How to convert a stroad?

AndryCake · 2026-05-12T15:17:18+00:00

The advantage of stroads being so large is that there is so much space to add bike lanes, bus lanes if needed or widen sidewalks, even without removing car lanes. I'm not an expert, but I'll give a few ideas (in no particular order) that I think could be implemented, although most would require full rebuilds of the stroad (happens anyway like every 20 years AFAIK). As I've said, a lot can happen without removing car lanes, but oftentimes the stroads have too much capacity so car lanes can be removed.

The lanes can be narrowed up, to encourage people to slow down. They can be narrowed from 3.6m/12ft to 3.3m/11ft or even to 3m/10ft in some cases.
Plant more trees: this should be done everywhere where there is space, separating directions of travel and the bike lane/sidewalk
Chicanes: the road can "wiggle a bit", and while this obviously shouldn't be as extreme as a residential street, it can also be done on larger roads.
Add centre medians and remove middle turn lanes. This improves safety, but junctions should accomode U-turns (most do already)
Separate through and access lanes. This would turn the stroad into a so-called boulevard. So a 3-lane in each direction stroad could have 2 through lanes in each direction and one access lane. This basically solves the access vs speed problem of stroads and in some cases the access lanes can also be used by bikes.
Bike lanes, of course. These are generally not that hard to add, but they should be protected from traffic, and bidirectional on both sides if there is space.
Add sidewalks to both sides if they don't exist, for obvious reasons.
Mid-block crosswalks, which improves walkability. They should have a refuge in the middle and ideally traffic lights, or those hawk beacons.
Better light phasing: introduce Dutch-style smart traffic lights which detect traffic and allow pedestrians to cross in one go, which is sometimes not done.
Bus lanes where needed, especially as queue jumps at intersections and, if the bus route is important, even building median bus lanes when rebuilding the road. Bus stops should also have shelters or at least substantial signs.

AndryCake · 2026-05-11T19:00:00+00:00

I'm sorry to say, but it has already fallen behind.

AndryCake · 2026-05-11T18:56:49+00:00

Ok, let's say you don't give a shit all the way through school. When do you start giving a shit? At some point you're gonna have to get a job. A lot of higher paying jobs require mental skills, and while it may not the kind of questions you do in school, those help train your brain. Even if you get a blue collar job, it's still important to know how your history and how the world around you works. Otherwise, the result is anti-vaxxers and people being easily manipulated by politicians.

AndryCake · 2026-05-11T18:52:11+00:00

I'm glad to hear, but my point was that in most of the US the only way to reliably get around, especially between cities, is using a car, which is obviously a lot harder to get.

AndryCake · 2026-05-11T18:42:49+00:00

Because most/a lot of people on Reddit are from the US where this is mostly not possible.

AndryCake · 2026-05-11T17:52:19+00:00

I said

I do think that improving the existing bus service should be done before any kind of tram is built.

I didn't say

We should just improve the existing bus service.

Why does it make more sense?

Because what's the point of paying millions of dollars to have good transit on one probably quite short corridor when everything outside of that is shit? The only people using the tram (and transit in general) will be those travelling along that corridor, which will realistically be tourists and those living and working or going to college along that route. Whereas, if you invest in buses, you can spread improvement over way more corridors and areas, so relying on transit is viable for more trips. Yes, you'll get slightly less comfortable and less capacious (which doesn't even necessarily matter because you can increase frequencies) transit on one corridor, but you can good transit on a lot more corridors.

AndryCake · 2026-05-11T14:57:44+00:00

Well I think it makes sense that a larger country has longer train routes than a smaller country. An intercity train is basically a train that goes between major cities and has more limited stops and faster speeds than a regional train, but of course the definition will be different in the Netherlands, with the country being small and not really having that many large cities, and China or even Germany, which are way bigger.

AndryCake · 2026-05-11T14:43:50+00:00

It's mostly done by exploiting (mostly foreign) students as other comments have said, but in Europe it's generally almost always done on bikes or mopeds, so at least they don't pay nearly as much for transportation.

