‘Stroads’ Aren’t Streets. They Aren’t Roads. And They Don’t Work.

I suppose this means I can't cruise the strip anymore.

‘Stroads’ Aren’t Streets. They Aren’t Roads. And They Don’t Work.

Urban planning critic says the U.S. should build streets for people to live, and roads to move traffic quickly

By James R. Hagerty, WSJ

Updated May 15, 2024

Wherever Charles Marohn travels in America, he finds a similar type of road, lined with strip malls, fast-food joints, gas stations, car dealers and dying malls.

Marohn calls these arterial roads “stroads”—a mix of a neighborhood street, where people want to live and shop, and a road, which is designed to move traffic quickly between two places. Stroads are trying to do two things at once, he says, and failing at both.

They repel pedestrians and bicyclists. But they also fail to move traffic quickly the way a road should, says Marohn, a civil engineer turned writer and speaker, and the founder of the nonprofit Strong Towns, which advocates for more livable and resilient urban development. Cars can rev up to 45 mph or so but frequently must brake for red lights, a frustrating and dangerous stop-and-go.

He blames traffic engineers for ignoring the way roaring traffic tends to decrease the value of adjacent neighborhoods and commercial districts, making them less safe and attractive to people who want to reside, stroll, shop or dine in calmer surroundings. That, he says, destroys the economic value of land and wastes public funds spent on ill-conceived roads.

He recently spoke with The Wall Street Journal about the problem and his prescriptions. Edited excerpts follow.

Losing the middle

WSJ: How do you sum up your message about how streets should be designed to improve towns and cities?

CHARLES MAROHN: A street is about building a place. And so the focus has to be on the place, not getting through the place. And a road is about moving vehicles, moving traffic quickly. So the focus for a road isn’t on the place, it’s on the movement. It’s a difference in emphasis. Are you emphasizing building a place? Or are you emphasizing getting somewhere?

WSJ: Does that mean that ideally we would end up with things that are either streets, where cars are moving at a leisurely pace and pedestrians and bicycles are comfortable, or else freeways?

MAROHN: There would be some nuance between the two, but, ideally, yes. You’re having the best function when you are one of those two bookends. If you’re moving in an automobile at 10 to 15 mph through a place, that place is going to be really great. You’re going to have a lot of stuff going on.

If you’re moving 60-plus mph, you’re on a great road. That is going to have a lot of financial return on our investment. That moves goods and services and people.

When you get into that middle area, where you’re traveling 30 or 40 mph, you’re really not going anywhere at a speed that is meaningful, but you’re also not building a place that can actually function or sustain itself financially—a place that anyone really wants to be in.

WSJ: But do we need at least a few of those medium-speed streets to connect up the two ideals?

MAROHN: I don’t think we need them. Given where we are at today, we’re going to have them for a while, and it will take time if we dedicate ourselves to phasing them out.

WSJ: What you’re proposing is such a radical idea that people must have a hard time wrapping their heads around it.

MAROHN: I think the whole post-World War II suburban experiment is a radical idea. Going back to my grandparents’ generation, the idea that you couldn’t walk in a neighborhood where you live or that you couldn’t get to a corner store by walking, that would have been an absolutely radical idea. They would have said, “How can you live like that?”

We have built most of our environment in a way that is unnatural for humans and it needs to change.

Fewer traffic signals?

WSJ: To give streets charm and higher economic value, how do we achieve that goal of much slower speeds, 10 to 15 mph?

MAROHN: The embedded mentality in the traffic-engineering profession is that we improve safety by forgiving the mistakes that drivers make. So we widen lanes, we add shoulders, we put in buffers, we remove trees and obstacles.

The way we would slow traffic down is to tighten things up. When we narrow streets, when we eliminate those buffers, when we add trees, drivers respond by driving more slowly.

We will have more fender benders, but there will be fewer deaths.

WSJ: You have suggested that removing traffic lights from some streets could be a way of promoting safety. How would that work?

MAROHN: I’m going to try to nuance that. In a lot of places, if you just remove the streetlights, you would have chaos, anarchy, death. The approach should be to eliminate traffic signals while also changing the geometry of how we approach intersections. We spend a lot of time today sitting at traffic signals. When the speeds are lower, you can let people and vehicles mix in traffic without worrying about killing each other. If you lower the speeds coming into the intersection, then the signals aren’t needed.

WSJ: And some accidents must result from people gunning the engine to beat the red light.

MAROHN: Absolutely. You can think of traffic signals as a license for aggression. Go ahead and drive at a lethal speed. Everybody else has to stay out of your way.

That yellow light and that transition time—when you’re giving up the aggression or when you’re gaining the aggression—that is where you have the most violent collisions.

Let the locals decide

WSJ: Why can’t we leave it up to engineers to figure out how to design our streets?

MAROHN: Engineers are really important in doing technical aspects of street design. We rely on them to help us drain water from streets, make sure we have the proper pavement, depth and thickness and good soil foundations. But when it comes to setting priorities for speed versus safety and other values, the general public and elected officials shouldn’t give up that authority.

WSJ: To what extent are local planning officials embracing your ideas?

MAROHN: We see very widespread enthusiasm for the ideas but a struggle to actually implement them a lot of the time. While local officials want to do things one way, the regional and state governments have a say in how those things are done, and they have different priorities. Local governments also struggle from a budgetary standpoint, so their ability to go it alone and impose their own approach is very limited. They often seek state or federal help, and that comes with strings attached.

WSJ: Could you name some examples of great traffic planning work you’ve seen in recent years?

MAROHN: Lancaster, Calif., has redone its main street. It had been modified to be very wide, very traffic-focused. They redid the street to put a tree-lined median in the middle and slow things down a lot. And it has just really exploded in terms of the amount of businesses, the success of those businesses and the desire of people to live near that particular street.

WSJ: What about the many Americans who are comfortable in distant suburbs, don’t mind that there is no sidewalk, love their cars and don’t mind driving a mile or two to McDonald’s or Kroger?

MAROHN: At some point, McDonald’s and the big-box grocery store aren’t going to find it valuable to be in that place. There will be less regional traffic because the highways won’t be properly maintained because there isn’t enough money to maintain them. Nor will there be the will to maintain them once demand shifts from suburban commuting by automobile to other, more-localized living patterns.

WSJ: So you think in the long run, a lot of these distant suburbs with no sidewalks, no bike lanes and no local downtown aren’t going to be sustainable?

MAROHN: Financially, they’re not sustainable. And so those roads will go back to dirt.

James R. Hagerty is a writer in Pittsburgh. He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.