 911 number plate, which usually don't get
| issued in Ontario unless there is a building on the property.
| Additionally, it appears to be a recycling bin at the end of
| the lane under the Canadian flag, which further indicates
| that a building is present.
|
| Moreover, we can find plenty of examples of buildings,
| including houses, that have direct access to that road.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _so-called road, it 's comprised of a single lane of paved
| dirt_
|
| Note the verbiage on road from the article:
|
| > [...] _where people board in one place, depart in another and
| there is a high speed connection between the two._
|
| See specifically "high speed connection". I have a hard time
| believing that a paved dirt 'road' would allow for a "high
| speed connection".
|
| There is the colloquial use of the word, and the 'technical'
| distinction that the article is trying to make between
| different types of way that vehicles can travel on.
| mcv wrote:
| I don't think this article is making the point veey clearly, but
| it is a very important point: roads are for long distance
| connections at speed, streets are for local traffic: reaching
| houses, shops, people. These stroads try to do both and fail at
| both because the goals are contradictory; you can't have high
| speed traffic with lots of side streets and crossing traffic,
| bikes and pedestrians. It will be too slow for a road or too
| dangerous for a street, and probably both.
|
| Separate traffic that requires different speeds.
| treis wrote:
| But this isn't how the world works. It's not Simcity where you
| lay down neat grids of zones and the dutiful citizens follow
| your orders. People will want to take advantage of cheap(er)
| land alongside your "road" so that they can own a house while
| still having reasonable access to the "street". And boom now
| you have a stroad.
|
| Attempting to use zoning to stop that runs into the problem
| that by and large people don't want to live in dense areas.
| Most of them want the cheap home in the burbs. And they'll vote
| for those that give it to them.
|
| This is the root problem with Strongtowns and their ilk. They
| love to navel gaze and contemplate the platonic ideal of how a
| city should be laid out. But for the most part fail to provide
| a viable option that people can and will choose.
| woah wrote:
| You're wrong. People want to live in walkable cities.
| Property prices prove this.
| cozzyd wrote:
| And the reason people often move out with kids is that it's
| too expensive to own a large-enough property for most
| people due to the high demand for walkable places.
| fragmede wrote:
| Is that actually true? That's absolutely true in SF, but
| the Bay Area is bonkers for lots of reasons, housing
| prices is a well known one so I want to be careful about
| extrapolating from there.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| It's true. The Not Just Bikes channel has a video on
| walkable neighborhoods in the US. They're all _massively_
| expensive because of the high quality of life.
|
| edit: here it is -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| there's a very simple solution then. build more walkable
| places.
| occz wrote:
| It's illegal to build them under most zoning laws in the
| U.S.
| cozzyd wrote:
| If only it were so simple. Building walkable places is
| illegal almost everywhere in the US due to onerous
| parking minimums, regulations about street design and
| restrictive zoning. It's still possible to build walkable
| places with highrises, but low-rise walkable areas like h
| ttps://www.google.com/maps/@41.9181247,-87.6517955,3a,60y
| ,7... are almost lost art in the US. There are entire
| major metro areas in the US with no street like this.
| captainmuon wrote:
| I wonder why nobody just changes these regulations. Sure
| it's difficult and you won't get a majority in most
| places, but I find it hard to understand why not at least
| some cities designate a small area as a "model community"
| and relax zoning and parking requirements.
| cozzyd wrote:
| This is happening to some extent (e.g. Chicago removing
| parking minimums near transit stations, Houston removing
| parking minimums in two downtown-adjacent neighborhoods)
| but mainly only in large cities. Parking minimums are
| especially onerous since they almost ensure you can only
| build strip malls for retail.
| mcv wrote:
| Exactly. And it's those policies that need to change. But
| because this is such a lost art, and because Americans
| have been raised to believe in the car-centric suburban
| dream, most people don't even know that this is an
| option. It's a policy issue, but also an awareness issue.
| [deleted]
| treis wrote:
| Walkable places are inherently more expensive because
| they lack economy of scale. It's why Dunkin Donuts can
| sell a dozen for $10 but it costs ~$20 for half a dozen
| at my local walkable place. Granted, there is a quality
| of ingredients difference but not 4x the cost.
| wilkommen wrote:
| No, it's the suburbs that lack economy of scale. The
| walkable areas contribute far more per acre in taxes than
| the suburbs. They also require fewer resources to
| maintain per person because they're physically smaller.
| The suburbs have such a paucity of "economies of scale"
| that municipalities around the country have gone into
| debt to support them.
|
| The reason donuts cost more at your local walkable place
| is because real estate prices are higher in walkable
| places, because walkable places are so in-demand that as
| a nation we've bid the prices of those places to the
| moon. So we ought to change our zoning rules so that the
| market can build more of them. That's the whole point of
| Strong Towns idea.
| tbihl wrote:
| Plus the Dunkin Donuts was gifted expensive public
| infrastructure since, in all likelihood, they have a 10
| year tax incentive that prevents them from paying almost
| any property taxes.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Dunkin Donuts also doesn't bake their donuts on premises
| (with a few exceptions). Surprise, you can get even
| cheaper (and shittier) donuts at the dollar store!
| treis wrote:
| >No, it's the suburbs that lack economy of scale. The
| walkable areas contribute far more per acre in taxes than
| the suburbs. They also require fewer resources to
| maintain per person because they're physically smaller.
| The suburbs have such a paucity of "economies of scale"
| that municipalities around the country have gone into
| debt to support them.
|
| Yes, Strong towns loves to say this too despite it being
| obviously not true.
|
| Infrastructure stuff like roads and pipes and so on is
| cheap. Usually 10-15% of the budget. The real cost of
| government is in providing services to people. And those
| are invariably more expensive in the cities than the
| suburbs.
|
| Show me even one city in the US that has lower taxes and
| spends less per Capita than the surrounding suburbs.
| cozzyd wrote:
| I mean City of Chicago has lower property tax rates than
| suburbs (due to the large amount of taxable commercial
| property in the city).
| treis wrote:
| Tax rate is only half of the calculation so it's a
| meaningless number on its own. Plus, there's sales tax
| and other assorted fees.
| cozzyd wrote:
| At least in Illinois, valuations are determined at the
| county level, and the majority of sales tax is also
| county-level. All things being equal, more commercial
| property (and tourism) moves some of the burden to
| taxpayers outside the city. Comparing Chicago to the
| neighboring suburb of Oak Park, sales tax in Chicago is
| 10.25% vs. 10% in Oak Park, but property taxes are nearly
| double in Oak Park. Maybe things like rental cars or
| hotels are taxed less, but that's not a big impact.
|
| Of course property tax rates are inversely correlated
| with property values so it's a bit tricky to compare, but
| the point is it's not always true that suburbs have lower
| taxes than the central city. Transportation costs are
| also typically much lower in cities (transit fares/passes
| are typically significantly cheaper than car ownership).
| kortex wrote:
| That's not the right metric though. Cities and suburbs
| are not comparable in terms of overall experience. The
| extra services you cite are one of the reasons why.
|
| For one, suburbs are pretty economically difficult for
| low-earning households. Low earners are more likely to
| live in cities, therefore cities tend to have more social
| services.
|
| You need to do an apples-to-apples comparison, which
| unfortunately is not easy.
| treis wrote:
| The services (schools, police, fire) aren't better in a
| city. They're more expensive and usually significantly
| worse.
| xmprt wrote:
| You have it completely backwards. Suburbs aren't
| scalable. That's why back in the 50s-70s when they were
| first built, they were amazing, but today, they are rife
| with traffic problems, noise pollution, and crumbling
| infrastructure.
| treis wrote:
| The percentage of the population living in the suburbs is
| growing, not shrinking.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| "O(n^2) sorting time doesn't scale." "The amount of data
| we are going to sort in O(n^2) is growing, not
| shrinking."
|
| Notice how the second statement doesn't disprove the
| first.
| cozzyd wrote:
| There are plenty of Dunkin Donuts stores in walkable
| places. I have a Dunks across the street from my condo
| and another one around the corner (and several others
| several blocks away). (I live in this area, which is VERY
| walkable: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8822495,-87.625
| 4941,1122a,35...)
|
| It's true there are also other, superior, options, but
| that's a bonus!
| treis wrote:
| But they choose not to. US population is roughly 1/2
| suburban, 1/4 rural, and 1/4 urban. Which backs up my
| point.
| occz wrote:
| >But they choose not to. US population is roughly 1/2
| suburban, 1/4 rural, and 1/4 urban. Which backs up my
| point.
|
| With single-family zoning being the norm in the U.S, it
| would be unfair to call this a choice. The supply of
| other types of housing is severely constrained.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| How much of that is "choice"? People can only live in
| places that exist, and places that exist must be
| constructed in compliance with certain government
| standards, and the government standards for the US for
| the last fifty years have been all cars, all the time. In
| most places, it is illegal to build a house without a
| garage, or a bar without a parking space for every stool.
|
| The law mandates that everyone drive everywhere whether
| they want to or not.
| treis wrote:
| None of this is true. You can easily find dense walkable
| places to live. You will just pay more money for a much
| smaller house. Your living expenses will be higher. And
| you'll have to rely on public transportation which is a
| pain in the ass when you have small kids.
|
| It's easy to see why people choose the suburbs.
| eutropia wrote:
| People will continue to choose the wildly tax-subsidized
| option, yes.
|
| If people in the suburbs had to pay enough property tax
| to recoup their share for the cost of roads, water,
| sewage, electric, telecoms, mail and other ancillary
| services to their large, non-productive plot of land,
| they'd likely consider other options.
|
| Suburbs look nice in the short term, before the roads
| need repaving and the utilities need major overhauls; but
| the total lifetime cost to the public far exceeds how
| much tax they bring in.
| boondaburrah wrote:
| You are mistaken that they have a choice.
| whatshisface wrote:
| There may be forces at work behind that other than
| individual home preferences.
| cozzyd wrote:
| There are entire metro areas where there are effectively
| zero walkable areas. People there don't have much of a
| choice at all!
| tbihl wrote:
| >This is the root problem with Strongtowns and their ilk.
| They love to navel gaze and contemplate the platonic ideal of
| how a city should be laid out. But for the most part fail to
| provide a viable option that people can and will choose.
|
| They fail to provide a viable option because, as they point
| out, cities are complicated so universal prescriptions will
| fail. If no one in your place cares enough to come up with a
| local solution, then any intervention would have failed
| anyway, as we've seen for decades with aid work throughout
| the world.
|
| Most of what they do is showing that what we have now is on a
| predictable, medium-term trajectory to insolvency by its
| fundamental financial unsound structure. Their 'ilk', so much
| as they have any, would be Urban3, who do GIS mapping of
| financial productivity within cities. So, 'navel gazing', I
| guess.
| mcv wrote:
| I just watched a video in response to this story that
| explained how zoning in North America is actually too much
| like SimCity, with very restrictive homogenous zoning and no
| mixed zoning at all. It's mixed zoning that allows people to
| live closer to the shops for their daily needs, and that
| reduces traffic.
|
| These shops aren't on the stroad because the US is an anarchy
| where everything goes, they're there because it's designed
| that way. But the design is inefficient and dangerous.
| timwaagh wrote:
| You might have a parallel street immediately next to the road
| but separate from it. That way people or business can be next
| to a road but will not block traffic. It's what we often do
| here. Those then will be connected to the road at some point
| via a side street. I have never seen a multi lane road with a
| lot of intersections and parking space next to it,
| immediately adjacent to stores. We don't have 'turning lanes'
| either. I'm really wondering whether they are cherry picking
| these things for badness or whether it's really very common
| in the States.
| Vinnl wrote:
| And yet somehow the country I live in has proper streets. I
| see that more often, where things are dismissed as "not
| viable" in the US even though they actually exist elsewhere.
| scrollaway wrote:
| What.
|
| No, strong towns "and their ilk" (biased much?) provide an
| unlimited supply of solutions to a variety of problems. If
| you're not seeing them it's because you don't want to see
| them.
|
| There isn't a "now the city is better" red button you can
| hit. It takes a lot of effort to get there. One of the
| efforts is in fact a marketing one: you need to spread
| awareness of where the problems actually are and why they are
| a problem. Stroads are a good example; I had never realized
| they were a problem, but since I discovered them I've been
| noticing them whenever traveling and thinking a lot about the
| implications and how they could be redesigned in that spot.
|
| Stroads are very difficult to find in western Europe by the
| way, compared to the US. In some countries they're non
| existent. Clearly you're mistaken about how they can and will
| just appear out of nowhere. Maybe things are more nuanced and
| complex than your three second opinion lets on.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| we do have roads where we prohibit driveways onto them.
| They're called Interstates. somehow we don't have massive
| issues with people illegally building driveways onto them.
|
| It kills me that US road planners don't even bother putting
| in medium-term solutions that would fix most of the issues,
| like a road with separated through lanes in the middle and a
| one-lane service road for the driveways.
| quantumwannabe wrote:
| Those exist in some areas of the country. Here's an
| example: https://www.google.com/maps/@33.5823608,-111.95042
| 03,3a,75y,...
