Charles Marohn – he of Strong Towns – coined the term stroad to describe the street-road hybrid, something that does neither job very well. Or as he says in the current issue of Better! Cities and Towns:
The STROAD design is the futon of transportation alternatives. Where a futon is a piece of furniture that serves both as an uncomfortable couch and an uncomfortable bed, a STROAD moves cars at speeds too slow to get around efficiently but too fast to support productive private sector investment. The result is an expensive highway and a declining tax base.
He targets, in particular, the state (or provincial) highway that cuts through our small towns and cities, like Harvey Avenue through Kelowna:
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The single piece of public infrastructure doing the most damage to the value of the neighborhood we are studying is the state highway. Its design is sucking the value out of the entire place. Like most highways, the design through this urban neighborhood is indistinguishable from the design used on the open road outside of town. This helps the engineers at the DOT to theoretically meet their mandate — move as many cars as possible as quickly as possible — but does little to create a platform for creating, let alone retaining, real financial value.
What to do? Marohn advocates shared space – something unlikely to be approved for Harvey, but just might be the ticket for the streets to the north, including Bernard, the traditional high street of this Okanagan ciy:
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The classic New Urbanist response is that when a highway enters a city or town, it should become a boulevard. Judging by the generous cross section of Harvey Avenue shown in the photo, there is plenty of space to provide a full boulevard treatment with a central treed median, generous sidewalk realm etc., and still carry a significant traffic load as a through town route.
A fully “outed” new urbanist, I’ve become a bit obsessed by boulevards of late, but I hugely prefer multiway boulevards to the central treed median you suggest. MWBs properly address Marohn’s critique, by providing two streets and a through road. And they make a much larger “pedestrian” realm, increasing property values and foot traffic on the sides.
I’m gathering examples at http://stroadtoboulevard.tumblr.com/ and would welcome suggestions.
Hey Neil,
I really like what you’ve done on your Stroad blog.
Do you think that Stroad will become more and more popular over the years? It seems really new to me.
Francis,
Living Room Furniture
Harvey is similar to the TCH through Duncan; what was once a bypass of the old downtown has morphed into a strip of auto-centric development. For Pentintonites and others heading for points north/east, it’s already slow enough. Maybe we’ve learned from that; the Nanaimo bypass remains just that; a bypass.
As for Bernard, we had a room at the Royal Anne looking over Bernard for a few nights a few years back, what traffic there was was already slow and calm.. it doesn’t really *go* anywhere; think “cruising” a la American Graffiti.