New Strong Towns Matrix on Road vs. Street Widens Definition of Stroad

Our Strong Towns group posted a link to a recent note at Strong Towns HQ on safety efforts, "Here Is What Vision Zero Should Really Look Like."

Strong Towns

It it was a new matrix on the difference between a street and a road. As I read it, the matrix expands the definition of the central hybrid they call a stroad, now seeing a stroad as nearly every street designed and posted for 16mph to 50mph. That's basically the whole of a city's street network!

In 2012, Strong Towns said

Anytime you are driving between 30 and 50 miles per hour, you are likely on a STROAD, which has become the default option for American traffic corridors.

And here's a Strong Towns graphic from 2015, which also shows a narrower speed range for a stroad (and a broader range for a "safe" street or road).

Strong Towns, 2015

Strong Towns is right that we should radically alter our understanding of safe city speed. A redefined stroad with an edge at 15mph could help with this, and they might say 20mph is still a pinch high. But a threshold of 20mph does dovetail with our current conversation on a "Twenty is Plenty" culture shift. So it might be convenient to fudge a little and say 20mph rather than 15mph so that there is a more consistent message on safe speed.

Since we've been critiquing the sidewalkification of bicycling lately here, we'll assert another link.

The sidewalkification of bicycling leaves stroads and their dangerous speeds intact. It affirms the autoist paradigm for speed and flow in urban contexts. This is the situation on Battle Creek Road at Mahonia Crossing. Battle Creek Road appears to be signed for 40mph in this segment, nearly the maximum danger for a stroad. 

The project on McGilchrist has a very similar problem, and the forthcoming Marine Drive seems likely to have it also.

Another reason to be generally skeptical about the sidewalkification of bicycling is that it doesn't make the whole street more safe and doesn't fit very well, if at all, with any genuine conception of Vision Zero. It seems to offer safety for people biking, and seems to meet a bureaucratic "complete street" standard, but it adds hazard for people on foot, and lets governments and planners off the hook for designing with safer auto speeds. It's a kind of stroad retention policy.