It's also separating things out. We need larger, faster roads to get from city to city - that's kind of inevitable. But the way you design those is to completely separate out bikes and pedestrians from them, and also limit access to them. Think of something like an interstate freeway.

Slow, local streets are relatively safe because of the slow speeds and the priority on building places that cater to people and businesses rather than moving automobiles as quickly as possible.

The 'in between' things, "stroads" are what tend to be the worst of both worlds. They do often include some token bike/pedestrian infrastructure that is not very safe, and they include lots of places where other cars exit/enter the road and turn lanes and just a lot of potential for bad interactions in unexpected ways.

The Strong Towns folks do a pretty good job of outlining this, and in terms of fixing it, I've seen some interesting stuff related to street design in the Netherlands.

The trouble is why the "stroads" came to be to begin with.

Motorists will generally prefer whatever route gets them to their destination faster, but shops want to be where the traffic is, because they want motorists to stop and patronize them. So the shops want to set up right next to the high volume traffic path. But then pedestrians patronizing the same shops will be adjacent to that high speed high volume vehicle traffic.

In theory there are designs that can address this, i.e. you interleave roads so that each block is bounded by a high speed road for vehicle traffic on one side and a low speed road for pedestrians and cyclists on the other, keeping them separate but still allowing businesses to be accessible to both. But now you run into politics: The motorists may now have to walk up to a city block to get where they're going and the anti-car people are going to object to there being high speed roads and parking lots in the city whatsoever. Meanwhile making the change requires a budget allocation to do the work, so in the absence of consensus the status quo prevails.

But that's a complete failure of the people doing traffic management: Other countries manage to make car accessible shops by minimizing the number of ingress and egress points in the road that is supposed to be fast, and moving the stores to a side street that has all those points, but is slower, narrower, and possibly usable by a pedestrian.

The sin of the stroad is to give us a 6 lane road that is ultimately risky and slow-ish due to those ingress points, instead of separating the fast traffic and the slow one. Most of the time we'd not even need a larger right of way: Just treating major roads as places where every intersection is a serious hazard to minimize.

> Other countries manage to make car accessible shops by minimizing the number of ingress and egress points in the road that is supposed to be fast, and moving the stores to a side street that has all those points, but is slower, narrower, and possibly usable by a pedestrian.

The main issue here is really that other countries allow mixed-use zoning, causing a higher proportion of patrons to be pedestrians instead of the majority of the population living isolated in the suburbs and arriving by car. But you can't fix that by changing the roads, first you have to change the zoning -- and then wait several years for its effects to be realized.

And in the meantime the shops will want to be on the high traffic road because that's how most of their customers arrive.

> shops want to be where the traffic is, because they want motorists to stop and patronize them.

Citation needed? Motorists (as opposed to pedestrians) rarely stop at a shop because they passed in front of it (except on very long routes). Reason being, it is pretty hard to register what shops you're passing when driving

I don't think having a lot of motor traffic in front of it helps a shop

Impulse stops are rare (except gas) but people often develop habit of coffee along the way, and they will look for a place not out of their way.

It's not just coffee. If you're coming home from work and want to pick up dinner or grab something at a convenience store, are you going to stop at the place on the road you're already taking or do you want to add more time sitting in rush hour traffic to go somewhere else?

But adding a detour is easy in a car (even during rush hour - congestion is mainly on big axes). Restaurant doesn't need to be right where the traffic is.

Congestion is mainly anywhere near the big axes, which is exactly the problem. Even if the place is "only" three blocks away, that's three stinking red lights in each direction. Meanwhile you may not have any strong preference between two similar burger joints, so if one is directly on the main road and the other isn't, where are you stopping?

Stroads make sense where there is little pedestrian (including bicycles, scooters, etc.) traffic.

Stroads never make sense, even with zero pedestrian traffic. They have way too many ingress and egress points, so they are wide, attempting to be fast, yet ultimately a significant crash risk, because there's a way in, or out, or something, ever quarter mile at the most. Tiny strip mall with 4 stores! A funeral parlor! A bank! a subdivision hidden somewhere? Sometimes, even straight out houses. All at 90 degree angles, where some traffic is doing 40, and there's no traffic lights in most of said interscetions.

Even banning pedestrians, we'd be far better off with fewer ingress points to fast roads that now need fewer lanes, and then the few intersections/roundabouts give access to side roads that are rated far, far slower, and have access to those store parking lots. The traffic that is going far is then detached from the one that is going close, the road gets faster, and the street is safer from fender benders. The diminished places where people stop fast and go will also lower stress on the physical road itself, leading to less places needing repairs very often, as the typical stroad turning lane does.

I'd argue that most American local streets are unsafe anyway: I've seen Spanish highways with fewer lanes than suburbian streets with no commercial. But the distances to connect 500 bedrooms, placed in 1/3rd of an acre lots, are so large that ultimately roads are overbuilt to fit anything. Suburban streets with traffic under 1 car a minute in the daytime, with 3 or 4 lanes, set to a 30mph max, where you'd do 60 except for the fact that it's full of driveways coming in and out. Why do we even allow a lone house connect to a road like that via a driveway, where the neighbor will go into the street in reverse? It's madness, and is all over the midwest. So we don't even have to get into the stroads.

> Let's just barricade up the streets. No traffic = no traffic accidents.

That’s what my home city did – Ljubljana. Over the past few decades the downtown area has become an almost square mile sized pedestrian zone. It has been wonderful. The area is completely revitalized, shops are booming, tourism is booming, entertainment industry is booming, everything is booming.

All because they kicked out the cars.

Here’s a video and a photo from my recent trip back. It made me realize how dead San Francisco feels in comparison even with 3x the population because everything is just roads with nowhere for people to hang.

https://x.com/Swizec/status/1803873334066843733 https://x.com/Swizec/status/1803896813679972570

For the last point, EVs.

For everything else, have you ever thought about the effects of higher speed traffic on residents? I'm guessing you haven't cause "screw those people".

Roads are a classic NIMBY thing. Essential infrastructure, but a nuisance to those nearby.

I grew up in a neighborhood that had no outlets. Very, very safe place to play as a kid. We’d be in the street all day long, riding, walking, playing.

I returned recently, and the atmosphere is completely different, because now the streets have been extended. Through traffic completely changed the dynamics.

In London, despite assertions from individuals similar to yours, impact has been almost universally positive from Low Traffic Neighbourhoods.