Thank you for highlighting the plight of disabled and older people trying to navigate areas like this stroad without a car. Planners need to recognize that people who take the bus are going to have to safely cross a street at least once. Give us a bit of dignity by making it possible for someone to walk all the way across without risking our lives.
Yeah, I probably should've highlighted even more the fact that, as much as the region invested in upgrading bus service, riders have to cross this street at least once if they're doing a round trip. These streets that are so wide you need two cycles to cross as a pedestrian (with a very uncomfortable wait in the median). What do you think happens when you're waiting in the median and you see your bus coming? Strong urge to dash for it, maybe not advisable.
Around here any time we try to take cars off a street for bikes or peds, boomers like to claim that the disabled and elderly *need* those lanes to drive in. It's infuriating.
@@justynawisniewska1213 I was mocking the opinion that cars are "necessary" because of the elder and disabled despite proof otherwise, that's why I have added a "/s" at the end of the comment.
To answer your question about Orlando, yes some residents actually do buy an annual pass and visit the Magic Kingdom regularly. I’ve been advised to get one as it pays for itself in just a few visits and comes with preferred parking.
Maybe the locals go to a place that is carfree. The tourists go to a place to is carfree. Inside the casinos in LV is also carfree. Maybe we need #carFreeCitiesNow and not have to drive to get there.
Hey CityNerd - are you familiar with James Howard Kunstler? One of the big reasons I got into this topic - he was big in the 90s/00s on "building an environment worth caring about". Would love to see a collaboration or guest spot on his podcast by you! Also, may I ask why you chose to live in Vegas?
I had to go look up a video on ‘drive through banks’ because my brain was just like ‘the what now!? Did I hear that right?’ I did not think of walking to the bank from the central shop parking lot as getting more exercise but _apparently_ it is.
Ah yes, the suddenly ending sidewalk. I once took the Amtrak from NYC to Aberdeen (MD) to pick up a rental car for a road trip. It was like half a mile down the street from the train station and the sidewalk ended suddenly. I either had to pull my luggage through loose gravel or on the danerous shoulder of the highway. Am I expected to arrive by car to rent another car or what???
It's weird to see my own neighborhood in a video like this. As a frequent Boulder Highway pedestrian, I agree with nearly every downside you've talked about. You mention marginalized people living here -- I guess I'm one of them. I see police giving them (us) jaywalking tickets on Boulder Highway, which seems like blaming the victims for inadequate pedestrian infrastructure. The police would tell you, they're just trying to save lives, there are a lot of pedestrian accidents here, but it's not the pedestrians' fault that the road is badly designed.
Video idea: MISs = Most Improved Stroads. What improvements or redesigns have had a dramatic impact on reducing traffic fatalities, increased access for public transportation and reduced congestion? It doesn't have to be a ranked list, but I think it would give us some ideas of what to encourage our local government and city planners to do. I'd also like to point out that you've done 4 Google Maps views showing neighborhoods where I've lived; Portland (Bybee), Kent, Eugene and Oxnard. If you do one more, I'll consider it a win for my own personal bingo. 🌎
Here in South Africa, we also have stroads. One big difference between here and the US is that only 30% of households even have a car. So it looks pretty much exactly like this except with lots more pedestrians. Naturally, we have heartbreaking numbers of pedestrian fatalities. And yet this is usually blamed on the pedestrians themselves for not looking out for cars or being drunk or whatever. Even our newly built infrastructure only has the bare minimum of pedestrian safety pretty much.
2:10 minimum parking requirements are perhaps the worst of all common urban policies. At least zoning and urban freeway building policies are fairly open about the fact that they massively influence the wider urban environment, MPRs have similar affects but do it more subtly so many people don’t notice.
@@yzdatabase4175 The majority of cities outside of the USA and Canada do not have MRPs. They do fine. Here in the UK some cities have even starting charging businesses for every parking space they do have, as they know parking generates car traffic. And that’s in the UK which is a more car centric country than others.
Just a waste of space and all the empty asphalt makes for a very ugly atmosphere and contributes to more blocks of heat in the city or even the outer suburbs.
I think it's like any other element of the commons---the rules arise because there is an existing resource that is abused. You can build things without parking, but then they need to be in an environment of either no parking or consistently controlled parking. It's often going to be an objective problem to build new multiunit residential without parking in an area that has an established pattern of street parking. It disadvantages the prior economic decisions of people already there.
How is a convenience store possibly convenient if you have to get in a car to get there! 😋 I loved the convenies in Japan because they were actually convenient, and had _much_ better variety of goods than I have seen anywhere else in the world. And even the ones with car parking still had 95% of customers arriving on foot.
It's a lot quicker to check out there than at a supermarket. Most convenience stores have a mini-canned food section but it's mostly garbage options. That's about the extent of convenience for a stroad gas station.
There you can also do fun stuff at konbinis, like buy aeroplane tickets, pay your bills... probably settle matters of honour and such as well, lots of amenities
Its "convient" assuming you were already in a car. Basically you already stopped for gas, and in the past entered the building to pay for it, so why not thow in some junk food, coffee, and beer for the convience of the gas buying customers. An actually convenient store is one in the building you are already in, my university had an overpriced convience store in the basement of the student center, it was actually convenient but it closed when ee voted out Aramark as the food service provider because the quality sucked.
Buses every 15 minutes is honestly pretty decent for North America. Hell, the suburbs of Toronto installed fancy looking BRT on some stroads and they only have half hour headways. York Regional Transit is a joke.
@@CityNerd SamTrans fails at this, they only run buses once an hour for a fairly short part of the day. (they don't run any buses at all for like 12 hours at night)
Thank you again. I keep chuckling at the dry humor. That said, you are 100% right about marginalized communities and I wish more traffic engineers would recognize this.
100% this. Especially in environments that aren't quite as harsh on infrastructure and can be maintained more easily (because building is one thing, maintaining is another which often gets forgotten or omitted from the plan).
Given that “marginalized communities” are the main obstacle to usable and safe public transit, i really dont feel bad about it. Maybe we gotta start having realistic perceptions of people before we can have realistic solutions.
@@Heatherder you're the one with an unrealistic perception of marginalized communities. What makes you think communities that get the shit end of the stick and suffer the most during economic recessions and crises are somehow the "main obstacle" to better public transit? I'm genuinely curious about those mental gymnastics
Light rail on most Stroads would be a monumental waste of money and resources. No way ridership would ever be enough to support. Look at the all the money and energy sunk into high speed rail in California. All that cement, steel, and fuel burned by construction equipment for nothing since it will never go online. What a complete waste of resources.
I really liked the introduction of people in "short term" living situations in motels on the stroads. it's a rising reality in america that families live in motel rooms (whole family in a room with 1 or 2 beds, kitchenette, and that's all.) If you could delve deeper into this from your perspective on urban design I think that would be great because like you point out, unlike most people who use the stroad and go to the suburbs, those people live in that environment.
I would like to see an analysis and discussion of disrespectful driving habits. People who think nothing of holding a door open for ten seconds for an able bodied stranger will encroach way into crosswalks, exceed the speed limit while approaching red lights, honk and harass the car ahead who's only crime is making a proper turn onto a side street. It is especially offensive when such behaviors are done by mature people who should know better. Its not just bad street design, there are some very deep cultural flaws at play here.
More bingo card spaces ... and yes, I know we only get 25. - drive through coffee chains - people standing on street corners, looking for work. I'm thinking of immigrant day laborers without green cards, but there are also those who get hired by the hour for less savory work. - public schools.I'm always surprised at how many public schools are on stroads. Any others?
