How Do You Actually Fix a Stroad?

This article first appeared, in slightly different form, as a response to a question in the Not Just Bikes subreddit. The original poster described the place below as “a 5-lane stroad that has a double left turn lane and strip mall businesses for 2 miles straight.” The redditor continued:

I do not see how it would be possible to convert this to a road, street, or a road in the middle and a street on both sides (which would really not be solving this). This is a major street that requires having 2 lanes in each direction. If there wasn't, there would be too much traffic. There are also hundreds of businesses and many of them are too close to the street to allow a parallel road + street scheme. It's not like we can tear them all down and build anew.

Maybe rezoning this business corridor and establishing a long term plan to convert this into a road might work (it has to be a road since it's a designated US highway), but that would inhibit future growth and is basically impossible in rich suburban America - especially since new city-approved businesses are being built and upgraded along this stroad every day.

Strong Towns says stroads can be fixed, but never explains how. Here and for most other stroads, I clearly do not see how it's possible.

Below is the response from Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn. We have added links into the text to help readers who want to explore further.

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"Strong Towns says stroads can be fixed, but never explains how."

Let's be clear that this specific example is about taking the most stroady of stroads and trying to "fix" it. My first question is: Why? This is not exactly low-hanging fruit.

There is going to be no impetus to turning this into a road; you'll be fighting all these strip mall tenants and owners who are making a living mining the public investment in roadway capacity for their own gain. And it's not like the configuration here lends itself to it easily becoming a street—that would require an enormous amount of commitment and capital, and for what?

So, why are you obsessing over this particular stroad? It's like we're saying "anyone can improve their health" and you are pointing to the chain-smoking, obese, diabetic, octogenarian and saying you see no hope.

It's not true that we've never explained how to fix a stroad. It's part of every talk I've given the past three months, in my latest book, and all over our website.

Stroad to Road: Reduce the number of accesses; prioritize through movement of traffic; do not develop the corridor or mine that mobility investment for short-term gain; simplify.

Stroad to Street: Slow traffic; prioritize human movement over auto mobility; build a lot of stuff; embrace complexity and ongoing, incremental growth.

More importantly, we also talk a lot about where you should start, and we always insist on working incrementally with what you have to make the changes that you can make right now. You're misunderstanding something foundational about the Strong Towns approach if you are starting with that stroad—it's not the next smallest step. You're going to spend a ton of energy fighting with people and fail to achieve any real change or build any meaningful momentum.

Most American cities have a stroad like this one. Those strip malls aren't designed to last more than a couple of decades. Same with the frontage roads and everything else. I think the most likely outcome for such places is that they rot away and nobody cares. If you want to fix this stroad, work on making your neighborhoods better places to live, naturally shifting people from auto trips to walking and biking, and then put the momentum and energy you create doing that into resisting calls to prop up the development along this corridor with tax subsidies and other public bailouts.

These are bad investments that never should have been made. The best thing that can happen is that they die a natural death and, in doing so, create a minimal amount of harm to the community. That's ultimately how this is fixed.

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