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Lots of them in San Diego, too. Here's an example in
| Clairemont, which is an early post-war suburb. Note that
| the homes pictured are also 'missing middle'
| construction.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@32.8276267,-117.2033566,3a,7
| 5y,...
|
| https://missingmiddlehousing.com/
| treis wrote:
| That's clearly a stroad. 1,000 feet away from where you
| linked to are shops and restaurants.
| N1H1L wrote:
| I remember driving through suburbian Atlanta at night a few
| months back, and there was this road that was 6 lines wide
| through a residential area, with a speed limit of 40 mph. That
| road was legitimately wider and straighter than Interstate 75,
| which I hopped on to in a few minutes.
|
| While driving through that _stroad_ , I remember thinking that
| the only people who benefit from this planning disaster is the
| local PD, as every corner gas station had cop cars hidden with
| their lights switched off.
| wffurr wrote:
| Every time I end up on a five lane road with the center turning
| lane and tons of curb cuts and cross streets and abutting
| parking lots, I remind myself that it's one of the most
| dangerous places I am likely to be in.
| chestervonwinch wrote:
| Here in Austin Texas, we have lovely signs to remind you of
| your imminent crash!
|
| http://austintexas.gov/sites/default/files/files/Sign%201.JP.
| ..
| gruez wrote:
| I love the "zero excuses" at the bottom. "now that we
| informed you of the danger, anything bad happening is
| entirely your fault and the city can't be held liable for
| its bad decisions"
| nemetroid wrote:
| I guess it might come across that way, but I was happy to
| see the "Vision Zero" thing in the bottom left. Vision
| Zero has been a very successful road traffic policy in
| Sweden.
|
| > Vision Zero is based on an underlying ethical principle
| that "it can never be ethically acceptable that people
| are killed or seriously injured when moving within the
| road transport system." In most road transport systems,
| road users bear complete responsibility for safety.
| Vision Zero changes this relationship by emphasizing that
| responsibility is shared by transportation system
| designers and road users.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero
| this15testing wrote:
| I don't think any American city or police department
| knows what vision zero is. They frequently include the
| words "vision zero" in their plans or posts, but then car
| crash deaths continue as normal or even increase.
|
| Using Los Angeles as an example:
|
| https://ladotlivablestreets.org/programs/vision-zero
|
| https://laist.com/news/transportation/2020-traffic-
| deaths-lo... for the graphic "Traffic violence in Los
| Angeles" showing the increase since Vision Zero was
| adopted.
|
| Then you have enforcement issues like jaywalking laws,
| the wording and culture around collisions and referring
| to them as "accidents", etc.
|
| The entire country was _REbuilt_ (US cities were not
| always like this) around the car. Until that changes, no
| city will reach Vision Zero.
| paulgb wrote:
| Same in NYC. There was some progress for a few years, but
| then traffic deaths rebounded. The pandemic gets some
| blame, though it's a poor excuse for weak leadership and
| the trend started before that. "Vision Zero" has become
| the "thoughts and prayers" of traffic deaths.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/nyregion/traffic-
| deaths-n...
| onionisafruit wrote:
| I don't remember ever seeing that sign. Where is it posted?
| chestervonwinch wrote:
| I've seen them while cruising S Pleasant Valley, but
| there are a number of road sections where they're posted:
| http://austintexas.gov/page/high-injury-roadways
| prawn wrote:
| Our equivalent in Australia is a Black Spot:
|
| https://www.snowyvalleys.nsw.gov.au/News-Media/Brungle-
| Road-...
| strken wrote:
| Slightly different, as the Black Spot Program signs are
| on former crash sites that have already had improvements
| made.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| We used to run this program in Poland too, but new signs
| haven't been installed since 2003.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| Why not Red or White Spot?
| kryogen1c wrote:
| > one of the most dangerous places I am likely to be in.
|
| i dont know how widely this turn of phrase is used, but where
| i grew up in the US, we called the middle turn lane in a 5
| lane road the suicide lane.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| I've also called it that for as long as I can remember, and
| it's probably helped me drive more defensively around that
| lane. Drivers misuse it all the time.
| eggsmediumrare wrote:
| Likewise in Ontario. Strong term, but gets the point
| across. I also once saw a dump truck with stickers on
| either side of the tailgate. On the left, "passing side."
| On the right, "suicide." Had a big impact on my driving
| habits... I never, ever pass on the right.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Unfortunately the majority of people don't seem to
| understand they're not allowed to pass on the right (and
| they never get pulled over for it).
| sokoloff wrote:
| If slower traffic kept right, there'd be a lot less
| passing on the right. (If you're getting passed on the
| right regularly, you might consider your own lane
| discipline as well as that of those passing you.)
| cozzyd wrote:
| Yes, this is also true, but I think the bigger problem is
| just speeding. People on the left are usually moving
| faster than people on the right or middle, on average,
| but some people want to go 20-30 mph over the speed
| limit. Normally I'd pull to the right so they can pass,
| but by the time I start doing that they're already
| starting to change lanes too!
| sokoloff wrote:
| True. If you take a highway that people feel is
| reasonable and prudent to drive at 75-85 mph and post it
| as 55, people will drive 20-30 mph over. I think the
| problem is more likely the 55 signage in that case.
| gruez wrote:
| That might make sense for dump trucks because they're
| bulky and have poor visibility, but what's the increased
| risk of passing on the right? The only thing I can think
| of is marginally worse visibility because the right side
| is slightly further away from the driver's seat. However,
| I don't think that's enough risk to justify going out of
| your way to pass on the right. Having to change lanes to
| pass on the left carries its own risks.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Some cars have a blind spot on their right. Also, the
| convention is passing on the left, so people are
| generally less aware of things going on on their right.
| Of course bad drivers are almost by definition
| unpredictable, but if some bad driver is going to absent
| mindedly merge into you, they will probably do it while
| you are on their right. In particular, distracted people
| whose texting has been interrupted by their GPS telling
| them to take the next exit...
| mcv wrote:
| In many countries, it's a hard rule that you need to pass
| on the left. Passing on the right is only allowed when
| it's a lane going in a different direction (like an
| exit), or traffic is moving very slowly (you don't want
| people changing lanes in a traffic jam to avoid passing
| on the right).
| jamincan wrote:
| While "keep right except to pass" is technically the law
| here in Ontario, the de facto standard is that the middle
| lane is the cruising lane, the left is the passing lane,
| and the right is basically a second merging lane. This
| means that it is not uncommon to have stop-and-go traffic
| in the left two lanes while the right lane is still
| moving and mostly wide open. Drivers will frequently move
| right into the middle lane from the ramp even with no
| traffic in the right lane and not having sped up to the
| highway speed. It's an complete waste of resources.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Highways are a complicated graph problem I guess, which
| I'm not very good at, but I wouldn't be surprised if the
| true bottleneck was some offramp later. So, increasing
| the throughput of the road leading up to it shouldn't
| really improve things, right? And leaving rightmost lane
| less heavily populated might make it easier for cars to
| do the off/on ramp thing which might make things easier
| around the bottleneck.
|
| I dunno. People pack in as tightly as possible around
| here and we still get traffic. I think it is just
| inevitable.
| ljm wrote:
| Going onto the IdiotsInCars subreddit, it's kind of
| shocking how commonplace it is for people to undertake
| other road users by speeding past in the slow lane. It's
| already more difficult to merge back into a slower lane
| because you have a much bigger blind-spot (and have to
| twist your neck a lot more to get a good look), so it
| doesn't make it any easier if you have to expect that
| people will be speeding to undertake you.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I hate it when my GPS on my second phone does this!
|
| On a serious note, the overtake left thing (or right for
| those strange people driving on the wrong side) is a big
| reason German Autobahn is as safe as it is. Reckless
| idiots notwithstanding.
| cozzyd wrote:
| On a 3+ lane road, it increases the risk of two people
| merging into each other as they both try to pass.
| bckr wrote:
| The only other time I have heard that was during my driving
| test on small town California
| masklinn wrote:
| Sounds like a derivative from a road style which has
| (mostly, thankfully) been abandoned: originally, "suicide
| lanes" designated the center lane of a 3-lane.
|
| A 3-lane is a road design where you've got one lane in each
| direction, and a _shared passing lane in the middle_.
|
| These used to be quite popular as they were not much more
| expensive than a 2-lane but allowed better throughput,
| however as density and speeds increased they became more
| and more deadly as they'd encourage trying to pass and
| high-speed frontal collisions.
|
| They're mostly gone now, replaced by either 2+2 or 2+1 (the
| latter is very popular in europe, it's basically a 3-lane
| except there's a hard barrier which regularly swaps the
| center lane's direction to allow safe passing sections --
| or more rarely a 1+1 with a protected turn lane).
| jacobolus wrote:
| In Mexico there are still a good number of 3-lane roads
| where the middle lane is for passing in both directions.
| A close family friend died on one: head-on collision with
| a truck passing a truck on a curving mountain road. (He
| was an aggressive driver who got lucky for decades until
| one day he finally didn't.) Truly horrible road design.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Middle shared turn lanes are quite safe though, though I
| don't have actual stats. It's very hard to hit someone in
| one because no one is driving more than 50 ft in one, and
| you're always coming to a stop to prepare for a turn. On
| busy streets they are usually a bit wider than a normal
| lane, and on 80 km/h highways, they are a full lane-and-
| a-half wide. On busier residential streets with lots of
| single family homes, they are a great alternative to two
| lanes in each direction, because they allow for separated
| bike lanes and left-turning cars don't block traffic
| flow. Many 50 km/h roads in my city have been converted
| like this.
|
| You would never put one in a newly designed road, but
| when a road needs to be upgraded, they are a great
| solution.
| jake_morrison wrote:
| I spent a summer in India in the late 1980s (Tamil Nadu).
| Going between cities, the roads were only partially paved.
| There were two dirt lanes, with a blacktop middle lane. The
| trucks would play a continuous game of "chicken", driving
| at each other until someone lost their nerve.
|
| The newspaper had regular reports of truck "capsizings",
| where a truck would lose control and turn over. It was
| common for a truck to have laborers who would fill up the
| truck with some bulk product like dirt, then ride on the
| top to go to the destination, then unload it. When one of
| these trucks capsized, it was a major disaster.
| ehnto wrote:
| I wonder how much that specific road design cause FedEx to
| discourage left hand turns in their routes?
| p1mrx wrote:
| If I go somewhere often, I like to find the "chill route"
| that minimizes complex left turns, even if it takes a bit
| longer.