Car washes, express drive-thrus and gas station hand washes (and pop-up ones) in particular. It might have been mentioned, but stray shopping carts laying on sidewalks or in ditches. Big box fitness centers and yoga studios. (Moronic for the latter that promotes peace & calm when placed on a very loud stroad.) Churches. Goodwill and Salvation Army centers and drop boxes scattered here and there. Oh and a seemingly endless line of stoplights, and god forbid if even one light is out of sync (or even a traffic accident...)
I love how almost all cities seem to have a most hated piece of road infrastructure. Here in Bristol I reckon it’s the Eastville roundabout which was actually voted the worst roundabout in Bristol in a newspaper poll a few years ago. And trust me that’s a strong field. Not to dis roundabouts though. They’re mostly far better the any alternative, it’s just some are still objectively awful for everyone. They’re probably symptoms of excessive car usage in a city generally.
I used to cycle over the "University roundabout" in Sheffield every day, grim stuff. I presume its similar. I now live in Leeds and the Armley gyratory is infamous.
@@hotbeefo doesn’t Leeds have a whole load of absolutely gigantic “loopy” roundabouts? Ones that are so big people sometimes “forget” that they’re on a roundabout. I’ve driven there once but I know people who live there.
I remeber that roundabout from when I lived there many years ago, I was filtering through the trafic on my motor bike on the aproach and some knob in a 4x4 tried to block me. I squeeed past and he leant out of his window to give me a gob full and drove straight into the car in front of him, I stopped laughed at him and then just rode off. Ah that was a good day. (Btw, for those who don't know filtering on a motorcyle is leagle in the UK).
That's actually a traffic circle, not a roundabout. No one likes traffic circles. It's maybe not always easy to distinguish the two, but roundabouts don't have traffic lights and they are usually smaller. Traffic in a roundabout always has right of way, hence no need for traffic lights.
If you want another grim video idea, how about taking a look at how old rail corridors have been repurposed over the years? I'm from Ohio and I've noticed how Columbus used to be a relatively large rail hub yet has diminished to car centric infrastructure. Notably how the I-670 highway was repurposed from rail right-of-ways and the old union station was demolished for the Convention Center
Also, Cincinnati Ohio has a big beautiful Main train station from maybe early 1900s, but the only Amtraks arrives very early in the morning so most people couldn’t take that unless someone dropped them off and waited with them to be sure they’re safe and that person I’m not sure if there’s even a public transport way to get there such as with a bus
On the flipside, there's the Midtown Greenway in Minneapolis, in which the old rail line was repurposed as a bike path (more like a bike highway, actually). About 5,000 cyclists use it every day, on average.
@@katiem.3109 And while greenways are beneficial to the local communities, they never really address the problem of car infrastructure as the primary, and often only, means of serious transit between two areas. A Greenway being constructed on top of an old rail line means that a train can never be run there again. :/
My mother-in-law lived on Boulder Hwy in a trailer home park. I'd pick her up and we'd have dinner at one of the casinos down the way, including that which has the animatronics in the atrium. I'd go back to my hotel room at The Cosmo afterward and cry myself to sleep.
As a westerner this is so common in most cities. You could have added a row of vacant lots with some mystery sign leftover, industrial warehouse properties either storing materials (like steel dealers) or transport (like trucking companies), dirt lots with chain link around them or some guy selling trump moribundia (we can hope), and my fave lots with either homeless encampments or a massive commercial for sale sign. Oh and the last one: older houses converted into small businesses like denture makers, astrologists, etc. All of these smack dab in front of little neighborhoods that have their yards abutting these businesses. Vegas is more of a “new build cul-de-sac” land, but in Spokane and Seatown the old streets pour out into busy stroads and the poor little neighborhoods look tired and barely worth the effort to keep them up. Man, vegas just has that extra layer of depressing.
In 2014 when I worked for a security company we consulted with Walmart. That Walmart on Boulder HWY was the most stolen from in America. The meth problem in the area is unreal.
this looks like a dream compared to where i live. there just arent sidewalks or crossings at all on most stroads here in montgomery, al. you arent supposed to walk, and i imagine people look at me like a criminal when i do.
Lived in the triangle formed by boulder hwy and Nellis for about 10 years when i was a kid. Walking anywhere was absolutely forbidden due to the number of cars and the width of the roads. Made me the anti-stroad zealot I am today though!
Topic suggestions: 1 An entire episode on the vocabulary of street design. Pork chops, street furniture, cross section, etc. It makes it easier to communicate and even to think about things if we have the language. I'm generally able to keep up, but you might be surprised at how many terms are unfamiliar to people with a different background. 2.. How has city design changed in the last few decades, what caused the changes, and what are the effects? Or in other words, what new stuff do you see, and is it good?
My city has no stroads. But we do have a highway going through a tunnel in the middle of the city, which has so much traffic it's no longer a highway. It's sad.
I read today that France is requiring all parking lots with more than 40 spaces to be covered in solar panels within 5 years. I'd love to see the numbers on how much power you could generate with a similar policy in the US. Imagine stroads as our climate salvation.
For a hot second I thought you were going to talk about Boulder Colorado which is surprisingly easy to live car free because of the expansive bike paths and bike lanes.
I notice in Colorado that a lot of people use the bike paths. Unlike California, where there are not that many people using them, except for the beach.
Obstructions are a huge problem on stroads. Bonus points if you get a double obstruction like a street light and a utility box in the same square making it difficult or impossible to get through on a bike. Spot on with the amount of car culture shops. It seems crazy that we have these long stroads with gas stations, auto parts stores, auto repair shops, and car dealers. Makes you wonder what we could have there instead!
I'd like to request a video for the Top Ten best and worst years in US History for walking/urbanism/transit. Here in Portland, I'd say 1958 is the worst year - with the suspension of all trolleybus service so Rose City Transit could evade regulation, it had the abrupt cancellation of all passenger service on the interurban lines, and it was smack dab in the middle of the the freeway building era. Not sure on the best year... but I'm interested in how much damage the US did to the fabric of its cities in the post-war era and what has been done to undo that.
Physically challenged people have a rough time in most of the US. It wasn't so obvious to me whilst I lived in N VA and then in Central CA back in the 90s and early 00s. Now, though I cannot even visit the US. My MS requires I use a wheelchair, but the terrible public transit systems and the dearth of easy access to what buses and trains exist is aweful. Having post-traumatic epilepsy means I have been barred from driving for the past ten yrs too. Hence, my last visit to the US was in 2011. I shall stick to Europe and to visiting family in BC and Australia, each areas which treat the physically challenged as if we are human.
Damn. I never considered how stroads are “sort of a low-value, residential environment where marginalized people can go and maybe afford to just survive” and yet these environments work to perpetuate their marginalization. Crazy. And stroads are an unfriendly hell-scape to be on for anyone outside of a car.
It is the only place that a place that serves the homeless in my town was allowed to open. All the others, the nimbys ran them out. There are pedestrian deaths at least once a month on Beach Blvd. Yet that is the site where the facility is located.
Re: very definition of a stroad? Unfortunately I think this isn't necessarily true. The development path of rural freeway to suburban highway to urban arterial to stroad isn't the only way to get stroads. There are some places where neighborhood streets get overdesigned by traffic engineers to the point that they are wide and straight with multiple lanes, turn lanes, and no sidewalks whatsoever. There are legitimately neighborhood streets in America with no pedestrian accommodations at all and apparent design speeds of 50 mph or more, and some of them were built that way from the beginning. There are also cases where what was originally a street erodes its surroundings and straightens until it becomes a stroad. Note that a proper apartment block or townhouse not very far from the street would prevent this, but typical American houses have wide lawns and the easement and eminent domain can be seized to turn a neighborhood street into a car traffic optimized environment.
