How Many "Drips" Will It Take To Wash Away A Stroad?

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.

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?

 

Where Are Cyclists Most In Danger? On Stroads.

When a plane crashes, the first thing investigators look for is "pilot error."

When a motor vehicle crashes, the authorities ask questions like, "Was the driver intoxicated?  Was he or she texting?"

When a pedestrian is struck, the focus turns to matters like what the pedestrian was wearing.  Could he or she not be seen in the dark?

And when I crashed, the first things the police wanted to know were:  Was I wearing a helmet?  Was I following all relevant traffic laws?  Was I intoxicated?  ("Yes" to the first two questions; "No" to the third.)

In other words, when what are commonly called "accidents" occur, the first inclination of investigators is to look for "human error."  While some mishaps are indeed a result of drinking, texting or other distractions, or of carelessness, as often as not, the blame lies elsewhere.

Jessie Singer, the author of There Are No Accidents, offers this explanation:  We focus on individual blame because it makes it easier to believe that it couldn't happen to us.  As an example, I grew up in a place and time in which women and girls were blamed for getting raped:  If she hadn't been wherever she was whenever she was, wearing whatever she was, it wouldn't have happened to her. Or so people believed. But, as we all know, there are all sorts of situation in which someone "did everything right" and still suffered an "accident" or is somehow victimized.  

The problem with the focus on individual behavior, according to Singer, is that it prevents the structural changes necessary to prevent recurrences of crashes or other mishaps.  

Charles Marohn would agree.  He is an engineer who used to work on road design.  The most dangerous roads for everyone--but especially cyclists, pedestrians and the disabled--are what he calls "stroads":  thoroughfares that combine the worst traits of roads and streets.  Roads, he said, are designed to move people and vehicles from one place to another.  Well-designed roads, he explains, are usually wide, with lots of lanes and clear zones on either side to make driver errors less deadly. Streets, on the other hand, are places where people live, shop, eat and play.  The deadliest roads in America, like a stretch of US-19 on Florida's Gulf Coast, are what he would call "stroads": several lanes of high-speed traffic lined with big-box stores and other businesses that provide a steady stream of cars and trucks pulling in and out of those lanes.  

Of course, the design of such roads isn't the only reason why pedestrian and cyclist injuries and fatalities have increased:  Vehicles have grown bigger and, thus, deadlier.  But Singer and Marohn agree that re-designing roadways will do far more to improve safety for cyclists, pedestrians, people in wheelchairs--and drivers--than focusing solely on the behavior of people who use, or simply try to co-exist, with the road.  As evidence, they point out that the "hot spots" for cyclist and pedestrian fatalities and deaths are found in places as diverse as Port Ritchey, Florida (one of the communities through which US-19 passes), Langley Park, Maryland; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Los Angeles and Manhattan.  But nearly all of them have the kinds of "roads" or "stroads" Marohn warns against.