Stroads — street/road hybrids — are the futon of urban transportation design

If you’ve ever sat or slept on a futon, or more accurately, attempted to sit or sleep on one, you know that it’s a “worst of both worlds” hybrid, being an uncomfortable bed that transforms into an equally uncomfortable couch. People buy them because they think they’re getting a lot of bang for the buck, even though they’re really wasting money on an inadequate solution for two needs.

Stroads are the futon design, being the combination of two separately useful things into a single, unusable frankenthing:

• Streets: Human-scale places that provide people places to work, live, and play. Streets are primarily for people, and speed limits are typically 15 – 30 km/h (10 – 20 mph).
• Roads: Car-scale places that provide cars a way to get quickly from place to place. Roads are primarily for cars and trucks, and speed limits are typically 50 – 80 km/h (30 – 50 mph); anything faster is a proper highway.

Stroads have the highway-width lanes and wide turn lanes that roads should have, but have speed limits that are set too low for their size, and are designed to slow cars down in spite of having all these highway-style amenities. They also have the residences and businesses that a street should have, but thanks to their highway design, are scaled too large for people, and actually weaken the local economy, aesthetics, and sense of community.

In the video below, Chuck Marohn, who calls himself a “recovering traffic engineer”, talks about stroads and suggests a way to fix them: by changing them back into streets (for people) and roads (for cars):

Chuck’s got some good ideas for making better, stronger, more viable and vibrant cities and towns on his blog, Strong Towns. It’s a worthwhile read.

Worth reading

• Shared Space: A post on Strong Towns that tries to explain the concept of “shared space”, which is sort of radical in North America, where cars are given priority.
• Defining the Worst Type of Street Design (The Atlantic): A look at Chuck Mahron’s “stroad” concept.
• The Stroad to Bloulevard Tumblr.
• One example of a “stroad” with an artificially low speed limit (Transitized)