There is perhaps no single better indicator that a city will be good/bad to get around without a car than the quality of the bus stops. One look at even a single one often gives you a very good idea.
This sounds about right. Many suburban Orlando bus stops only had benches because of a random charity that built and donated them. In my neighborhood, there was like 1 in 5 bus stops that had an actual shelter and often walking an extra 5-10 minutes to wait there because who knows when the bus will show.
In Atlanta, most of our bus stops are just a pole with a little flag to tell you it’s a MARTA stop. Almost none have benches or coverings. Some aren’t even on a sidewalk, just a grassy ditch
At least in Vegas they mostly only need to protect from the sun. here in Quebec we need protection from a whole lot more types of weather. (Love the few interior heated ones we have downtown)
Not a perfect indicator. I think my childhood Chicago stop lacked even a bench let alone a shelter, just a pole with a bus sign. But the bus ran every 5 minutes. (Granted that sometimes meant 6 buses coming after 30 minutes, but hey.)
Another one: pedestrians have no protection from the elements (sun/rain). No shade because all the buildings are too far from the sidewalk and there are very few trees. Same with rain, no buildings with canopies close to the sidewalk to duck under (and if you're really lucky, the curb-tight sidewalk means you get splashed by cars driving by... because the massive amounts of paved surface means tons of runoff overflowing the gutters)
Hi CityNerd, you might like to read "Learning from Las Vegas" if you haven't already. it's a very short study on the architectural landscape of LV that was published sometime back in the '70s. It's not quite city planning, however it does focus a lot on the topics of road layouts, with particular emphasis on the strip. Definitely plenty of fodder for your LV specific content
Oh, man, that's crazy! My favorite is the attorney billboard that reads, "Just Because You Did It... Doesn't Mean You're Guilty!" I'd hire that guy lol.
First, I absolutely love the content. I have to ask though, are you from the Pacific NW? I'm a linguist and you have the strongest PNW accent I've ever heard, it's amazing 😂
I think he mentioned in one of his videos that he's from Seattle. He's definitely lived in Portland. I'm from Oregon and I'm curious about what you mean by PNW accent? I've always thought that I couldn't tell any difference in accent between speakers from Bellingham vs. San Diego. I've taught EFL classes, so I'm interested if there's been more research in this region. I've watched all the videos from that accent guy, I think his name's Erik and I'm pretty sure he's on the Wired channel?
@@AmyEugene Short answer: PNW has a very distinctive combination of vowel mergers (cot/caught, bag/egg, father/bother). Mr. CityNerd has all of them at once. 😅 I've worked at a university and I've heard of students in broadcasting journalism from OR/WA sometimes can't even hear the distinction or physically make those vowels without training. The other thing is high-rising terminal, even in compound sentences. This is becoming more common in all of the west coast, but (this is just my observation), the further north, the intonation is otherwise much flatter, so it sounds much less stereotypical. Again, Mr. CityNerd uses high-rising terminal prodigiously and is almost a stereotype (and not in a bad way, I love it) 😅
@@AmyEugene There is definitely a difference - I've lived in Oregon and Los Angeles, and I'm from Philadelphia (we have our own special East Coast accent there that got beat out of me in boarding school lol). Now that I've lived in LA for 40 years, I can even here the difference between LA proper and San Gabriel Valley accents. I noticed that one (the SGV accent) during an Olympics where one of the US figure skaters was talking and I thought, "she's from Arcadia!" I looked her up, and sure enough...
Ray Delahanty says in other videos that he grew up in Seattle. He played golf on his high school team. (To prove his suburban origin creds.) Look for the episode about urban golf courses.
Los Angeles is almost entirely composed of stroads with metered parking, at least in the central part of town. Venice Blvd is a great example. 6 lanes and somehow parking is a challenge.
Hey CityNerd have you ever thought about doing a video about the 10 U.S. cities that have had the biggest fall from grace (in terms of walkability, transit access, how much downtown has been hollowed out to make way for surface parking, etc.) Detroit and Kansas City would surely be #1 and #2 on that list
Video idea: America's worst transit deserts (i.e. places that have terrible transit service yet high levels of transit usership/demand--places that have a desperate need for transit that isn't provided for). This is a major problem in Honolulu, where I live. Also, there's a lack of walking and bike infrastructure (many streets here don't have sidewalks, and the ones that do are extremely narrow and in terrible condition, except in Waikiki (tourist area). The bike lanes, where they exist, are extraordinarily dangerous, sometimes less than 3 ft wide, such as the Beretania street bike lane. The Dole street bike lane is less than 2 ft wide in some places).
Do Honolulu buses have payment cards yet? When I visited in 2019 it seemed they were just rolling something out for residents, but it was cash-only for tourists, something I had never experienced in a First World country. Even in the 1980s cities had tokens you could buy to not deal with "$1.35" fares. And heh, I stayed up in the hills a bit. Took 5 minutes to reach a sidewalk, and I mostly just walked downtown from there rather than waiting for a bus.
@@mindstalk They do have payment cards now. I'm not sure they're only for residents, though. And yeah, the lack of sidewalks is still very much a thing.
I had a really interesting experience with boulder highway. In my early teens I lived in a budget suite on Boulder highway between sam's town and Boulder station. We were actually pretty close to that skate rink I think. Anywho, in that particular area, I found it was easy to walk to places or ride a bike (mostly biking) and there were plenty of ways the other kids and myself at the suites could hang out and get into trouble, lol. It was pretty fun, but I think that's specifically because I was in a densly populated budget suite right on the highway. It was definitely dangerous though. Peoplre literally race each other on Boulder Highway. Anywho, that was in the early-mid 2000s, so things are probably different there now.
Interesting, I spent a yr of my teens in a large motel complex on US-192 in the Orlando area after the 2008 housing crash. I had similar experiences with making plenty of friends with other families there. Plus there was wide sidewalks along that stroad to walk along and access a fast food joint. Although, I also hung out with sketchy fugitives who didn't mind showing their stolen goods and such. They made it tempting to commit crime but luckily I wasn't convinced down that route. Nowadays, that motel is a luxury apartment complex lol
As somebody who's still living in Nevada a lot of the time (college student returning home edition) not a whole lot has honestly changed. The area up towards the top of Henderson gets a bit more respectable by a small margin but as you head out into the valley it really gets odd. The jaywalkers on that street actively want to get hit I swear, they wear all black including black hoodies like 50% of the time and a good number of them don't even try to run, they just walk like nothing is happening as you come barreling towards them. As for the racing, yeah that's still a problem but the freeways actually deal with it too late at night.
The artist drawing had really wide bus lanes and really narrow places to wait in the median. The future vision really needs a really safe place in the median for bus passengers to wait and so crossing pedestrians only have to cross half the stroad at a time.
I'd love to hear your take on making transit fares free. In one of your old vids you mentioned Kansas City's poor (but free) bus system as an example of "you get what you pay for". I always thought lifting fares was a no brainer - is there an argument against it?
My 2 cents: spend that money on more frequent service. Usually the reason people are not using transit is because it is inefficient and unreliable not because it costs $2.
Connections between bus routes are not synchronized in Las Vegas. It is common to arrive a few minutes after your connecting bus has left, even when the buses are not late (as they often are).
If you wanted to expand to a 7x7, another square could be debris in the bike lane (if there is one) and on the sidewalk (if there is one). Bonus points for it being auto debris (hub caps, tire bits, broken pieces of tail lights, etc.), which adds an extra fun dimension to intermodal relations of these facilities.
