One of the most surprising thing in old timey movies is that streets were truly mixed-use spaces, people walked there, rode horses, sold things from carts, etc. I guess that was possible because horses and horse-drawn carts were slower than cars, plus horses would generally try to avoid crashing into something, even without orders from their rider or driver.
I always thought that a “street” and a “road” were synonyms, until I heard the term “stroad” from Not Just Bikes. It turns out that in modern planning, a street is meant as a paved path intended to provide local access to homes, shops, and other things. A road is supposed to be a way to get from A to B. A “stroad” is a derogatory term to refer to a street that has been combined with a road, so you get high speed traffic that wants to travel through an area next to homes and businesses.
Stroads are the worst of both worlds because you end up with people who just want to get through an area dealing with kids playing, cars turning onto and off the path, other drivers slowing down to spot an address, etc. It also sucks for the locals because the way onto their driveway or school has to deal with large volumes of high-speed traffic.
IMO we’re not going back to horses and carts. High speed movement of people is here to stay. But, we really need to use modes of transport that separate people who are passing through on their way somewhere from people who are exercising, playing sports, shopping, hanging out outside their homes, etc.
The best way to do that is public transit, especially light rail and subways which pack a lot of people into a really efficient people-mover. Subways additionally move the people-mover underground to an area where there’s nobody who isn’t trying to travel. Light rails are easier to build, but they have to share the above-ground with people doing other things. But, at least when they’re on rails the only shared space is the rail, and the pedestrians know that as long as they’re not standing on rails they don’t have to worry about the light rail vehicles.
For North America, giving up cars might be too difficult, at least in the short term. But, it seems like in newly built neighbourhoods, the least they should do is make it so every second “street” is pedestrian / bicycle only. Or, maybe allow local vehicles but with an incredibly low speed limit, less than 10 km/h and a rule that they must yield to pedestrians at all times. That way someone can still pull into their driveway but they’ll only drive half a block on the local street to get there.
This might sound stupid, but basically, go to St Denis in RDR2.
Just… walk around, like a yokel, like a jay, lol.
That, then imagine cars as basically horseless buggies, at basically the same speeds as horses or horse drawn buggies.
Everyone either instinctively slows down, or is mandated to, because people are assumed to be able to amble and meander across the street.
Anyone moving faster than approximately 15mph is basicslly just assumed to be either a criminal or in some kind of emergency.
Its also kind of like boats in a marina… you slow to speeds such that you do not produce a wake.
Having high speed thoroughfares going straight through a downtown is literally insane, stroads are a diabolical abomination, as is the entirety of low density design that places the car as primary, above the human.
What is it, hitch hikers guide to the galaxy, or another of douglas adam’s stories, where alien observers assume automobiles are the dominant form of life on the planet, that humans are just odd parasites that simply tend to enter and exit from them at times?
At this point, I would genuinely prefer the literal horseshit of horses in cities, over the much, much grander scale of horseshit imposed on us by car centric paradigms for personal transport.
One of the most surprising thing in old timey movies is that streets were truly mixed-use spaces, people walked there, rode horses, sold things from carts, etc. I guess that was possible because horses and horse-drawn carts were slower than cars, plus horses would generally try to avoid crashing into something, even without orders from their rider or driver.
I always thought that a “street” and a “road” were synonyms, until I heard the term “stroad” from Not Just Bikes. It turns out that in modern planning, a street is meant as a paved path intended to provide local access to homes, shops, and other things. A road is supposed to be a way to get from A to B. A “stroad” is a derogatory term to refer to a street that has been combined with a road, so you get high speed traffic that wants to travel through an area next to homes and businesses.
Stroads are the worst of both worlds because you end up with people who just want to get through an area dealing with kids playing, cars turning onto and off the path, other drivers slowing down to spot an address, etc. It also sucks for the locals because the way onto their driveway or school has to deal with large volumes of high-speed traffic.
IMO we’re not going back to horses and carts. High speed movement of people is here to stay. But, we really need to use modes of transport that separate people who are passing through on their way somewhere from people who are exercising, playing sports, shopping, hanging out outside their homes, etc.
The best way to do that is public transit, especially light rail and subways which pack a lot of people into a really efficient people-mover. Subways additionally move the people-mover underground to an area where there’s nobody who isn’t trying to travel. Light rails are easier to build, but they have to share the above-ground with people doing other things. But, at least when they’re on rails the only shared space is the rail, and the pedestrians know that as long as they’re not standing on rails they don’t have to worry about the light rail vehicles.
For North America, giving up cars might be too difficult, at least in the short term. But, it seems like in newly built neighbourhoods, the least they should do is make it so every second “street” is pedestrian / bicycle only. Or, maybe allow local vehicles but with an incredibly low speed limit, less than 10 km/h and a rule that they must yield to pedestrians at all times. That way someone can still pull into their driveway but they’ll only drive half a block on the local street to get there.
This might sound stupid, but basically, go to St Denis in RDR2.
Just… walk around, like a yokel, like a jay, lol.
That, then imagine cars as basically horseless buggies, at basically the same speeds as horses or horse drawn buggies.
Everyone either instinctively slows down, or is mandated to, because people are assumed to be able to amble and meander across the street.
Anyone moving faster than approximately 15mph is basicslly just assumed to be either a criminal or in some kind of emergency.
Its also kind of like boats in a marina… you slow to speeds such that you do not produce a wake.
Having high speed thoroughfares going straight through a downtown is literally insane, stroads are a diabolical abomination, as is the entirety of low density design that places the car as primary, above the human.
What is it, hitch hikers guide to the galaxy, or another of douglas adam’s stories, where alien observers assume automobiles are the dominant form of life on the planet, that humans are just odd parasites that simply tend to enter and exit from them at times?
At this point, I would genuinely prefer the literal horseshit of horses in cities, over the much, much grander scale of horseshit imposed on us by car centric paradigms for personal transport.