Charles Marohn's book is called The Confessions of a Recovering Engineer. In it, the former road designer and transportation planner describes how conventional American traffic engineering makes people and communities less safe, destroys the fabric of communities, bankrupts towns and cities and exacerbates the very problems--like congestion--engineers like himself were trying to solve.
His greatest disdain is for what he calls "stroads." I mentioned them in an August post. Think of them as Franken-lanes: They are supposed to be streets in cities and towns but in reality are highways with multiple lanes of high-speed traffic. (Even if the speed limit is more like that of an urban or residential street--say, 30 mph (50 kph), drivers are often sprinting at twice that between lights.) They are usually lined with big-box stores and other businesses that provide a steady stream of cars and trucks pulling in and out of the lanes.
Examples of "stroads" in my area are the Hempstead Turnpike, which I wrote about in an earlier post, West Street (a.k.a. Route 9A) in Manhattan and, even closer to home, Northern and Queens Boulevards. A particularly egregious example of a "stroad" is US 19 on Florida's Gulf Coast.
In some places, particularly in the southern and western US states, cyclists use "stroads" because there are few or no alternative routes. Even if a cyclist is not riding along the route itself, he or she probably will need to cross it because, as Mahron points out, they often divide downtown areas, leaving, say, a store somebody frequents on one side and a doctor or other service provider on the other. Or said cyclist might live on one side of the stroad and want to go to a park or movie theatre--or need to get to school or work--on the other side.
Michael Weilert discovered this danger the hard way. He was crossing, with his bicycle, one such stroad--Pacific Avenue (a.k.a. State Route 7) in Tacoma, Washington--when he was struck and killed in a crosswalk. Last week, a hundred people gathered for a silent ride at the site where Michael's life ended after only 13 years.
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| Photo by Carla Gramlich for Strong Towns |
While such tragedies motivate the families, friends and immediate communities of victims, they don't lead to fundamental change because of what Marohn calls the "drip, drip, drip" effect. When hundreds of people are killed, say, in a plane crash or building collapse, it gets the attention of planners, policy-makers and, sometimes, politicians. On the other hand, incidents like the one that claimed young Michael Weilert usually claim one, or a few victims, so they receive less notice.
How many more "drips" will it take before those in authority see a tidal wave?
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