Most recently in my case, an entire box of nail gun nails spilled along 20 feet of bike lane. I thought it was shredded paper until I got a flat. As a bonus there's also several bungee cords, presumably what was securing the boxes of nails to a truck. It's been two weeks and the city hasn't done anything about it. I just ride on the sidewalk for that section now.
The strangest thing I've ever seen on a sidewalk was a large white plastic bucket full of watermelon slices. The sidewalk was along a highway and it was between the bus stop and my work, so I passed it twice a day for 3 or 4 days. Then, after the weekend it disappeared. It wasn't anywhere close to a driveway and it would've been an awkward spot for someone to pull their car over to the side of the road, so that means someone walking down the sidewalk set it down and forgot about their large bucket of watermelon slices and continued on?
I live near the far south end of Boulder Highway. The speed limit increases to 55 MPH. Sadly I witnessed an elderly lady get hit in a marked crosswalk. She had the green and a car ran the light. They were already going over 55 MPH and then sped up to run the light. The end result was horrific. Pedestrians don't just get hit often on Boulder Highway but tend to get die when they do. The only thing worse than a stroad is a highway stroad. You couldn't pay me enough to cross Boulder Highway on foot. On the plus side Boulder Highway does have plans for a re-design. While the re-design does make improvements it is still very much cars first. I find it funny the land next to Boulder Highway has been attempted to bring about higher value development that never seems to show up. Huh I wonder why. Instead of Boulder Highway re-imagined why not make Boulder NOT a highway. Seems that would go a long way to truly improving the problems. Also thanks for the shout out in the video for me suggesting Boulder Highway. Try to hang out around Boulder Highway and Lake Mead Blvd and ped watch. I once observed a ped need four light cycles to cross that intersection. As in crossing Boulder and then crossing Lake Mead.
Avenida 9 (or 5) de Julio in Buenos Aires won a sustainable transport award (it went from 14 car lanes, to dedicated lanes for BRT and cycleways... Maybe you can talk about that "stroad" some day
Sidewalks should not only be wide and set back from traffic, but they should be level. I hate all the entrances where the sidewalk gets slanted so the cars can drive in without having to jump the curb. Very difficult to walk across. Walking was much, much better the two years I lived in the Netherlands.
Those 4-way-drivethrough lanes will indeed haunt my dreams, thank you very much! "Monstrosity" can't even begin to describe some of the infrastructure in this video.
I'd love to see a video about smaller cities (less than 500k). Check out Downtown Little Rock and/or North Little Rock. We have trolleys and a very walkable downtown, and there are other parts of LR such as Hillcrest that one can easily maneuver without a car. Unfortunately the trolley system in the latter area was ripped out in the 60's.
Oh and thank you for this channel. I'm obsessed with the states of America content (did all 50 by 50). All the other well made channels are men who talk about poor black and poor white areas in very different ways (black area = this area has fallen to crime, while white poor areas are "salt of the earth people who have fallen on hard times".
Great video. Really love this channel, it’s helping me tap into a whole new sect of my geography/urbanism hobby that’s inexplicably developed in my 20s lol. If you want a fun few hours of google maps stroad torture, check out Broad Street in Richmond, Virginia. I’d say from maybe Lombardy Street to as far west as you can go without wanting to rip your hair out first. It’s a truly miserable experience as both a pedestrian and motorist.
I like that you found a way to end on more of a high note. I'm always interested in discussions about how places like this can be and in some cases have been improved. I hope that one of those Boulder Highway plans can actually be implemented some day.
The horror, the horror! Where is contemporary America's Joseph Conrad? Las Vegas is America's heart of relentlessly upbeat darkness. Does that make CityNerd Kurtz? Has he gone native in the heart of darkness as he chronicles America's colonization by the automobile? And who is King Leopold in this drama? Keep your wits about you, Mr. CityNerd. You may lose your outsider's perspective. Nah, probably not. Keep up the great work!
They're called "Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man" according to Family Guy, who are the premiere experts on American culture. Or something, IDK.
When will you show a stadium in Australia? When you reach 100,024 subscribers you could show the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). It has 2 stations near it serving 8 rail lines.
y'all have Lerner & Rowe injury attorneys too? I see that exact billboard every day in Chicago, im starting to think they may not be friendly local lawyers who have my best interests in mind
It feels absolutely insane to me to go "hey here's this highway, let's just slap a four-way intersection on it as if it's a boulevard, and also build a load of driveways directly onto the highway, and level pedestrian crossings, what could go wrong?"
I’d love to hear your analysis of some of the ridiculous roads/intersections that exist here in Boston. For example, the intersection at Mass General Hospital is essentially a 7-way intersection with a busy T station directly at its center
The most sickening thing about this is, in significantly smaller Australian cities I've seen almost equally bad stroads. The only thing keeping them from being just as bad, if not worse, is that they have fewer lanes. Pick any stroad in Mackay, Queensland, for example, and you could probably black that bingo card out (except we rarely have billboards for personal injury lawyers. I think there's some advertising regulations that stop it). *note that I have not lived in Mackay for several years now, so maybe some planner waved a magic wand and made it livable in the past seven years, I don't know. Another fine example is Bell Street, a great scar cut east-west across Melbourne's northern suburbs, which itself intersects with many north-south running stroads.
A few fine examples of what I consider Stroads here in SEQ: Ferry Road/Bundall Road (same road, different names) Logan Road (from Garden City to Old Cleveland Road at least) Old Cleveland Road through to Carindale
Brisbane probably has stroads, but I wasn't thinking in that term. It did have 2 minute wait times for a walk signal. On Kangaroo Point it took me 4.5 minutes to cross 4 busy lanes. 2.5 to safely cross two lanes to the median, 2 minutes to cross from there to the other side.
I love your videos. Might I make a minor suggestion that you either turn down the high end of your eq, or maybe put up a blanket or two to cut the high frequency reverberation.
Another great video, thanks for the tour. I’ve been to Vegas a couple of times only to change planes - very glad I never left the airport terminal. BTW, the bus stop shouldn’t have the tactile edge - those are to help the visually impaired at signalized intersections. In fact the sidewalk shouldn’t be a street level because this makes the ramps into the bus steeper than if coming from a raised sidewalk. Ray please see if you can rent a power wheelchair in Las Vegas. If so, then you can experience riding a bus, narrow sidewalks, lack of sidewalks, and all other manor of issues in a whole new way. Also please visit St. Louis and see an MLS match in our new stadium. First match a week from today, first official season match in 2023.
I live in Lafayette, LA (2 hours from New Orleans) and we eat just as much, if not more gumbo than they do there. And I can say that all of us in South Louisiana do eat gumbo constantly, as I am eating a bowl while watching this.
The bike corral is so cool! BTW Disneyland has one bike rack in front of the employee trailer and that is it. PS around here, they block pedestrians from crossing certain parts of the intersection. At one intersection, where a bike trail starts, they expect you to cross three streets and 14 lanes to get to it, from the other side of the street.