| ehnto wrote:
| Same, I don't even mind if it takes a bit longer. I am
| more interested in stress free driving than getting there
| sooner.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I think you're thinking of UPS, and IIRC the decision is
| mostly to reduce waiting time/idle fuel burn. (Most
| jurisdictions in the US allow right-on-red and that makes
| this even easier to justify.)
| timvdalen wrote:
| I had to look up a 'center turning lane'. Is this[1] it? That
| looks incredibly dangerous.
|
| [1]: https://www.wikihow.com/Use-the-Center-Turning-Lane
| sokoloff wrote:
| It is, but they're more common on one travel lane each way
| streets.
|
| When evaluating the danger of such a design, you have to
| consider the alternatives. You're probably considering 3/4
| head on collisions from drivers misjudging the turn. Those
| happen, but how many rear-end collisions are avoided?
| wffurr wrote:
| The center turning lane isn't there to avoid rear end
| collisions, which are only problematic due to too-high
| speeds in a commercial area.
|
| They are about improving throughput.
|
| What makes them dangerous, particularly in the five lane
| configuration, is the poor visibility for crossing
| uncontrolled intersections of multiple traffic lanes.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Center turning with five lanes? wow, that's crazy...
| wffurr wrote:
| The examples in the article show anywhere from 5 to 7
| lanes. The outermost lanes in one of the 7-lane examples
| are parking lanes.
|
| There's a stroad on Staten Island that scares the crap
| out of me - Hylan Blvd. I have family that live on it.
| It's six lanes with a median, but _sometimes_ and in
| _certain places_ parking is allowed in the outermost
| lanes. So you can suddenly come up on parked traffic but
| only at certain times of day in certain places. It 's
| totally insane.
|
| To get in the driveway, you have to loop the block to the
| closest light, wait for the green, and then drive halfway
| down the block and back-in before the light changes and
| traffic starts up. It's quite stressful.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Over here we have that, well something similar, outside
| of towns and cities for one lane. In cities max 2 lanes,
| with a 50 kmh speed limit. And those are rare, street
| cross section have traffic lights and those from parking
| lots are scary enough. And slow enough, it is sometimes
| faster to not cross lanes and just turn around at the
| next traffic light.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Commonplace in suburban Chicago.
| wffurr wrote:
| That's exactly it, except with businesses with parking lots
| on each side and lots of cars pulling in and out. Also a 55
| mph speed limit that's routinely ignored unless there's
| enough traffic to slow everyone down.
|
| Colloquially called a "suicide lane".
| mcv wrote:
| The way it's shown on that page, it looks like every part
| of that lane can be used in both directions. In
| Netherland we do have separate lanes to turn left, but
| only before an intersection, and only to be used in the
| direction towards that intersection. People turning left
| in the other direction will be on the other side of the
| intersection. There will be lines on the road directing
| you where you're supposed to go. The left-turning lane
| will have a very limited length, only existing near the
| intersection that it's for. Also, I think there are
| usually traffic lights ensuring safe crossing for left-
| turners.
|
| Having just a general all-purpose two-directional left-
| turning lane looks incomprehensibly dangerous to me.
| jmacc1 wrote:
| A common thing I see drivers in my city do is pull into the
| center turning lane and then merge into their intended lane
| when doing a left turn. It's super illegal afaik, but I see
| it done all the time, I've even seen police do it. Of
| course, the alternative to this maneuver is waiting a very
| long time until both lanes are clear before turning because
| the stroad you're turning left on is extremely congested
| (though not extraordinarily congested in my cities case)
| closeparen wrote:
| We have lots of slow and calm streets in American suburbia, and
| we love them that way. We value this calm so much that we
| refuse to admit shopping or even multi-family housing to them,
| for fear of disturbing it. These uses have to go somewhere, so
| they go where there is no presumption of an entitlement to low
| traffic, and that's the road.
|
| The businesses hardly complain; they love to be where the
| greatest numbers of eyeballs and potential impulse shoppers are
| going by.
|
| Maybe you could start with a strong street vs. road discipline,
| but I would predict that within 40 years any American polity
| will surely break it, and the stroad will re-emerge.
| ehnto wrote:
| Mixed use medium density is my urban nirvana. Anywhere I have
| been with it just makes so much sense for daily life at
| person scale. Cars tricked us into thinking life can be
| comfortable spread across large distances and I think we are
| suffering in various ways for it.
|
| I am reminded of that cartoon where aliens arive on earth,
| and assume that cars are the dominant species, since so much
| of our world has been dedicated to them.
|
| https://youtu.be/wFaHArkYLsM
| closeparen wrote:
| Suburbanites hate cars too, and that's why they'll never
| let you have mixed use. It would perhaps eliminate the
| snarl in commercial areas, but it would also bring some
| portion of that traffic into what are now quiet residential
| sanctuaries.
| mcv wrote:
| But American suburbia seems entirely designed around
| cars. Exactly because there are no shops nearby, you need
| to take the car for everything. If there were shops
| around the corner, there would be far less need for cars
| in these streets.
|
| When I go to the shop, I walk or take my bike. And even
| here, the shops aren't in my street, but there's a small
| shopping center (with two supermarkets, a pharmacy, two
| drugstores, a bakery, a butcher, two organic food shops,
| a small bookstore, a fast food place, a pizza place, and
| some other shops) two streets over. It's easy to reach by
| car, but even easier to reach on foot by the entire
| neighbourhood they serve.
|
| In the other direction, there's the big shopping street
| of the next neighbourhood over, still walkable, though
| it's more than a kilometer so I always take my bike, and
| there's tons more shops and great restaurants there. It's
| an older neighbourhood, more a shopping street than a
| shopping center, and cars constantly clog that street.
| Maybe less fun to live in that street, but it's still a
| very popular street to live in. Personally I'd prefer to
| see cars banned from that street, but maybe that's not an
| option for some reason.
|
| Still, it's a great neighbourhood and a great shopping
| street, and it's nice to have not one but two such
| shopping areas close to my home. (There's a third not far
| from that second one, which had a fantastic cheese shop
| and has a daily market.)
| closeparen wrote:
| It is designed around _pushing cars away from houses_.
| The thing about walkable neighborhoods is that they're
| nice to visit. If you live near one, those visitors will
| be near your home. To a suburbanite this is unacceptable.
| mcv wrote:
| Where I live, every neighbourhood is walkable. There's
| nothing special about it. Sure, people walk past our
| house. They're our neighbours and we say hi.
| paulgb wrote:
| Generalizing a bit, it seems that suburbanites hate
| _other people's cars_ , but are OK needing to drive
| everywhere, whereas urbanites hate having a car-dependent
| lifestyle.
| joshlemer wrote:
| Exactly. This video makes that point so crystal clear:
| https://youtu.be/dqQw05Mr63E
|
| Car-dependent suburbia is about imposing your car on
| everyone else while not allowing anyone else to impose
| their cars on you. It is inherently selfish city design.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| A neighborhood street that literally cannot allow through
| traffic is not really conducive for high-traffic stores,
| but really more like low-traffic uses like a convenience
| store or a hair salon or a daycare, many of which also
| generally tend to be prohibited by overly restrictive
| residential zoning.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| This is precisely why nothing is going to change in the US in
| terms of urban planning: people love living in the suburbs.
| adrianN wrote:
| I don't understand how people think that cars zipping by at
| high speeds is particularly conductive to impulse shopping.
| When I'm traveling at high speeds I usually have a goal I
| want to reach quickly and don't have time to follow any
| impulses.
| mcv wrote:
| Exactly. These are two different types of traffic that need
| to be separated from each other. Maybe have fast 1+1 or 2+2
| road in the center for through traffic, with the occasional
| connection to slow parallel streets to access the shops.
| Make the center road a level higher or lower so everybody
| can cross it everywhere without interfering with the
| through traffic. That way you're still serving both
| purposes, but a lot more safely and efficiently.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| I don't think businesses like being hard to reach outside of
| a small low density neighborhoodz advertising to cars zooming
| by who can't slowndown and turn in.
|
| Cities are moving toward "30 [mph] in the city" laws, moving
| stroads back to streets.
| occz wrote:
| > We value this calm so much that we refuse to admit shopping
| or even multi-family housing to them, for fear of disturbing
| it.
|
| With single-family zoning being the overwhelming norm in the
| U.S, it would be unfair to call this a refusal - the supply
| is artificially constrained. Had multi-family housing been
| legal to build, then it's pretty likely that people would
| move into them at higher rates.
| omnicognate wrote:
| This puts a name to something I've found very strange the few
| times I've visited America. Places like the "stroad" picture are
| everywhere and they have a strangely desolate feel to them. It's
| not an environment I would want to live and work in.
|
| I have to take issue with this, though:
|
| > 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.
|
| Futons (good ones, at least) are fantastic beds. I've been
| sleeping on them for over 20 years entirely by choice, having
| plenty of space and money for the alternatives. How anybody came
| to consider them a form of couch is the mysterious bit to me.
| masklinn wrote:
| > How anybody came to consider them a form of couch is the
| mysterious bit to me.
|
| Apparently someone saw a futon and figured "we could use
| [cotton-filled and somewhat foldable mattresses] instead of
| rigid split mattresses for sofabeds" and so "futon" became a
| style of sofabed (obviously shitty since it's a sofabed).
| fragmede wrote:
| Hm? Futons fold up into a softish furniture for sitting on. How
| is that not a couch?
| masklinn wrote:
| Mostly in that it's not what a futon actually is, in its
| country of origin.
|
| In japan, a futon is not a sofabed, it solely bedding and
| during the day it gets stowed into a closet (or a corner of
| the room).
|
| It's not seating and it doesn't have a frame. Those are
| western "additions". But not improvements, because futons
| were never intended for slatted frames (or even hard
| surfaces). Because of this incompatibility and the desire to
| make them permanent the "futon-style mattresses" thus have to
| become much thicker and heavier, thereby losing the
| flexibility and stowability of the original, and just
| becoming bad mattresses (la requirement for sofabeds,
| really).
|
| In essence, "futons are shit" is one more example of taking
| something which is perfectly fine, moving it completely out
| of its context, misusing it entirely, and then calling it bad
| _after making it so_. And the badness gets attributed to
| futons where it's been _a universal constant of sofabeds_.
|
| Futon-style mattresses have not made sofabeds worse, they've
| always been shit[1] they've just tarnished the name of
| futons.
|
| [1] Which in fairness is not normally an issue, their purpose
| is to be an ok-at-best couch with some ad-hoc bedding so
| guests don't sleep on the floor.
| boudin wrote:
| Futon, originally, designate the japanese bed, not the weird
| couch bed hybrid the author is talking about. It's not meant
| to be used as a couch but, often, to be folded so that it can
| be stored while the bedroom can be used for other purposes
| mcv wrote:
| I'm not a futon fan, but I did recognise this attack on futons
| as misguided. The article has a very important point, but
| addresses it poorly in my opinion. Partially because of this
| sort of unfair attack on something unrelated.
| hatchnyc wrote:
| Anytime I leave the city and spend a few days getting around by
| car I'm amazed at just how completely exhausting it is to go
| shopping or run errands in suburbia. I am not sure why exactly,
| after all I'm just sitting there, but I think all the stop-and-go
| and waiting 10 minutes at lights trying to get across a stroad
| intersection to a shop I can see the whole time is a big
| contributor.
| ehnto wrote:
| I moved recently to where everything is a car drive away. The
| constant in an out of the car is exhausting. Not physically but
| mentally. Conter-intuitively because cars are also weather
| proof and comfortable, I felt a lot of the inertia is actually
| in getting out of the car. I found myself just waiting a little
| while before getting out. I am a fit and healthy individual and
| it is draining.
|
| I tried the ride on and it's about an hour one way to work by
| bike, so I think I will get an e-bike. I have other physical
| training to do so I don't want to completely deplete myself by
| riding, but I still don't want to use the car.