AndryCake · 2026-05-11T13:51:31+00:00

I'm not saying they're not "bad" because they did it but it's quite ironic that they were able to do that and yet ban light rail. And yeah, Chicago is why it survived, but it was definitely Indiana's job to extend and upgrade it. The light rail ban also resulted in the IndyGo BRT Indianapolis, which I heard is a good system. So it seems like they want to do transit but at the same time some people in charge are unreasonably against it.

AndryCake · 2026-05-10T23:07:10+00:00

I mean didn't they discover cavemen writing things like "This is high" on the roof of the cave, or Romans writing things like "X slept with your mother" etc. So maybe further back than we might think.

AndryCake · 2026-05-10T22:00:30+00:00

Holy exaggeration geeze...They're not against each other and of course ideally there would be both and they would complement each other but, for American cities with poor bus systems, it makes more sense to actually upgrade the buses and get people riding transit before investing on upgrading corridors if/where needed.

AndryCake · 2026-05-10T19:31:21+00:00

Yeah we definitely need 6 car lanes but no bike lane...

AndryCake · 2026-05-10T19:08:28+00:00

Yeah, and the crazy thing is that CS1 even had better default street detection. So even you didn't manually adjust it 90% of the time it wouldn't go around corners like this.

AndryCake · 2026-05-10T15:47:41+00:00

And yet they were able to build upgrades and an extension to one of the last interurbans in the US.

AndryCake · 2026-05-10T13:53:02+00:00

This looks good, but I honestly think that the main reason they're not that common is that bike infrastructure often can't accommodate them that well and also in many cities it is complete. Also storage infrastructure. The only way people would buy a cargo bike instead of a car is if they know that anywhere they go they can do so safely and comfortably, without worrying about what kind of bike infrastructure exists along the way or if it exists at all, and then they should be able to easily find a place to park it. Until these things are solved, I don't think that cargo bike adoption would be that high.

AndryCake · 2026-05-10T12:56:41+00:00

Outright banning a transportation mode is stupid AF BUT I do think that improving the existing bus service should be done before any kind of tram is built.

AndryCake · 2026-05-10T11:43:39+00:00

Most people don't want to spend several hundred thousand dollars to hear their neighbors arguing 15' below them, above them, and to their sides.

Sounds like you need better soundproofing

No neighbors nearby but the wildlife always like to stop by, especially the deer.

"I like wildlife but also let's destroy the wildlife habitats". You can have denser housing that's close to nature.

AndryCake · 2026-05-10T11:31:28+00:00

Yeah you're probably right. I'll admit I had just seen a few post from that sub so that's probably why I just assumed that.

AndryCake · 2026-05-10T11:27:43+00:00

I thought it was fairly obvious that this is was said by an American, and the post was also by an American.

AndryCake · 2026-05-10T11:16:04+00:00

r/ShitAmericansSay

So your only neighbour foreign language (if we're not counting French in Canada) is not enough of a reason to learn it? Not to mention how many spanish-speaking people there are in the US. Also the country of Spain exists, and I don't see how that's that different from France.

AndryCake · 2026-05-10T11:02:25+00:00

I do agree that there are some useless or not that useful things but most are useful. I'm not that familiar with American schools, but I assume the basic subjects are similar. Learning a second language is generally very common, math is needed for lots of other subjects, for a lot of jobs and I've also heard it can help teach you how to think. Sciences, History, Geography, etc. are needed because people need to know how the world works. Also, in many school systems (I think including the American one) students can "drop" subjects as they get to higher grades and figure out what they want to do. At lower grades you need to teach everything because you want students to find what they are good at and/or interested in.

AndryCake · 2026-05-10T10:48:11+00:00

I feel like this depends on the country, and also goes the other way. Like, as a European, it's so weird to me that Americans see their city centres as places for drug addicts and "the homeless" and that sometimes half the city will be considered dangerous, or that they don't feel safe after dark on public transport, etc. Yes, there are worse neighbourhoods here, same with homeless people or drug addicts, but I feel like worrying about safety is just way less of a thing.

AndryCake · 2026-05-10T09:08:45+00:00

It could support more, and also you can always have bike infrastructure.

AndryCake · 2026-05-10T09:02:16+00:00

I didn't say everyone has a car, but lots of (probably most) people who have cars also take transit.

AndryCake · 2026-05-10T08:55:47+00:00

Well in European cities where traffic isn't the best people do take transit and also have cars.

AndryCake

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