I've been through Las Vegas many times, but I've never driven down this regrettable piece of pavement. It must be the ur-stroad. I'm having a hard time thinking of one I've seen that has been worse, and I've been on some bad ones. State Street and Redwood Road in the Salt Lake City metro area and Miramar Road in San Diego come to mind; these stroads and the environments around them are places that are not conducive to human contentment. If I want to have an unpleasant experience the next time I'm in Las Vegas, I'll have to drive the length of Boulder Highway and try to go for a walk somewhere along it. To be fair, it is easy to have an unpleasant experience in Las Vegas, but this looks worse than some of the other options. I'm not a fan of Las Vegas, but I will give it one bit of credit - the restaurant scene there is amazing. If I ever stop there, the search for a fine meal and some top quality booze is the reason. I should avoid the dreaded ur-stroad if I want to preserve my sanity. I would be interested in one statistic for this stroad. How many mattress stores are located along it? And how many of them are "going out of business" but never actually shut down for good? Surely the ur-stroad must be well supplied with purveyors of the finest mattresses.
Say, Mr. CityNerd, have you taken a glance at the MWRRP, the Midwest Regional Rail Plan? One thing that interested me was its examination on population growth in certain areas like the twin cities, and I wondered if that would affect the value of such high speed rails in the future. Thanks for the hard work!
O boy. Seeing these stroads and parking lots as far as the eye can see all I can think of is: cut the amount of car lanes in half. Tramline in the middle, protected bikelanes next to proper sidewalks. Mixed-use infill development... Maybe one day
As a sometimes RVer, the last thing I want to do when I've finally parked my house after a long drive is secure every drawer, unplug and drive my house on an errand. Unfortunately, most RV parks have little to no public transit or walkability. The best I've found was in Kelowna, BC, where you walk to the beach across the street in one direction, or to sushi and ice cream cream across the street in the other direction.
I hope you do Atlanta, for it has almost every stroad/stroadevard you can think of. Moreland Ave, Peachtree Rd/ Industrial Blvd {the non-freeway portion of it}, Buford HWY, Lawrenceville HWY, Tara Blvd, Candler Rd (S of Memorial Dr. which itself is a stroad), Metropolitan PKWY, Northside Dr/Pkwy, Cobb PKwy, Clairmont Rd/Ave, Scott BLVD, Piedmont RD/Ave, Lenox/ Chesire Bridge Rds, Ponce de Leon Ave, Covington Hwy, etc. And that's in the ATL area whose very car-centric, pedestrian unfriendly and public transportation is horrifically unreliable.
The plans for Boulder Highway is LOLSTUPID. 1. NDOT is full of incompetent decision makers. 2. Removing traffic lanes does NOT reduce traffic congestion. 3. NDOT could have kept all the traffic lanes with the new plans but they decided not to go with that. WTF?!
here in texas, so many businesses have gigantic signs right at the front of their driveway that completely blocks the view of the oncoming traffic as every single one of their employees and customers has to pull out of their parking lot onto the street every single day
You're right, transforming stroads into great streets should be at the top of transportation funding priorities. I do wonder whether some of those costs could be covered by developers if the transformation came along with the appropriate allowances for high-density commercial and residential development?
At the end there you showed the combination bar/laundromat on Boulder Highway, which is actually something I enjoy and we have some neighborhood ones here in San Francisco, but in my mind I had never thought about one being on a stroad. Getting a $17 beer bucket, drinking 6 Bud Lights while doing laundry, tossing my clean clothes in the back seat, then hopping in my car and driving home. If I'm going to get a little buzzed while doing laundry, I'd prefer having the option to just stumble a block or two by foot.
the idea that a bar is essentially only accessible by car is a recipe for disaster O_o alcohol and operating a multi ton high speed projectile do not mix well...
IMO, stroads seem to occur in developing low density residential areas. Businesses that can afford high rents are almost completely "big box" and often are built at the same time that parallel residential areas are constructed. Parking seems based upon strict formulas with parking based upon maximum usage criteria, i.e., build parking for that 1 day per year or 30 minutes per day peak usage. Lot signage seem predicated upon time visible at 45mph from any lane of traffic (walking at 4 mph means that the pedestrian sees the same signage at least 11 times longer. A 200 foot store parking lot frontage for one big box store takes approximately 34 seconds to walk past. A 150 wide street takes approximately 25 seconds to walk across. At 45 mph the respective times are 200ft is passed in 3 seconds and 150ft is passed in approx 2.27 seconds.)
Thank you for highlighting the plight of disabled and older people trying to navigate areas like this stroad without a car. Planners need to recognize that people who take the bus are going to have to safely cross a street at least once. Give us a bit of dignity by making it possible for someone to walk all the way across without risking our lives.
Yeah, I probably should've highlighted even more the fact that, as much as the region invested in upgrading bus service, riders have to cross this street at least once if they're doing a round trip. These streets that are so wide you need two cycles to cross as a pedestrian (with a very uncomfortable wait in the median). What do you think happens when you're waiting in the median and you see your bus coming? Strong urge to dash for it, maybe not advisable.
They should hop into a car, they're basically specifically made for them. /s
Around here any time we try to take cars off a street for bikes or peds, boomers like to claim that the disabled and elderly *need* those lanes to drive in. It's infuriating.
@@MarioFanGamer659 Are you for real?
@@justynawisniewska1213 I was mocking the opinion that cars are "necessary" because of the elder and disabled despite proof otherwise, that's why I have added a "/s" at the end of the comment.
To answer your question about Orlando, yes some residents actually do buy an annual pass and visit the Magic Kingdom regularly. I’ve been advised to get one as it pays for itself in just a few visits and comes with preferred parking.
I mean I probably would but I just thought I was weird
I live in SoCal and Disneyland is really big with locals here, there are people who go multiple times per month
Maybe the locals go to a place that is carfree. The tourists go to a place to is carfree. Inside the casinos in LV is also carfree. Maybe we need #carFreeCitiesNow and not have to drive to get there.
@@CityNerd I imagine a lot of New Orleans people do eat gumbo a lot. I probably would. It's food, not "a tourist thing".
Hey CityNerd - are you familiar with James Howard Kunstler? One of the big reasons I got into this topic - he was big in the 90s/00s on "building an environment worth caring about". Would love to see a collaboration or guest spot on his podcast by you! Also, may I ask why you chose to live in Vegas?
I think those boats are for the flash floods. Those parking lots cause a lot of runoff in the monsoon season.
There's something about a smart guy with glasses and a yearning for better infrastructure.
Damn.
Take my money!
Excellent work - thank you.
I had to go look up a video on ‘drive through banks’ because my brain was just like ‘the what now!? Did I hear that right?’
I did not think of walking to the bank from the central shop parking lot as getting more exercise but _apparently_ it is.
10:02
I believe the technical term is "wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube-man".
Ah yes, the suddenly ending sidewalk. I once took the Amtrak from NYC to Aberdeen (MD) to pick up a rental car for a road trip. It was like half a mile down the street from the train station and the sidewalk ended suddenly. I either had to pull my luggage through loose gravel or on the danerous shoulder of the highway. Am I expected to arrive by car to rent another car or what???
It's weird to see my own neighborhood in a video like this. As a frequent Boulder Highway pedestrian, I agree with nearly every downside you've talked about. You mention marginalized people living here -- I guess I'm one of them. I see police giving them (us) jaywalking tickets on Boulder Highway, which seems like blaming the victims for inadequate pedestrian infrastructure. The police would tell you, they're just trying to save lives, there are a lot of pedestrian accidents here, but it's not the pedestrians' fault that the road is badly designed.
cars kill more people than guns do cars kill 34,000 people every year but that is ok with them
Video idea: MISs = Most Improved Stroads. What improvements or redesigns have had a dramatic impact on reducing traffic fatalities, increased access for public transportation and reduced congestion? It doesn't have to be a ranked list, but I think it would give us some ideas of what to encourage our local government and city planners to do.