| nicbou wrote:
| Driving is active. Public transport is passive. You can just
| sit there and read.
| prawn wrote:
| I once had a serious learning experience driving from the
| suburbs into the CBD to meet friends. My attempt coincided with
| a Zombie Walk that bisected the city. It took me forever to
| reach where I was meeting friends, then another forever to find
| somewhere to park the car (all the paid parking was full) given
| I had to radiate out and cross the zombie parade again. Took 90
| minutes to do what would've taken 5 minutes normally, or maybe
| 10 minutes on foot. All for one person in a car.
| gpvos wrote:
| In a proper (that is, probably not North-American) suburb you
| can do errands walking or cycling.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| How is that not urban?
| josephcsible wrote:
| This feels like saying that we should only have supercomputers
| and low-power embedded devices, and nothing in between such as
| regular desktop computers.
| ragebol wrote:
| Desktops are still a decent means to some ends. The argument
| made by Strong Towns is that the stroad is not a good means to
| it's ends. It serves both it's ends badly.
| romwell wrote:
| You are trying to argue by analogy without providing any basis
| for why the analogy is valid.
|
| (In math, that would be like saying that a homomorphism exists
| because you feel like it should)
| wetpaws wrote:
| Bad analogy is like a diagonal frog.
| wilkommen wrote:
| No, it's saying that we need to use the right tool for the
| right job. It's about _kind_ , not _degree_. When you lay
| asphalt on the ground there should be clear purpose - am I
| making a place for people to live and for commerce to occur or
| am I making a way for people to travel from one place to
| another place? If the latter, allow no intersections and allow
| for high speed vehicular travel. If the former, prioritize
| making the _place_ that you 're creating a nice place to be -
| things like wide sidewalks, tree cover, easy to walk around,
| low speed vehicular traffic for pedestrian safety and comfort,
| etc. If you are unclear about for which purpose you're laying
| asphalt, you end up creating something that is a sucky place to
| be and also moves traffic really slowly. You get something that
| sucks at everything.
| sam_bishop wrote:
| I can't think of a really good computer analogy to explain
| stroads, but if I were to attempt it I would say that it's
| analogous to forcing everyone to use a CLI, for _everything_.
|
| Roads can move a lot of people and material long-distances,
| quickly. CLIs are powerful, but I've never seen an e-commerce
| application with a command-line interface. It'd be the wrong
| tool for the job.
|
| Similarly, you shouldn't build multi-lane roads with wide lanes
| (which is all a great fit for highways) in places where you
| expect a lot of people to be, especially if they're shopping.
| tjader wrote:
| It's more like trying to use desktop computerd to serve the
| purpose of both supercomputers and smartphones. It would suck
| at both tasks.
| dibujante wrote:
| Your argument seems like "why have phones, when laptops exist?"
| throw0101a wrote:
| It's saying that _currently_ only desktop computers are being
| built, and they 're being shoehorned into _both_ supercomputer
| applications (modelling weather) _and_ embedded areas
| (controlling a lightbulb via a Dell OptiPlex).
|
| Having two classes of devices would be an improvement of the
| current situation.
| josephcsible wrote:
| But it's not the case that only stroads are being built.
| There's plenty of things that are unambiguously streets and
| plenty of things that are unambiguously roads. If the
| argument were "not everything should be a stroad", I'd agree,
| but they're saying they want to eradicate all stroads.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Because there are very few situations where a stroad is
| actually appropriate.
|
| If your goal is to move people, a limited access high speed
| road is the right way to do it.
|
| If your goal is to support commerce, a low speed, mixed
| traffic street that can support a lot of homes an
| businesses in a small area is the right way to do it.
|
| The high speed and land use of stroads makes them
| inefficient and dangerous for commerce, and the fact that
| there's so much on-and-off traffic makes them slow and
| dangerous for transit. They are the worst of both worlds.
| chabons wrote:
| You're correct, they are advocating that stroads be
| removed. The difference is that in your comparison to
| computers you assume that roads, like computers, have a
| quasi-linear trade-off between performance and power (ie:
| alpha x performance - beta x power = 0, obviously a
| simplification, but I hope it gets my point across) and
| thus a middle-ground between the extremes represents a good
| compromise for a variety of applications.
|
| Strong Towns appears to be arguing that the trade-off
| between movement (roads) and value (streets) is highly non-
| linear, and that the middle-ground's combined performance
| is so much worse than either a street or road that it's not
| worth building. See the comment below about counter-tops
| vs. stoves for an example of an extreme binary case.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > [...] _but they 're saying they want to eradicate all
| stroads._
|
| Correct. Because as a sibling comment notes, they are a
| "compromise" that serves neither purpose very well. See the
| _Not Just Bikes_ video referenced elsewhere in this
| discussion for a fuller treatment.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| No, a stroad is more like trying to do supercomputing tasks on
| a Raspberry Pi. Except you also expect it to get ridiculous
| perf/watt despite running at it's highest performance band all
| of the time. Oh, and you're also overclocking the Pi to the
| point that it explodes.
|
| The point they're trying to make isn't "you should only have
| tiny side streets and massive highways, with nothing in
| between". It's "don't build roads that require you go from a
| driveway or parking lot straight into high speed six-lane
| traffic". Drivers need reserved space for speeding up and
| slowing down, something that stroads _do not provide_.
| jschwartzi wrote:
| The other point that's being missed here is that pedestrians
| need a bunch of stuff that's ignored:
|
| * to be able to walk from business to business in minutes or
| seconds * to feel safe walking across the street * to be able
| to have conversations with other people outside without
| having to yell over traffic.
|
| The stroad is also really bad at providing these needs
| because pedestrians are not considered at all in US roadway
| design.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| No, its like saying that a kitchen surface should have clear
| femarcation between a stove for cooking and a prep surface, and
| wen you mix them you get molten chopping board and house fires
| wilkommen wrote:
| lol this is the best reply.
| twelvechairs wrote:
| Needs a (2017) in title. This has been a very important
| article/concept in US planning circles. Personally I don't really
| like the street/stroad/road distinction but prefer the Transport
| for London 'movement and place' approach [0] which is clearer on
| necessary compromises. The end goal of both of course is to
| ensure traffic engineers (trained primarily in efficient car
| movements) take into account pedestrian considerations where
| pedestrians need to be, which have taken a back seat where there
| is any conflict with cars over the last 50 or so years.
|
| [0] https://content.tfl.gov.uk/rtf-report-chapter-2-part-1.pdf
| throw0101a wrote:
| Another article that may be useful:
|
| > _Americans do not understand the difference between a road and
| a street._
|
| [...]
|
| > _The value of a road is in the speed and efficiency that it
| provides for movement between places. Anything that is done that
| reduces the speed and efficiency of a road devalues that road. If
| we want to maximize the value of a road, we eliminate anything
| that reduces the speed and efficiency of travel._
|
| > _The value of a street comes from its ability to support land
| use patterns that create capturable value. The street with the
| highest value is the one that creates the greatest amount of tax
| revenue with the least amount of public expense over multiple
| life cycles. If we want to maximize the value of a street, we
| design it in such a way that it supports an adjacent development
| pattern that is financially resilient, architecturally timeless
| and socially enduring._
|
| [...]
|
| > _In the United States, we've built a 45 mile per hour world for
| ourselves. It is truly the worst of all possible approaches. Our
| neighborhoods are filled with STROADS (a street /road hybrid)
| that spread investment out horizontally, making it extremely
| difficult to capture the amount of value necessary for the public
| to sustain the transportation systems that serve them._
|
| * https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/11/21/a-45-mph-worl...
| hef19898 wrote:
| The DDIs he mentioned had me thinking about Cloverleaf
| interchanges at first, the standard interchange at German
| Autobahn (or roads with more than one lane when round-abouts
| aren't feasible, incredible for that application, lots of
| traffic, high speeds and so on. DDIs are close enough it seems,
| just worse in every aspect.
|
| Both have in common that they suck for pedestrians.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| We do understand it. It's why Americans love quaint towns.
| There's a few in my suburbs. It's why many old towns you see a
| BUS sign. It's not for a bus, its' the 'business' route and the
| highway has been sent around them.
|
| Doylestown PA: succesfully petitioned and built TWO of these. A
| 611 and 202 bypass leaving historic doylestown beautiful.
|
| The problem is, for those suburbs that never had strong town
| centers, there was little objection and so as you go down 611,
| it's a 4 lane major travel route that passes right through a
| bunch of other suburbs leaving them without a downtown and a
| place thats not comfortable to travel.
|
| of course, Doylestown was surrounded by farmland when this was
| build making it much easier to do... Good luck building a
| bypass through other towns
| gpvos wrote:
| A thing that you can often see in the Netherlands is frontage
| roads. When a road with houses on it needs a speed upgrade, it
| gets split into a fast road and a parallel
| frontage/access/service road for access to the adjacent houses.
| Possibly even on both sides. This is something that was already
| being done way back early in the 20th century. (Edit: found a
| reference to the Dutch word, "ventweg" ("hawking/peddling
| road"), in 1923.)
|
| It seems to me that in such cases the US tends to choose to
| expand into a stroad instead. Belgium also has quite a few
| stroad-like roads, but at least those tend to have usable
| sidewalks and fairly often even bicycle paths.
| mattzito wrote:
| We have a major one of those in NYC, queens boulevard, and
| it's a disaster. It's dangerous to cross, and wide enough
| that it's inconvenient to get across, so it effectively
| divides neighborhoods in half.
| addicted wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20110923155641/http://wiki.coe.
| n...
|
| There's a picture of one here, and the main road is a
| single lane in both directions. Which is as far from Queens
| Boulevard as you can get.
|
| The 2 lanes to be crossed makes crossing safer. Further,
| the side roads are differentiated to make it clear that
| they are primarily for biking/walking (they are a different
| color, and are tiled).
|
| Also:
|
| > Service roads are purposely constructed to be
| discontinuous sections of road, meaning that through
| traffic cannot use it to get from one main street to
| another. Since the only traffic on it will be cars
| accessing the houses or shops along the service road,
| traffic is substantially lower that on the main roads, and
| speeds are kept down due to the short segments of roadway
|
| Queens boulevard is a highway masquerading as a road.
| mcv wrote:
| I think I've come across references that those "ventwegen"
| existed even back in the 19th century.
| cobertos wrote:
| There's a few of these around the suburb-y metro Detroit
| area. They're nice to bike on, and they haven't seemed awful
| to drive, but they do still do "divide neighborhoods" quite
| well, which is unfortunate
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The Dutch versions of these have elaborate systems to
| separate pedestrian and bike traffic that minimize the
| "divide neighborhoods" effect.
|
| The first time I went to the Netherlands I walked from
| Schiphol airport to the center of Amsterdam and it was an
| easy but amazing experience. Walking from JFK to Manhattan
| is a completely possible walk in terms of distance (I
| usually do better than a 20 minute pace on the flats so it
| takes only half a day) but when I think of the battle with
| the infrastructure you'd have to do it's like an Arnold
| Schwarzenegger movie.
| eyabs wrote:
| It's a half marathon's distance as the bird flies from
| JFK to midtown. That's almost four and a half hours at a
| twenty minute pace. Not walkable for anyone but an
| athlete.
| airza wrote:
| Barring something like serious obesity or disability it's
| impossible for me to imagine an adult who _couldn't_ walk
| for for and a half hours, especially on flat terrain.
| That's basically an easy hike.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I've never run a marathon and probably never will but
| I've walked 20 miles several times at a slow pace and
| never thought it was that hard.