I'd also like to point out that you've done 4 Google Maps views showing neighborhoods where I've lived; Portland (Bybee), Kent, Eugene and Oxnard. If you do one more, I'll consider it a win for my own personal bingo. 🌎
Love this idea. Seconded!
Nice idea!
Add upvotes here!
Yes this sounds great
+
Here in South Africa, we also have stroads. One big difference between here and the US is that only 30% of households even have a car. So it looks pretty much exactly like this except with lots more pedestrians. Naturally, we have heartbreaking numbers of pedestrian fatalities. And yet this is usually blamed on the pedestrians themselves for not looking out for cars or being drunk or whatever. Even our newly built infrastructure only has the bare minimum of pedestrian safety pretty much.
Eye opening
It's really sad that the US is seen by many countries as a "leader" or "role model"
2:10 minimum parking requirements are perhaps the worst of all common urban policies. At least zoning and urban freeway building policies are fairly open about the fact that they massively influence the wider urban environment, MPRs have similar affects but do it more subtly so many people don’t notice.
try living in a city without - it's nightmarish
@@yzdatabase4175 The majority of cities outside of the USA and Canada do not have MRPs. They do fine. Here in the UK some cities have even starting charging businesses for every parking space they do have, as they know parking generates car traffic. And that’s in the UK which is a more car centric country than others.
I agree!! There’s many shops and malls that have 25 to 50% more parking than they need.
Just a waste of space and all the empty asphalt makes for a very ugly atmosphere and contributes to more blocks of heat in the city or even the outer suburbs.
I think it's like any other element of the commons---the rules arise because there is an existing resource that is abused. You can build things without parking, but then they need to be in an environment of either no parking or consistently controlled parking. It's often going to be an objective problem to build new multiunit residential without parking in an area that has an established pattern of street parking. It disadvantages the prior economic decisions of people already there.
How is a convenience store possibly convenient if you have to get in a car to get there! 😋
I loved the convenies in Japan because they were actually convenient, and had _much_ better variety of goods than I have seen anywhere else in the world. And even the ones with car parking still had 95% of customers arriving on foot.
It's a lot quicker to check out there than at a supermarket. Most convenience stores have a mini-canned food section but it's mostly garbage options. That's about the extent of convenience for a stroad gas station.
"Convenience Store" is a concept/business model, not an actual convenient thing.
There you can also do fun stuff at konbinis, like buy aeroplane tickets, pay your bills... probably settle matters of honour and such as well, lots of amenities
Japan is literally built different.
Its "convient" assuming you were already in a car. Basically you already stopped for gas, and in the past entered the building to pay for it, so why not thow in some junk food, coffee, and beer for the convience of the gas buying customers.
An actually convenient store is one in the building you are already in, my university had an overpriced convience store in the basement of the student center, it was actually convenient but it closed when ee voted out Aramark as the food service provider because the quality sucked.
The BHX runs more frequently than once per half hour. That’s actually quite the accomplishment given the urban fabric (or lack thereof) it serves.
tfw Las Vegas has better transit than the smallest and second most dense state in the union
Buses every 15 minutes is honestly pretty decent for North America. Hell, the suburbs of Toronto installed fancy looking BRT on some stroads and they only have half hour headways. York Regional Transit is a joke.
@@GaigeGrosskreutzGunClub Rhode Island. It should have better transit.
"Better than once every 30 minutes" is a working definition of frequent service in many US cities
@@CityNerd SamTrans fails at this, they only run buses once an hour for a fairly short part of the day. (they don't run any buses at all for like 12 hours at night)
Thank you again. I keep chuckling at the dry humor. That said, you are 100% right about marginalized communities and I wish more traffic engineers would recognize this.
100% this. Especially in environments that aren't quite as harsh on infrastructure and can be maintained more easily (because building is one thing, maintaining is another which often gets forgotten or omitted from the plan).
Given that “marginalized communities” are the main obstacle to usable and safe public transit, i really dont feel bad about it. Maybe we gotta start having realistic perceptions of people before we can have realistic solutions.
@@Heatherder Poor people are to blame for the infrastructure that they didn't design and don't have the power to change? 🤨
@@Heatherder The famous NIMBY’s that oppose transit are mostly rich people, not the marginalized. Do you even know what marginalized means?
@@Heatherder you're the one with an unrealistic perception of marginalized communities. What makes you think communities that get the shit end of the stick and suffer the most during economic recessions and crises are somehow the "main obstacle" to better public transit? I'm genuinely curious about those mental gymnastics
Please make a top ten list of stroads that would be good to convert to a light rail line!
Yes please
Lewes ferry in Delaware down Rt 1 through Rehoboth, Dewey, Bethany Beaches, all the way to Ocean City, MD
I nominate Guadalupe St. in Austin, Texas!
Detroit has many
Light rail on most Stroads would be a monumental waste of money and resources. No way ridership would ever be enough to support. Look at the all the money and energy sunk into high speed rail in California. All that cement, steel, and fuel burned by construction equipment for nothing since it will never go online. What a complete waste of resources.
I really liked the introduction of people in "short term" living situations in motels on the stroads. it's a rising reality in america that families live in motel rooms (whole family in a room with 1 or 2 beds, kitchenette, and that's all.) If you could delve deeper into this from your perspective on urban design I think that would be great because like you point out, unlike most people who use the stroad and go to the suburbs, those people live in that environment.
I would like to see an analysis and discussion of disrespectful driving habits. People who think nothing of holding a door open for ten seconds for an able bodied stranger will encroach way into crosswalks, exceed the speed limit while approaching red lights, honk and harass the car ahead who's only crime is making a proper turn onto a side street. It is especially offensive when such behaviors are done by mature people who should know better. Its not just bad street design, there are some very deep cultural flaws at play here.
do drivers actually throw bottles at people waiting for the bus, I live in Canada and can't even imagine that !!!!
Interesting
What about people who don't know where the right side of their car is and drive in the bike lane.
More bingo card spaces ... and yes, I know we only get 25.
- drive through coffee chains
- people standing on street corners, looking for work. I'm thinking of immigrant day laborers without green cards, but there are also those who get hired by the hour for less savory work.
- public schools.I'm always surprised at how many public schools are on stroads.
Any others?
Sign twirlers.
Stop light panhandlers?
Car washes, express drive-thrus and gas station hand washes (and pop-up ones) in particular. It might have been mentioned, but stray shopping carts laying on sidewalks or in ditches. Big box fitness centers and yoga studios. (Moronic for the latter that promotes peace & calm when placed on a very loud stroad.) Churches. Goodwill and Salvation Army centers and drop boxes scattered here and there. Oh and a seemingly endless line of stoplights, and god forbid if even one light is out of sync (or even a traffic accident...)
I love how almost all cities seem to have a most hated piece of road infrastructure. Here in Bristol I reckon it’s the Eastville roundabout which was actually voted the worst roundabout in Bristol in a newspaper poll a few years ago. And trust me that’s a strong field.
Not to dis roundabouts though. They’re mostly far better the any alternative, it’s just some are still objectively awful for everyone. They’re probably symptoms of excessive car usage in a city generally.
I used to cycle over the "University roundabout" in Sheffield every day, grim stuff. I presume its similar.
I now live in Leeds and the Armley gyratory is infamous.
@@hotbeefo doesn’t Leeds have a whole load of absolutely gigantic “loopy” roundabouts? Ones that are so big people sometimes “forget” that they’re on a roundabout. I’ve driven there once but I know people who live there.