| xputer wrote:
| Google the word "modal filter"
| frereubu wrote:
| The centres of most UK towns and cities are now limited to
| 20mph. Although in practice that means that people drive around
| 25mph - i.e. just low enough not to be caught for speeding - it
| does make the streets less threatening for both pedestrians and
| bikes. The thing that would make it better for cyclists is to
| line up the speed limit of e-bikes (currently set at a max of
| 15mph) and the speed limit. Currently the 15mph / 20mph
| disjunction means that some idiots still try to squeeze their
| cars past relatively fast-moving e-bikes (which then often
| catch up with the car at the next set of lights...), whereas if
| those bikes could go at 20pmh or the speed limit was 15mph I
| don't think they'd bother.
|
| Edit: Although generally once you get out of the very centre
| there are arterial "stroads" which have 30mph limits, but side-
| streets are usually still 20mph.
| GordonS wrote:
| > Currently the 15mph / 20mph disjunction means that some
| idiots still try to squeeze their cars past relatively fast-
| moving e-bikes (which then often catch up with the car at the
| next set of lights...)
|
| To be fair, this behaviour isn't one-sided. Often bicycles,
| e-bikes and motorcycles squeeze through small gaps between
| cars moving slow'ish in packed traffic.
|
| Now, of course car drivers should remain vigilant and
| continually check their mirrors, but nobody is infallible,
| and I'm sure there are plenty of drivers that do not take
| proper care.
| frereubu wrote:
| With respect, this feels like whataboutery. "To be fair"
| makes it sound like cars speeding past cyclists is a
| response to cyclists whipping between lines of cars, but
| they're entirely separate issues and can both be wrong at
| the same time without needing to be compared to each other.
| laputan_machine wrote:
| > To be fair, this behaviour isn't one-sided. Often
| bicycles, e-bikes and motorcycles squeeze through small
| gaps between cars moving slow'ish in packed traffic.
|
| The speed is the issue. A collision at low speeds is much
| less likely to be fatal [0]. Being closely overtaken by a
| car when you're going at 20-25mph on a bicycle is 1) a
| scary experience and 2) unnecessarily dangerous for the
| cyclist (and not at all for the driver).
|
| [0] https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_
| risk_...
| throw0101a wrote:
| Instead of digging through that PDF, the charts on this
| post show how a higher speed can drastically increase the
| odds of fatalities:
|
| * https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/05/31/3-graphs-that-
| explain...
|
| Remember from physics class that kinetic energy is
| generated proportional to the _square_ of velocity.
| Doubling speed _quadruples_ energy.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Not only does speed increase the damage inflicted by a
| given collision, it also makes them more likely: there is
| less time available to see and respond to hazards, and
| the space required to stop also is proportional to
| (speed^2). So for a given road, the risk level (frequency
| * consequences) is probably even steeper than squared:
| perhaps more like (speed^3).
| clairity wrote:
| no, this is an all-too-common misconception, because
| you're missing the other half of the distribution where
| accidents were avoided because the car speeded past an
| accident that would have happened at a lower speed.
|
| speed increases the severity of an accident (e.g., more
| fatalities vs. injuries), but doesn't generally _cause_
| the accident. distractedness and impairment are
| overwhelmingly the primary causes of auto accidents. it's
| important for policy decisions that we keep this very
| clear, and why we have ineffective, revenue-oriented
| programs like speed enforcement rather than attention-
| oriented policies.
| acdha wrote:
| > To be fair, this behaviour isn't one-sided. Often
| bicycles, e-bikes and motorcycles squeeze through small
| gaps between cars moving slow'ish in packed traffic.
|
| This is conflating two different activities: when a
| bicyclist or motorcyclist is moving in space between cars,
| they're using space which is already open and it doesn't
| impose a risk to the driver of the vehicle or require the
| cars to move. That's distinct from people trying to
| illegally pass, which creates new demands for space and
| frequently endangers other road users and often obstruct
| oncoming traffic.
|
| The underlying issue here is that cars are the least
| efficient use of space by a significant margin. That means
| that drivers see other people taking advantage of space
| which they are unable to use and feel like they're losing
| in some way, which often leads to attempts to prevent it.
| When I lived in California, even though lane-splitting was
| legal I used to regularly see drivers move their vehicles
| to the edge of a lane or a few times even open their car
| door(!) to block motorcyclists. This was clearly because
| they perceived it as unfair that someone else wasn't jammed
| the same way they were, but misattributed the problem to
| the motorcylist rather than the drawbacks of their personal
| vehicle choices.
| itronitron wrote:
| They should switch to kph from mph so the effective speed
| limit is lowered to ~15mph while being labeled as 25kph.
| Drivers will _feel_ like their going '25' so less likely to
| feel inconvenienced :)
| kortex wrote:
| I rarely look at my speedometer. I set my speed almost
| entirely by feel, road conditions, and other cars.
|
| Which is kind of the point of the human-scale roads
| movement. If you design roads that _feel_ fast, people will
| _drive_ fast.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| Would only work for the current generation of drivers.
|
| Maybe we could add a few zeroes each few years? So in some
| decades they'll be driving ultra fast at 25000 _meters_ per
| hour? ;)
| HPsquared wrote:
| About half would just do 25 mph.
| fho wrote:
| Counterpoint: I regularly go 40-50 km/h on my (not e-)bike on
| a downhill rural road (40 km/h speed limit) and drivers still
| feel obligated to overtake me.
| frereubu wrote:
| Absolutely true, and that's happened to me plenty of times
| too. There's definitely a trigger in the minds of some
| drivers where seeing a cyclist means that they need to
| overtake them because the vast majority of the time the
| cyclist isn't going to be near the speed limit.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| I tend to overtake cyclists specifically for their safety.
| I figure that the farther I am from them, the lower a
| chance of a collision there is. If that holds true, then
| the only options when encountering one is to slow down and
| possibly impede other traffic, or speed up, overtake, and
| move away. This works for single cyclists. Groups would be
| different, but I've never encountered them.
| netrus wrote:
| If there is traffic, that means that your spot behind the
| cyclist will immediately be replaced by another car. If
| everyone acts like that, the biker caries a bubble of
| faster-than-average cars with them. Hardly ideal.
|
| I propose a different protocol: Slow down, and follow the
| cyclist until the situation allows to safely overtake the
| cyclist at a nice distance without speeding up too much.
| You will still travel faster than the cyclist, and you
| have actively contributed to the safety of the cyclist.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| If we're optimizing for the cyclist's safety wrt a "pack"
| of cars, they themselves should pull over and wait for
| the "pack" to pass. Otherwise, a driver doing their best
| to clear the hazard as quickly as possible is the ideal
| compromise. A cyclist that is impeding the natural flow
| of traffic with a slower speed than is normal for the
| road is a danger to himself and others; any individual
| driver cannot account for the behavior of other drivers,
| particularly those who might drive recklessly if impeded
| by others' attempts to wait out a slow cyclist. Your
| protocol increases the danger, per likely factors.
|
| The other wrinkle to this is that, outside of cities,
| cycling in America is a luxury sport. The people who
| partake in it are most in the position to force changes
| to infrastructure that supports safer cycling. NJB and
| other similar commentators make it clear that
| infrastructure improvement, not changes to driver
| behavior, is the most efficacious way to imrpove cyclist
| safety.
| rnantes wrote:
| Transportation and housing are intrinsically linked with
| affordability and quality of life. For North American society to
| improve we need to address these issues.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| Uh. What?
|
| > The function of a street is to serve as a platform for building
| wealth
|
| > the function of a road is to connect productive places
|
| Is your house located on a street or a road? If it's on a
| street... how is wealth being built? And how is it not connecting
| productive places (your home to your office) ? And how is
| connecting productive places not building wealth?
|
| This concept just doesn't make sense. Roads and streets are
| synonyms. Yes, I get that they have different definitions, but
| separating their usage actually leads to more problems than
| solutions.
|
| _" Make sure you look both ways when you cross the street."_ -
| So, I don't need to look both ways before crossing the _road_?
|
| _" There are so many potholes on the road."_ - So, are there
| none on the _street_?
|
| _" I think I will be late to work because of all the road works
| on the way."_ - So there's no works being done on the _street_?
|
| _" Kids, don't play in the street!"_ - Gotcha, we will just play
| in the _road_.
|
| _" No street level parking."_ - OK, but can I park on the
| _road_?
| eightysixfour wrote:
| > If it's on a street... how is wealth being built?
|
| It's tax revenue, aka wealth, for the city. That counts for
| homes and businesses.
|
| > And how is it not connecting productive places (your home to
| your office)?
|
| The main purpose of a street is access to the productive places
| which is different from a road. The main purpose of a road is
| connecting two areas with productive places, usually attached
| to streets. A street has businesses or homes lining it, a road
| should not.
|
| > but separating their usage actually leads to more problems
| than solutions.
|
| No it doesn't. You want transportation to be fast and efficient
| and you want streets to be safe and accessible.
|
| > Roads and streets are synonyms.
|
| No, they're similar but are designed for different things. My
| smartphone and my laptop are both computers but we call them
| different things because their uses are different.
| artisanspam wrote:
| Lots of people are recommending Not Just Bikes on YouTube in this
| thread, which is great. In my mind, walkable urban design is a
| super important topic that people need to be on board with if
| we're to get ourselves out of this climate crisis. So here are a
| few related YouTube recommendations I've come across:
|
| About Here (Specific to Vancouver, BC):
| https://www.youtube.com/c/AboutHere
|
| Oh the Urbanity: https://www.youtube.com/c/OhTheUrbanity
|
| City Beautiful: https://www.youtube.com/c/CityBeautiful
| oscribinn wrote:
| Stroad... stroad? STROAD? STROOOOOAAAADDDDDDDD
| Upvoter33 wrote:
| I've been a fan of "strong towns" for a while. I was wondering if
| anyone in the know here could answer: has it made much
| difference?
| floatrock wrote:
| Or more specifically, are there any towns out there that have
| gone all-in on this mindset?
|
| For example, there's lot of housing developers out there that
| build "eco-villages" housing developments -- the houses have
| solar or are well-insulated or there's a community garden or
| something else cute like that.
|
| But a real "eco village" isn't a housing development with a
| gate or two onto the local stroad, it's a
| walkable/bikable/mixed-development town where you don't need a
| car to go grab a cup of coffee. Outside of the old pre-car
| suburbs like Cambridge/Somerville, are there any towns that are
| actively all-in on these ideas?
| tbihl wrote:
| I've been following along and donating since Chuck was on
| EconTalk in 2014, and the answer seems to be a clear 'yes'.
| Chuck sometimes says that the goal, other than to disappear
| because they're no longer needed, is to ensure that no city
| council or planning commission can ever make one of these
| really stupid developments without the opposition of people who
| buy into Strong Towns ideals, so it has been about fighting for
| mindshare. To that effect, their ~hundredfold increase in
| meetup attendance and the repeating of their message on huge
| channels like Not Just Bikes are both indicators of success.
|
| They're trying to overthrow the design vernacular of an entire
| society, and that's necessarily hard despite that vernacular
| being dangerous, dehumanizing, and expensive. It's a team
| effort, but I think they're pulling their weight.
|
| If you're (reasonably) wondering what they, as a particular
| organization, bring to the table, look at Chuck. He's a
| conservative Catholic engineer from a small Midwest town, which
| is significant both because that's a rare voice in this space,
| and because his broad appeal indicates something the
| organization is doing well so that it can reach a group that
| doesn't jump for 'Vision Zero', 'look at Europe', etc.
|
| In his recent announcement that the fatal library crossing from
| his second book just brought about another death, Chuck is as
| feisty as I've ever heard him; he's out for blood. I think he
| might be on to something with the goal of bringing crippling
| lawsuits against city engineers who have been sheltering from
| responsibility by hiding behind MUTCD.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| I stopped reading after disagreeing with the fundamental
| assumptions in sentence two
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| "A stroad is a street/road hybrid."
|
| Which fundamental assumptions?
| _robbywashere wrote:
| I couldn't agree more with the article. Unfortunately as for
| America I think people wouldn't be very happy with turning their
| stroads into streets. There is a very toxic self centered car
| culture here; any impediment to it real or imaginary will make
| people very angry.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| > There is a very toxic self centered car culture here; any
| impediment to it real or imaginary will make people very angry.
|
| I have seen more comments and people talking about this toxic
| car culture than seen it in real life.
|
| Not everyone is young, healthy and rich enough to bike. There
| is a historic racial divide. White folks live in more bike
| friendly places.
|
| https://theconversation.com/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-cycl...
|
| https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollecti...
| _dain_ wrote:
| >Not everyone is young, healthy and rich enough to bike.
|
| This is such an alien attitude to me. Why would you need to
| be young or rich to ride a bike? Then I remember that
| American cities are so hostile to cyclists that, of course,
| only the young and rich would be able to do it there. Then
| this inequality is somehow taken to be a problem with the
| _bikes themselves_ rather than the cities that made cycling
| so dangerous. It's maddening to see.
|
| And cars are not cheap either, you know.
|
| Go to a European metropolis, you will see cyclists young and
| old, rich and poor, black and white.
|
| Is there a name for the following fallacy:
|
| "X is good, we should have more of X and make X available for
| more people." "No we can't do that, X is only for rich white
| people and therefore bad."
| vinaypai wrote:
| Yet the rest of the world seems to manage just fine.
| stephen_g wrote:
| No need to bring race into this - people into calling out car
| culture want to build and upgrade cities to make things
| better for everybody wherever they live. Bikes are obviously
| a lot cheaper than cars too, so better bike infrastructure
| everywhere reduces inequality in a way.
|
| Anyway, as to your other points - firstly, changing or
| building cities in a way that is not car centric doesn't mean
| there are no cars and nobody drives - obviously people still
| have to and will. Actually, building cities in a way that is
| not car-centric is safer for people who still drive, and
| there's a lot less traffic, so that's good. It's just even
| better for people who don't or can't drive (think of people
| under 16 years old, who have little independence to travel
| living in suburbs).
|
| It should be noted too that non car-centric cities are much
| better for e.g. elderly people to live in, because everything
| is much closer, and good cycle and walking paths are much
| better to ride mobility scooters on. Things being in walkable
| distance also helps people age better, because the exercise
| means you retain your mobility longer. It's pretty scary how
| as people age, you get to a point where if you're not staying
| active, you really quickly start to lose the ability to be
| active, which is a unfortunate spiral.
|
| The last thing - it's not just bikes (look up the YouTube
| channel with the same name, by the way - it's awesome).
| Improving zoning laws and building good public transport is
| also a key part of the puzzle, and helps solve lot of the
| issues as well.
| xorfish wrote:
| Did you know, that the Netherlands is rated higher than the
| US for car friendliness?
|
| Making biking, public transport and walking more attractive
| also improves the experience for the few that still need to
| use a car.
|
| Cars have a really low capacity. If you reserve the fastest
| route for biking or public transport and force cars to take a
| longer route then you will still be faster by car over the
| longer route than you would over the shorter route if cars
| where allowed there.
|
| Not just bikes did a video on just that and explains it much
| better than I have:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| > Not everyone is young, healthy and rich enough to bike.
|
| Bikes are orders of magnitude cheaper than a car. Both in
| terms of the infrastructure needed as well as the individual
| cost of bicycles. Good bicycle infrastructure also improves
| accessibility for those using mobility scooters, and a
| bicycle culture has hugely beneficial health benefits to
| individuals and society - not to mention the awful health
| effects of cars.
| occz wrote:
| Luckily, basically everyone who advocates for bicycle
| infrastructure also advocates for public transportation,
| which as I understand it in the U.S is more utilized by less
| privileged groups.
|
| I find it hilarious that anyone would ever try to start a
| debate making the standpoint that car-oriented development
| would be the less racist alternative, what with highways
| inside cities having been used to absolutely ravage areas
| where non-whites have lived, and suburbs basically having
| entirely excluded non-whites, by both economic and non-
| economic means. Not to mention the added economic strain of
| owning a car, making it even worse for those who are less
| well off economically.
| detaro wrote:
| Are you suggesting it's impossible to have cars while not
| having a "very toxic self centered car culture"?
|
| Also, bikes are not the only or natural alternative to cars.
| adrianN wrote:
| Not everyone is young enough (or old enough!) or healthy
| enough or rich enough to drive a car either. That's exactly
| the point of people advocating for less car-centric
| infrastructure. Walkable neighborhoods and public transit are
| much more inclusive.
| xmprt wrote:
| In what way do you need to be young and rich to ride a bike?
| Cars are significantly more expensive than bikes by almost 2
| orders of magnitude. And people can ride bikes well into
| their 60s. In the Netherlands, old and disabled people are
| allowed to use small single passenger electric vehicles in
| the bike lanes. Meanwhile you can't drive a car until you're
| 16 which seems like a bigger problem for child development.
| The restrictions you've listed are only problems in the US
| because of how exclusive riding bikes is in the US. It's too
| dangerous to be used for anything other than leisure or
| exercise for most people.
| irdc wrote:
| As a Dutch person: everybody bikes here. Young people, old
| people (sometimes with electrical assist bikes), women, men,
| people with and without an immigration background.
|
| It's the money sink that is a car that's the real privilege.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Not everyone is young, healthy and rich enough to bike.
|
| In the same way curb cuts improved the well being of way more
| than people in wheelchair, good, grade-separated walking and
| biking infrastructure makes moving around much easier and
| safer for way more than just cyclists.
|
| Not everyone is young, healthy, and rich enough to be able to
| own and operate a 2.5t vehicle at high speed. And where
| walkers, wheelchairs, and other assisting devices can mix
| with little difficulty with bike traffic, that's not the case
| with high-speed road traffic.
| csnover wrote:
| It was interesting for me to learn how this process happened in
| Copenhagen and Groningen in the 1960s and 1970s--people were
| angry, they protested, made death threats.[0] So it seems like
| re-pedestrianising areas has always made some people very angry
| everywhere, and that anger may not be so unique or significant
| a barrier as it might initially seem.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlXNVnftaNs
| himinlomax wrote:
| Just a few years ago, when Paris decided to pedestrianize (or
| rather restrict traffic on) rue des Rosiers, a small,
| commercial street in a historically Jewish neighborhood, shop
| owners were strongly opposed to it. When the work was
| completed, foot traffic in the shops doubled almost
| overnight. You can easily tell by the fact that long queues
| pop up in front of fallafel shops and delis at peak business
| hours that overflow in the street and that wouldn't have fit
| before on the tiny sidewalks.
|
| People are scared of change, even when the benefits are quite
| obvious. At least it was obvious to me when I was handed an
| hyperbolic leaflet opposing the change before it was done: I
| knew pedestrian streets were beneficial to shops, the area
| has no lack of transportation being in the center of Paris,
| there's no parking nearby, and you don't get in a car to go
| buy a damn sandwich in Paris unless you're completely fucking
| insane.
| cycomanic wrote:
| This is similar in the town in Germany where I grew up.
| When I was a kid they converted the central part of the
| inner city into a walking mall, no cars allowed (except for
| delivery traffic outside of certain hours). The shop owners
| were up in arms, saying it would be the death of the city,
| everyone would go shopping at big malls outside of town
| etc.. The exact opposite happened, the city is absolutely
| packed, people come from far to go shopping there, cafe's
| everywhere.
|
| Ironically, the city is considering expanding the
| pedestrian zones and shop owners are bringing forth the
| same arguments they did 30 years ago, as if they didn't
| learn anything.
| closeparen wrote:
| Suburbia is a tree. The best residential property is closest to
| the leaf nodes, since this minimizes through traffic (think
| cul-de-sac). The best commercial property is closest to the
| root, since this maximizes it (think McDonalds). The tree
| empties every morning and fills every night, placing enormous
| demands on the edges near the root. Those are generally the
| stroads. Slashing the capacity of a stroad/arterial by turning
| it to a street would cut off the entire subtree from the world.
| Homeowners are right to resist that. Their property would be
| useless.
|
| If we're fighting stroads, those have to become roads. One way
| to get this done is simply banish the businesses. But this
| strains capacity on the arterials even worse, since you now
| need to leave the suburb to go shopping.
|
| The other way is to push businesses down the tree, closer to
| houses, more decentralized. But the residents won't abide that
| either, on the theory that businesses will attract traffic to
| their sub-trees.
|
| To that I say: get over it. It's utterly insane to have a whole
| street for the private use of a few dozen families. It's
| literally impossible to make arterials big enough to
| compensate. You can have your street slow, but it's going to be
| part of a network and it's going to be used by more than just
| the hyper local community.
|
| But of course they don't see this as particularly less bad than
| total isolation, so they won't allow it either. The whole thing
| is fucked.
| farnsworth wrote:
| The takeaway here is a lesson about how we build cities, not
| that we should decrease the traffic capacity of some stroads
| and make no other changes.
| fragmede wrote:
| In practice, new cities, when that even happens, doesn't
| happen out of thin air either, not in the US at least. We
| don't build cities (too much infrastructure investment
| required), but even when we do, they don't go from 0-100
| mph and go from being a small sleepy town into a city
| overnight. History of a place thus dictates what the future
| of it will look like. How we build cities, effectively,
| involves decreasing traffic capacity in some places.
| Strongtowns.org has a large number of other changes, not
| just limiting stroads.
| mcv wrote:
| No, they need to move the commercial property closer to the
| leaves. Not at the leaves, but close enough that the distance
| is still walkable. That would really reduce car traffic, and
| therefore reduce stress on the road capacity.
| closeparen wrote:
| It would bring mild traffic to parts of the tree that
| currently have almost zero, which is unacceptable to the
| people living on them.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The cognitive dissonance is wild.
|
| The busiest and most economically vibrant areas in the US are
| the ones that deprioritize cars (main streets, downtowns,
| outdoor malls, bar districts).
|
| But if you try to change an existing area into a less car
| friendly area people absolutely lose their heads
| asdff wrote:
| There's no cognitive dissonance here really. People are just
| self interested. They don't want a bunch of bars because that
| means people will drive drunk and piss and puke all over
| their property stumbling back after last call. They don't
| want fewer lanes because its just going to turn their commute
| from work into even more of a bottleneck. They don't want a
| mall built near them because of the traffic bottlenecks it
| would create, but they want a fast road to get to a mall at
| just enough distance away to not be affected by these issues
| themselves.
| noobermin wrote:
| The "less lanes means bottle neck" bit is not even true due
| to induced demand.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
| asdff wrote:
| It's definitely true in certain cases, induced demand is
| not some law of physics. Take a one lane road and a two
| lane road. It's pretty common for one lane roads to end
| up clogged up due to left turning traffic that's unable
| to clear intersections fast enough. On a two lane road,
| traffic that goes straight or right will have room two
| maneuver around the left turning traffic. And on top of
| that, planners for highways are really planning for
| throughput rather than commuting times. When you widen a
| freeway, speeds don't change or might even go down, but
| total throughput goes up accordingly and that's whats
| important when you have a mile of trucks backed up at
| your port.
| mcv wrote:
| If they're afraid that a mall will create traffic
| bottlenecks, maybe build those malls so they're easy to
| reach on foot, by bike, or with public transport. That way
| you don't get that traffic bottleneck.
| asdff wrote:
| People buy shopping carts worth of stuff at malls. That's
| not exactly easy to schlep on a bike or a bus for most
| people especially if you are in poor shape. A lot of
| people in the U.S. today live in walkable areas, but opt
| to just take a climate controlled car with a spacious
| trunk 5 mins to the grocery store vs walk 15 minutes one
| way and back with 25 pounds of groceries in poor weather.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Right, but like everything else in the US right now, the
| split is obvious along political lines. People who like
| cities are left, people who like suburbs/rural living/driving
| everywhere are right.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| I truly believe the reason has more to do with being
| antisocial than anyone cares to admit. It's not always the
| car's mobility that people enjoy so much as the barrier it
| creates from the outside world.