I remeber that roundabout from when I lived there many years ago, I was filtering through the trafic on my motor bike on the aproach and some knob in a 4x4 tried to block me. I squeeed past and he leant out of his window to give me a gob full and drove straight into the car in front of him, I stopped laughed at him and then just rode off. Ah that was a good day. (Btw, for those who don't know filtering on a motorcyle is leagle in the UK).
Gonna have to do something on roundabouts at some point
That's actually a traffic circle, not a roundabout. No one likes traffic circles. It's maybe not always easy to distinguish the two, but roundabouts don't have traffic lights and they are usually smaller. Traffic in a roundabout always has right of way, hence no need for traffic lights.
Our house in the middle of our stroad
I love the guy with the ‘injured while searching for dead bodies in Lake mead?’ Billboard
If you want another grim video idea, how about taking a look at how old rail corridors have been repurposed over the years? I'm from Ohio and I've noticed how Columbus used to be a relatively large rail hub yet has diminished to car centric infrastructure. Notably how the I-670 highway was repurposed from rail right-of-ways and the old union station was demolished for the Convention Center
Also, Cincinnati Ohio has a big beautiful Main train station from maybe early 1900s, but the only Amtraks arrives very early in the morning so most people couldn’t take that unless someone dropped them off and waited with them to be sure they’re safe and that person I’m not sure if there’s even a public transport way to get there such as with a bus
On the flipside, there's the Midtown Greenway in Minneapolis, in which the old rail line was repurposed as a bike path (more like a bike highway, actually). About 5,000 cyclists use it every day, on average.
@@katiem.3109 And while greenways are beneficial to the local communities, they never really address the problem of car infrastructure as the primary, and often only, means of serious transit between two areas. A Greenway being constructed on top of an old rail line means that a train can never be run there again. :/
My mother-in-law lived on Boulder Hwy in a trailer home park. I'd pick her up and we'd have dinner at one of the casinos down the way, including that which has the animatronics in the atrium. I'd go back to my hotel room at The Cosmo afterward and cry myself to sleep.
I see a lot of car repair and adult stores on the stroads around here - very auto erotic
One thing you forgot was the sheer lack of any greenery, especially trees.
That is mainly just the desert though
Me watching the city plant trees along the stroad every 2 years because they install but don't upkeep or maintain them and they die in 15 months
As a westerner this is so common in most cities.
You could have added a row of vacant lots with some mystery sign leftover, industrial warehouse properties either storing materials (like steel dealers) or transport (like trucking companies), dirt lots with chain link around them or some guy selling trump moribundia (we can hope), and my fave lots with either homeless encampments or a massive commercial for sale sign. Oh and the last one: older houses converted into small businesses like denture makers, astrologists, etc.
All of these smack dab in front of little neighborhoods that have their yards abutting these businesses. Vegas is more of a “new build cul-de-sac” land, but in Spokane and Seatown the old streets pour out into busy stroads and the poor little neighborhoods look tired and barely worth the effort to keep them up.
Man, vegas just has that extra layer of depressing.
Moribundia! Moribund memorabilia? What a word!
In 2014 when I worked for a security company we consulted with Walmart. That Walmart on Boulder HWY was the most stolen from in America.
The meth problem in the area is unreal.
When that store was being built, I was surprised that Walmart would even open a store there. There are neighborhoods that even Walmart avoids.
this looks like a dream compared to where i live. there just arent sidewalks or crossings at all on most stroads here in montgomery, al. you arent supposed to walk, and i imagine people look at me like a criminal when i do.
They’re not trying to say “pets welcome,” they’re saying you’ll receive a welcome fit for a dog, aka a “pet’s welcome”
Lived in the triangle formed by boulder hwy and Nellis for about 10 years when i was a kid. Walking anywhere was absolutely forbidden due to the number of cars and the width of the roads. Made me the anti-stroad zealot I am today though!
"I love cars for the freedom they provide."
Topic suggestions: 1 An entire episode on the vocabulary of street design. Pork chops, street furniture, cross section, etc. It makes it easier to communicate and even to think about things if we have the language. I'm generally able to keep up, but you might be surprised at how many terms are unfamiliar to people with a different background. 2.. How has city design changed in the last few decades, what caused the changes, and what are the effects? Or in other words, what new stuff do you see, and is it good?
I had never heard of stroads before. my city as tons 😭👎
@@garyholt8315 'stroad' is a pretty new term, coined in 2011 by Charles Marohn.
My city has no stroads. But we do have a highway going through a tunnel in the middle of the city, which has so much traffic it's no longer a highway. It's sad.
@@HrHaakon Seattle?
I read today that France is requiring all parking lots with more than 40 spaces to be covered in solar panels within 5 years. I'd love to see the numbers on how much power you could generate with a similar policy in the US. Imagine stroads as our climate salvation.
I’m not sure if it was him or another UA-camr, but they said that putting solar panels on excessive parking is green-washing the effects of cars.
For a hot second I thought you were going to talk about Boulder Colorado which is surprisingly easy to live car free because of the expansive bike paths and bike lanes.
Any good UA-cam videos on this? I promise I won't move there 😃
@@DiogenesOfCa haha I just lived there for the better part of a decade
@@ericsalazar4027 I am in San Diego, the weather is great and bike infrastructure is meh.
I notice in Colorado that a lot of people use the bike paths. Unlike California, where there are not that many people using them, except for the beach.
Obstructions are a huge problem on stroads. Bonus points if you get a double obstruction like a street light and a utility box in the same square making it difficult or impossible to get through on a bike.
Spot on with the amount of car culture shops. It seems crazy that we have these long stroads with gas stations, auto parts stores, auto repair shops, and car dealers. Makes you wonder what we could have there instead!
Also having obstructions on the sidewalks is hard for wheelchairs and other people to get around.
one more lane bro please
I'd like to request a video for the Top Ten best and worst years in US History for walking/urbanism/transit. Here in Portland, I'd say 1958 is the worst year - with the suspension of all trolleybus service so Rose City Transit could evade regulation, it had the abrupt cancellation of all passenger service on the interurban lines, and it was smack dab in the middle of the the freeway building era. Not sure on the best year... but I'm interested in how much damage the US did to the fabric of its cities in the post-war era and what has been done to undo that.
This stroad is so bad I feel like you are putting yourself in an unacceptable amount of danger for one UA-cam video. Its making me uncomfortable.
Physically challenged people have a rough time in most of the US. It wasn't so obvious to me whilst I lived in N VA and then in Central CA back in the 90s and early 00s. Now, though I cannot even visit the US. My MS requires I use a wheelchair, but the terrible public transit systems and the dearth of easy access to what buses and trains exist is aweful. Having post-traumatic epilepsy means I have been barred from driving for the past ten yrs too. Hence, my last visit to the US was in 2011. I shall stick to Europe and to visiting family in BC and Australia, each areas which treat the physically challenged as if we are human.
Damn. I never considered how stroads are “sort of a low-value, residential environment where marginalized people can go and maybe afford to just survive” and yet these environments work to perpetuate their marginalization. Crazy.
And stroads are an unfriendly hell-scape to be on for anyone outside of a car.
I agree definitely a hell scape for anyone needing to walk instead of drive.
It is the only place that a place that serves the homeless in my town was allowed to open. All the others, the nimbys ran them out. There are pedestrian deaths at least once a month on Beach Blvd. Yet that is the site where the facility is located.
Re: very definition of a stroad?
Unfortunately I think this isn't necessarily true. The development path of rural freeway to suburban highway to urban arterial to stroad isn't the only way to get stroads. There are some places where neighborhood streets get overdesigned by traffic engineers to the point that they are wide and straight with multiple lanes, turn lanes, and no sidewalks whatsoever. There are legitimately neighborhood streets in America with no pedestrian accommodations at all and apparent design speeds of 50 mph or more, and some of them were built that way from the beginning.