| closeparen wrote:
| Socialization needs norms. It's no accident that relatively
| urbanized civilizations have relatively strict codes of
| behavior. America's wild and free frontier spirit, God
| bless it, is less fun in a crowded subway.
| noobermin wrote:
| And soul crushing traffic is wild and free? Or suburban
| strip malls are wild and free? Or endless cul de sacs?
| There is a lot of imposed structure to suburbia too,
| specifically because it is planned.
| mcv wrote:
| In fact, it has more imposed structure, exactly because
| of the unreasonably restrictive zoning laws in the US.
| Allow more variety and you get more choice.
| [deleted]
| maxerickson wrote:
| My favorite example of this is something I saw in a local
| bicycle planning study. A 4 lane stretch about 6 blocks long
| was converted to 2 lanes with parking and wider sidewalks (with
| the idea that people will naturally drive a bit slower with
| less of the street devoted to traffic). Someone was livid that
| it had happened, ranting about delays at the light on one end
| of the stretch. At busy times, the typical wait at the light is
| for the green (so not even a full cycle). Very occasionally a
| couple of cars don't make the busiest left on the first green.
| refurb wrote:
| The truth is there isn't that much demand for high density
| housing and walkable neighborhoods. They are mostly attractive
| to young childless adults. Some of them stick around once they
| have kids, but it's rare and usually reserved for the well-off
| who can afford private schools and family-sized homes. In SF
| you've got the parents who are happy to put their kids and
| groceries on the back of their bike, but most look to find
| something a bit closer to suburbia.
|
| I would say communities like San Mateo or Belmont on the
| peninsula are what's in demand. Small "cute" downtowns with
| trendy shops and dining, but also enough parking so you can
| drive, surrounded by single family homes, big parks and open
| spaces and mixed multi-unit apartments/condos. People can have
| the benefits of their own property, exclusive space and enough
| space for a family, while enjoying a "downtown" experience when
| they want to.
|
| _"California is changing because of a desire of many millions
| of people to have something that looks like the conventional,
| traditional California Dream: a house on a lot in a
| neighborhood of similar houses on lots,"_ [1]
|
| [1]https://www.wsj.com/articles/californians-flee-the-coast-
| to-...
| noobermin wrote:
| This is patently false given how expensive housing in cities
| is. It does vary but walkable neighborhoods can be pretty
| expensive in North America.
| occz wrote:
| >The truth is there isn't that much demand for high density
| housing and walkable neighborhoods.
|
| Real estate prices for high density housing and walkable
| neighborhoods disproves this statement outright. As for why
| this type of housing is not built more frequently, there is a
| fairly simple explanation: they are illegal to build under
| zoning laws, which massively favour single-family homes.
|
| > Some of them stick around once they have kids, but it's
| rare and usually reserved for the well-off who can afford
| private schools and family-sized homes. In SF you've got the
| parents who are happy to put their kids and groceries on the
| back of their bike, but most look to find something a bit
| closer to suburbia.
|
| There's a simple explanation for this: cities in the U.S are
| unsafe in particular for children due to the massive
| infestation of cars and car-oriented infrastructure. Suburbs
| appear to be the only alternative, but they are pretty damn
| harmful to the development of children - basically being a
| prisoner inside your house until you are old enough to drive
| a car is quite frankly demeaning.
| quadrangle wrote:
| It's mostly a case of people not knowing what they really
| want. Demand-driven economy has a place, but it's definitely
| not something to accept simplistically.
|
| Famous examples: people wanted better horse-carriages and
| didn't anticipate cars. People wanted better keyboards on
| their blackberry-style phones, not an iPhone. Etc etc.
|
| Nobody who experiences life in the Netherlands where biking
| and walking is actually safe ends up wishing they could
| return to stroad-style car-dependency. Everyone who says they
| prefer it is just saying that they don't know any better.
|
| And any appeal to saying we have to keep making dangerous
| garbage sprawl _because_ that 's what people demand, that's
| disengenuous nonsense.
|
| Strong Towns actually has the answer to this, the one that
| doesn't involve being condescending to people in sprawlville,
| USA. They point out that EVERYONE when you ask them about
| their priorities, especially for the streets where they live,
| they _always_ say they care about safety, capacity, cost, and
| speed, basically in that order. But engineering assumptions
| put it more like speed, capacity, cost, safety.
|
| (Wish I could give you the optimal link, but the one thing
| Strong Towns is weakest at is making it easy to find the
| right links in their enormous backlog of articles; the site
| search tool is really annoying; I know the concepts I'm
| mentioning are discussed multiple places, including in their
| two books)
| sokoloff wrote:
| > It's mostly a case of people not knowing what they really
| want
|
| While this is possible to be true, I suspect on a per-
| utterance basis, it's wrong way more often than it's right.
| People often do know what they want; it's just
| inconveniently not the same as what the utterer prefers.
| quadrangle wrote:
| "really want" is a poor phrase, but it was intended to
| mean not "what people sincerely/honestly want" but
| instead "what people would choose if they really had
| deeply informed understanding of the options".
|
| People's utterances about what they want are almost never
| in light of the question of what they "really want". We
| rarely have the space and perspectives to reflect on and
| learn about what we "really want" to be able to even
| answer that question.
|
| Most of life is people having low-level fears about loss
| and acceptance and so on and expressing our wants from
| that position. We rarely settle into our deeper values
| enough to even ask what we "really want" let alone find
| answers.
| refurb wrote:
| I'm not convinced. It's not like your "better horse-
| carriage" example because the option already exists and
| people reject it. My colleagues in the Bay Area all lived
| in SF, then quickly moved to the subrurbs when they got
| older. Sure, there is no pedestrian/biking utopia in the
| US, but there are places where you can pretty much get by
| without a car. And many people don't choose to live there.
|
| I also spent some time in Singapore and it seems much
| closer to the Strongtowns ideal than the US - dense
| housing, top-notch transit (most don't have cars),
| carefully planned development with first-floor shops on
| every block, lots of greenspace and public areas.
|
| And when I talked to my colleagues you know what their
| desired was? Make enough money to buy a car and get the
| equivalent of a single family home. They lived in dense
| housing and got by without a car not out of choice but out
| of affordability. Again, not all of them (many who could
| afford cars choose not to buy one), but it was a pretty
| common theme.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| > My colleagues in the Bay Area all lived in SF, then
| quickly moved to the subrurbs when they got older. Sure,
| there is no pedestrian/biking utopia in the US, but there
| are places where you can pretty much get by without a
| car. And many people don't choose to live there.
|
| Agree. I don't understand the claims in this discussion
| about kids not being able to get around in suburbs on
| their own. I lived part of my childhood in a dense
| metropolis and part in a suburb. I was able to get around
| the suburb just fine on my own on a bicycle. This was
| before bike lanes (which many suburbs now have), and I
| would just ride on the sidewalk - this is perfectly safe
| and legal.
|
| > And when I talked to my colleagues you know what their
| desired was? Make enough money to buy a car and get the
| equivalent of a single family home.
|
| This isn't surprising to me, particularly if people know
| what the two different lifestyles are like (with and
| without a car). I am more of an advocate for different
| cities to have different styles of living for different
| people. The big issue in discussions like this, is a
| belief that there must be only one way to do things, and
| it must be forced onto every town and city through
| aggressive activism, which people who are older or have
| children or other responsibilities just don't have time
| to combat. That's not just disruptive but also unethical,
| in my opinion.
|
| This thread also has several people with a fetishistic
| obsession with life in the Netherlands. Granted - the Not
| Just Bikes channel that many have mentioned is run by
| someone who moved to NL - so the bias there is expected.
| But lots of people who fantasize about NL would not
| actually like living there. To be blunt about it, most of
| the Dutch cities are soulless and boring. At first the
| immediate walk-out-the-door access to local
| businesses/destinations was charming. But ultimately I
| felt that the anti-car lifestyle led to a cultural lack
| of spontaneity and people implicitly had committed to a
| limited life that is centered around just what is nearby.
| Ironically, unlike the GP, I felt those living in NL who
| reported high levels of happiness were the ones who
| didn't know there were other options.
| quadrangle wrote:
| The issues are well-discussed in NotJustBikes
| specifically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul_xzyCDT98
|
| It's not just a vague grass-is-greener issue. And sure,
| Dutch cities can be soulless and boring by some measures,
| but that's the norm for American suburbia too.
|
| It's not just a matter of self-report of happiness, the
| support for the Netherlands style of living is strong by
| a ton of measures.
|
| Here's the thing: stuff like the eyes-on-the-street
| effect are HUGE. A sprawly American suburb that still has
| a neighborhood park where there are _reliably_ dozens of
| kids who know each other... that works, because it 's
| safe enough to let your kids go to the park with their
| friends without adult supervision. The fact is, other
| kids there means it's not bizarre to see one isolated
| seemingly-abandoned kid, and if they get hurt, there are
| other kids around to help them or to run home or call
| their parents etc.
|
| It's not strictly a matter of cars. The whole issue of
| "stroad" vs road isn't anti-car. Roads are for _cars_
| mainly. Stroads are fundamentally dangerous. They are
| part of the development style that makes it unsafe for
| younger kids to get out on their bikes and be
| independent.
|
| Given the choice of dense urban life vs car-dependent-
| sprawl, it's understandable why many people choose the
| latter. The problem is the missing-middle. Why is it
| _illegal_ in most places to build moderate-dense walkable
| mixed-use neighborhoods that are neither densely urban
| nor car-dependent-sprawl? The capacity of people to
| choose different lifestyles along this continuum is
| missing. The rare places in the middle are crazy
| expensive because demand far outstrips supply. So, we
| really don 't get anywhere with a conversation focused on
| which of the limited polarized choices people are stuck
| with in the USA.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| I suspect this will also suffer from the "grass is
| greener" problem. Those who live in cities will
| romanticise suburban living, and vice versa in suburbs.
|
| Culture also matters; in the west the city is often seen
| as a place for single professionals, rather than
| somewhere to build your life long term. This will affect
| perceptions, for good or ill.
|
| Also, although you can get by without a car in many
| locations, I think there's probably a relatively stark
| difference in how livable that is depending on how it's
| implemented. If your city is filled with two lane roads
| through the core that's clearly much worse than the
| Netherlands equivalent.
| xmprt wrote:
| What were the reasons your friend gave for not wanting to
| live in SF? The common reasons I see are often that it's
| too expensive, there's too much crime and homeless
| people, and it's noisy and full of traffic. All of these
| are solvable problems.
|
| Cost is fixed by building more housing and traffic is
| solved by making the Bay Area less car centric (public
| transportation in the Bay Area isn't terrible but it can
| still be a lot better). I don't have great solutions for
| crime and homelessness but building more housing all over
| will definitely help reduce it and better social safety
| nets can help eliminate it entirely.
|
| Additionally, you don't need to build a second SF to
| solve the problem. In fact, most dense housing can be
| built for relatively cheap. You don't need to build 20
| story buildings everywhere.
| refurb wrote:
| Their reason often came down to "raising a family of four
| in 700 sq ft 2 bed kinda sucks".
|
| For the same amount of money they could get a 1,100 at ft
| home, with a yard, lots of families close by and good
| schools.
|
| You cant "build more housing" if the desirable housing is
| a single family home with a yard. SF is out of space.
|
| Like I said in my other reply, countries where raising a
| family in a 2 bed apartment is mostly due to cost - they
| can't afford more space. American has plenty of space.
| acdha wrote:
| > Their reason often came down to "raising a family of
| four in 700 sq ft 2 bed kinda sucks".
|
| > For the same amount of money they could get a 1,100 at
| ft home, with a yard, lots of families close by and good
| schools.
|
| You can't build tons of detached single family homes but
| you certainly can build higher-density housing with
| public parks and playgrounds. Similarly, I'd say the lack
| of families and schools is more of a symptom than a cause
| of not having the infrastructure to support families. In
| the United States there's a lot of marketing, culture,
| and laws which mean the detached single-family suburban
| home model is heavily subsidized but if you look at the
| better U.S. cities or many examples internationally,
| there's no shortage of families living in smaller places
| using shared public space -- even a small playground is
| going to be more fun than the average back yard.
|
| Schools are similarly prone to this: standardized test
| scores closely track family socioeconomic status so if
| you're in an area where there's limited family-friendly
| housing, lack of areas for kids to exist safely without
| getting hit by cars, etc. the scores will go down as the
| most affluent parents move without any change in the
| quality of the school's education.
| quadrangle wrote:
| Seems we're talking past one another. The point isn't
| that people can _afford_ whatever they want, the point is
| that people don 't directly _want_ car-dependent suburban
| sprawl.
|
| Sure, people want the impossible: quiet beautiful
| wilderness where you can also walk to school, groceries,
| concerts, and medical centers.
|
| But the question at hand is actually how much of all the
| good things we are capable of having. And we really can
| do a lot better than sprawlville USA without the only
| alternative being San Francisco.
|
| https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/11/3/our-self-
| impos...
| zip1234 wrote:
| Yes, the funny thing is that because cities allow so many
| cars in the city center, congestion, pollution, and noise
| are everywhere, which makes people want to move to the
| suburbs, which means they have to drive to get anywhere,
| which makes congestion, pollution, and noise everywhere
| in the suburbs, which makes them want to move further
| out...
| acdha wrote:
| It makes a lot more sense when you look at the history.
| American suburbs exploded in popularity after the
| successes of the civil rights movement started cutting
| into the ability of white people to live in a city
| without having to share public spaces with black people.
| Public pools were closed around the country, tons of
| people moved into suburbs which had barriers of various
| levels of subtlety where they could create a de facto
| segregated school system, etc.
|
| Since that was the class of people with the most money
| and significant political power, city planning
| departments were heavily dominated by the idea that the
| people who mattered the most weren't actually residents
| for many decades, especially since it's always easier to
| continue a direction than radically reconsider the
| approach.
|
| I saw a good example of that here in DC a couple of years
| ago when our _pedestrian safety_ project was being led by
| an older traffic engineer who could not stop talking
| about cars per hour as his primary metric. It was very
| clear that this was a deeply engrained way of thinking,
| and that it had never been subject to much critical
| analysis. When he retired and a much younger replacement
| got the job, they treated neighborhood safety as their
| top priority -- and since they actually ran simulations
| rather than relying on their gut, it turned out to have
| almost no impact on overall commute speeds because all
| the reckless drivers were doing was getting to the next
| backup slightly faster.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I agree there isn't much real demand for high density housing
| as much as reluctant demand. What I mean by that, is that no
| one actually wants to live in high density areas, but they go
| for it when it gives them access to a desirable location they
| otherwise can't afford, or if they genuinely want that
| lifestyle, which I would argue is age-based more than
| anything. In reality, most people don't like the downsides of
| high density like crowded public spaces (for example parks),
| dealing with the habits of bad neighbors (like playing loud
| music at odd times), increased crime that correlates with
| urban areas, poor schools guided by populist policies, and so
| on. If you're young, you might put up with those downsides to
| get back access to bars or more social networking. But as you
| age, the value of those things drops significantly for most
| people.
|
| As for walkability - its utility is vastly overblown in my
| opinion. Your note about childless adults rings true for me,
| and the only parents I know who care about walk scores are
| the ones who are themselves urbanist activists (few in
| number). Even then, when it came time to purchase a home,
| walkability was not a decision maker for those couples. To
| me, that was a signal that even parents who were very anti-
| car in their political sentiment ultimately didn't put enough
| of a value on the pro-walk/bike lifestyle to prioritize it
| when their money was on the line.
|
| I also think it is impractical to not have a car. If you want
| to live a rich life with access to diverse activities,
| instead of being boxed into a 15 minute radius or your metro
| line, then you need a car. Who wants to deny their children
| the memories of day trips and the thrill of exploration? And
| if you have a car, then you already have the vehicle you need
| to live in a more suburban neighborhood, where you can enjoy
| additional space and safety while still accessing commercial
| areas in a time efficient manner.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| If you have the average 2 children with the average ~ 3 years
| between children, then these concerns are only relevant for
| roughly 21 years of life. If the average person lives to 80
| and becomes an adult at 18, then you have 62 years as an
| adult. Only about a third of that time is spent caring for
| your children. That's still 40 years remaining. None of that
| has to happen on a place with large lot sizes and good
| schools for the kids, even if you concede that having kids
| requires large lot sizes and good schools.
| refurb wrote:
| Clearly children are a driver for a suburban lifestyle but
| it's not the only driver. Plenty of kid-less people choose
| to live in the suburbs.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Sure and plenty of them live in the city as well. Many of
| my friends' parents moved back to cities a decade or so
| ago when my cohort was going to college. I'm merely
| saying that having kids may increase demand for suburban
| housing by folks who otherwise would be interested in
| urban housing, but that doesn't permanently shift demand
| toward suburban housing.
| artisanspam wrote:
| This[1] Pew Research article shows that, pre-pandemic, it was
| about a 50-50 split between car-centric + low-density and
| walkable + high-density living. It is now 60-40 due to the
| pandemic. I would bet that it goes back to 50-50 in a few
| years once the pandemic slows down.
|
| So yes, there's almost an equal amount of demand for this
| type of housing.
|
| [1]https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/26/more-
| americ...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I visited Palm Springs, CA recently, and it was all stroads.
|
| At midnight, they actually functioned as good roads; I probably
| averaged 47mph.
|
| During the day, I averaged about half of that because of all the
| lights -- even when I didn't stop at a red, the traffic in front
| of me did.
| dijit wrote:
| Wow, that's a really weird coincidence, I was literally watching
| (listening) to this video on youtube when I saw this pop up.
|
| One thing strikes me though: there's network effects to
| "Stroads"; in the USA if you designed a shopping district or
| neighbourhood as being "roads to streets" with limited parking
| (as is suggested) then the people operating businesses or living
| in that neighbourhood would be worse off... because _everyone
| judges things in ability to get to it by car_. It 's almost a
| culture of cars and it's probably impossible to remove, but first
| movers in this space will be the losers, even if in the long run
| everyone wins.
|
| It's game theory at a national scale; and we're all losing.
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| Also sadly the moment all the parking is removed from
| businesses and concentrated in public lots do you really
| believe it will be free to park? If you've ever been to a town
| like Gatlinburg, Tennessee you'd understand just how nerve-
| wracking it is to feel comfortable parking on the edge of town.
| "Oh this is 3 hour parking will we make it back in time", "oh
| this lot is $7/hr wow"...
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Parking is a limited resource and probably should be
| expensive if we want to limit the number of cars on the road.
|
| Parking can be free if the citizens of said city decide to
| issue a bond and build a bigger garage. But there's no free
| lunch, you pay for it one way or another.
|
| In order to de-car American life, it's going to take some
| frustration with this situation to drive people and
| businesses to locations better suited for fewer cars. Driving
| is only going to keep getting more expensive until this
| happens.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Interestingly, consider the late victoria period. Here there were
| no problems distinguishing between Road and Street because the
| _vehicles_ involved were quite different. A steam train did not
| drive to your house or shop, and a horse and carriage would not
| make a cross country freight (well it did happen ...)
| ehnto wrote:
| When I first read this it was a revelation of vocabulary, but
| also helped me solidify a bunch of nebulous discontent for
| infrastructure in my city. Why did it suck quite so much? How
| could a simple 4 lane road be implemented so poorly as to cause
| -this-? Because it was trying to wear two hats. A main artery,
| and a commerce precinct. As the article points out, they are
| incompatible without huge compromises.
| drivers99 wrote:
| Cool seeing strongtowns here. Not Just Bikes is a YouTube channel
| that has helped popularize them recently, and has a lot of other
| videos about what makes living in the Netherlands so great (i.e.
| it's not just bikes, although that's a big part of it).
|
| Here's Not Just Bikes' video about Stroads:
| https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM
| anitil wrote:
| It really is a nice channel.
|
| I can't find the exact video right now but I remember one where
| he compared a horrid stroad with a lovely Dutch street. The
| Dutch version contained two single lane streets, bike lanes, a
| lightrail line and lovely shade from all the trees. And
| ironically the second had a higher carrying capacity because
| single-occupant vehicles are just terrible at moving people.
| bo0tzz wrote:
| > I can't find the exact video right now
|
| I think that's probably because it was a Patreon exclusive ;)
| However, his recent video includes a similar comparison:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds-v2-qyCc8
| burlesona wrote:
| The popularization is more likely the other way around: Strong
| Towns has been around 12 years, has a huge audience, and is a
| sponsor and promoter of Not Just Bikes.
|
| I agree it's an exceptional YouTube channel though. :)
| drivers99 wrote:
| On YouTube, Strong Towns has 9.7K subscribers and Not Just
| Bikes has 425K. NJB's video about stroads has 1.3M views
| while Strong Towns' videos about stroads have 62K and 63K and
| are 3 and 8 years old. I've only seen people talk about
| stroads online when NJB made his videos.
|
| Here's their newer stroad video though, which is pretty good:
| https://youtu.be/OZ1HhLq-Huo
| masklinn wrote:
| > Strong Towns has been around 12 years, has a huge audience,
| and is a sponsor and promoter of Not Just Bikes.
|
| St might have a huge audience amongst professional city
| planners, but in the "public consciousness" NJB is what
| popularised both ST's concepts and knowledge of ST as an
| organisation.
|
| NJB is closing in on half a million subscribers and has 11
| vids above a million (one above 3), by comparison ST's
| youtube channel is under 20k subs and their biggest video is
| 10 years old and has 350k views. Their 2 STROAD videos follow
| with 60k each, NJB's top stroad video has 1.3m views. Hell, 3
| videos of NJB's "strong towns" series have more views than
| _the entire strong towns channel_.
|
| The "bicycle dutch" channel is larger than ST, and it's
| essentially a cycling vlog.
|
| You say that ST is a sponsor and promoter of NJB, but NJB has
| a much larger lay audience _and regularly plugs donating to
| strong towns_.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| I hate driving to the city because I loathe these stroads but I
| don't see a way out. The ship has sailed, the roads are built. I
| don't think there is enough money to build ourselves out of this.
| This is the problem I see with most infrastructure in US. We
| overshot so much that the burden of maintenance is too great.
| It's easier to build once than maintain indefinitely.
| mcv wrote:
| The ship hasn't sailed. Yes, the roads are built, but they can
| be changed. New roads are constructed every day, and they could
| be better. And better roads will eventually save money, because
| of less accidents and more efficient land use. And they will
| bring in more money because they attract and enable more
| businesses and increase the value of land. It's still a good
| investment to look for improvement.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| I have great respect for your optimism.
| Vinnl wrote:
| The good news is that the Netherlands has come a long way
| too. It used to be far more car-centric, but over the years
| has steadily made improvements as part of ongoing
| maintenance. And now we're at the point where we're even
| re-digging canals that had been paved over for a 12-lane
| motorway [1] in the 70s.
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/14/utrecht-
| restor...
| timwaagh wrote:
| That road was a failed experiment. There's no parking
| space in the center. there aren't any big access roads
| towards it. There was little logic supporting a broad,
| short road to nowhere.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Yeah of course, but it does demonstrate how much of a
| U-turn infrastructure thinking in the Netherlands has
| made. We came from thinking such a road was a good idea
| (and paving that canal was a big offer to make for such
| an experiment), to creating the infrastructure we have
| today.
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