There are also cases where what was originally a street erodes its surroundings and straightens until it becomes a stroad. Note that a proper apartment block or townhouse not very far from the street would prevent this, but typical American houses have wide lawns and the easement and eminent domain can be seized to turn a neighborhood street into a car traffic optimized environment.
There is perhaps no single better indicator that a city will be good/bad to get around without a car than the quality of the bus stops. One look at even a single one often gives you a very good idea.
This sounds about right. Many suburban Orlando bus stops only had benches because of a random charity that built and donated them. In my neighborhood, there was like 1 in 5 bus stops that had an actual shelter and often walking an extra 5-10 minutes to wait there because who knows when the bus will show.
In Atlanta, most of our bus stops are just a pole with a little flag to tell you it’s a MARTA stop. Almost none have benches or coverings. Some aren’t even on a sidewalk, just a grassy ditch
We luckily have a passable train system but trying to get anywhere more than .5-1 mile off the train network is a pain
At least in Vegas they mostly only need to protect from the sun. here in Quebec we need protection from a whole lot more types of weather. (Love the few interior heated ones we have downtown)
Not a perfect indicator. I think my childhood Chicago stop lacked even a bench let alone a shelter, just a pole with a bus sign. But the bus ran every 5 minutes. (Granted that sometimes meant 6 buses coming after 30 minutes, but hey.)
Another one: pedestrians have no protection from the elements (sun/rain). No shade because all the buildings are too far from the sidewalk and there are very few trees. Same with rain, no buildings with canopies close to the sidewalk to duck under (and if you're really lucky, the curb-tight sidewalk means you get splashed by cars driving by... because the massive amounts of paved surface means tons of runoff overflowing the gutters)
And there’s even some drivers that seem to speed up on purpose so they can splash walkers.!!!
I absolutely love your dry delivery and humour. Thanks for another great video. Your editing and research is always top-notch.
15:34 - Ooooh Yes!!! I want to ride my bike right next to a massive 40,000-pound bus flying past me at 45mph!!!
What an absolute hell on Earth.
Hi CityNerd, you might like to read "Learning from Las Vegas" if you haven't already. it's a very short study on the architectural landscape of LV that was published sometime back in the '70s. It's not quite city planning, however it does focus a lot on the topics of road layouts, with particular emphasis on the strip. Definitely plenty of fodder for your LV specific content
We have an attorney billboard in Tallahassee that advertises their specialization in "apartment shootings." Great stuff!
Oh, man, that's crazy! My favorite is the attorney billboard that reads, "Just Because You Did It... Doesn't Mean You're Guilty!" I'd hire that guy lol.
@@james-p Hahaha, if I was a prosecutor against him I would be submitting a picture of that billboard into evidence.
First, I absolutely love the content. I have to ask though, are you from the Pacific NW? I'm a linguist and you have the strongest PNW accent I've ever heard, it's amazing 😂
I think he mentioned in one of his videos that he's from Seattle. He's definitely lived in Portland. I'm from Oregon and I'm curious about what you mean by PNW accent? I've always thought that I couldn't tell any difference in accent between speakers from Bellingham vs. San Diego. I've taught EFL classes, so I'm interested if there's been more research in this region. I've watched all the videos from that accent guy, I think his name's Erik and I'm pretty sure he's on the Wired channel?
Accent? What accent? 😂
@@AmyEugene Short answer: PNW has a very distinctive combination of vowel mergers (cot/caught, bag/egg, father/bother). Mr. CityNerd has all of them at once. 😅 I've worked at a university and I've heard of students in broadcasting journalism from OR/WA sometimes can't even hear the distinction or physically make those vowels without training.
The other thing is high-rising terminal, even in compound sentences. This is becoming more common in all of the west coast, but (this is just my observation), the further north, the intonation is otherwise much flatter, so it sounds much less stereotypical. Again, Mr. CityNerd uses high-rising terminal prodigiously and is almost a stereotype (and not in a bad way, I love it) 😅
@@AmyEugene There is definitely a difference - I've lived in Oregon and Los Angeles, and I'm from Philadelphia (we have our own special East Coast accent there that got beat out of me in boarding school lol). Now that I've lived in LA for 40 years, I can even here the difference between LA proper and San Gabriel Valley accents. I noticed that one (the SGV accent) during an Olympics where one of the US figure skaters was talking and I thought, "she's from Arcadia!" I looked her up, and sure enough...
Ray Delahanty says in other videos that he grew up in Seattle. He played golf on his high school team. (To prove his suburban origin creds.) Look for the episode about urban golf courses.
I think that drive-through bank actually has _five_ lanes - two ATMs, two pneumatic tube thingys, and a window with a real human.
I’m gonna start a band called the Stroads and Stroad Bingo will be the first album, with a song about each square. Who wants in?
Los Angeles is almost entirely composed of stroads with metered parking, at least in the central part of town. Venice Blvd is a great example. 6 lanes and somehow parking is a challenge.
Funny, I went for a job interview in Irvine, seemed surrounded by grass covered hills, and the parking was $10. Nothing else around there.
Hey CityNerd have you ever thought about doing a video about the 10 U.S. cities that have had the biggest fall from grace (in terms of walkability, transit access, how much downtown has been hollowed out to make way for surface parking, etc.)
Detroit and Kansas City would surely be #1 and #2 on that list
Video idea: America's worst transit deserts (i.e. places that have terrible transit service yet high levels of transit usership/demand--places that have a desperate need for transit that isn't provided for).
This is a major problem in Honolulu, where I live. Also, there's a lack of walking and bike infrastructure (many streets here don't have sidewalks, and the ones that do are extremely narrow and in terrible condition, except in Waikiki (tourist area). The bike lanes, where they exist, are extraordinarily dangerous, sometimes less than 3 ft wide, such as the Beretania street bike lane. The Dole street bike lane is less than 2 ft wide in some places).
Do Honolulu buses have payment cards yet? When I visited in 2019 it seemed they were just rolling something out for residents, but it was cash-only for tourists, something I had never experienced in a First World country. Even in the 1980s cities had tokens you could buy to not deal with "$1.35" fares.
And heh, I stayed up in the hills a bit. Took 5 minutes to reach a sidewalk, and I mostly just walked downtown from there rather than waiting for a bus.
@@mindstalk They do have payment cards now. I'm not sure they're only for residents, though. And yeah, the lack of sidewalks is still very much a thing.
I had a really interesting experience with boulder highway. In my early teens I lived in a budget suite on Boulder highway between sam's town and Boulder station. We were actually pretty close to that skate rink I think. Anywho, in that particular area, I found it was easy to walk to places or ride a bike (mostly biking) and there were plenty of ways the other kids and myself at the suites could hang out and get into trouble, lol. It was pretty fun, but I think that's specifically because I was in a densly populated budget suite right on the highway. It was definitely dangerous though. Peoplre literally race each other on Boulder Highway. Anywho, that was in the early-mid 2000s, so things are probably different there now.
Interesting, I spent a yr of my teens in a large motel complex on US-192 in the Orlando area after the 2008 housing crash. I had similar experiences with making plenty of friends with other families there. Plus there was wide sidewalks along that stroad to walk along and access a fast food joint. Although, I also hung out with sketchy fugitives who didn't mind showing their stolen goods and such. They made it tempting to commit crime but luckily I wasn't convinced down that route. Nowadays, that motel is a luxury apartment complex lol
@@AssBlasster which motel was it? I live close by us 192 has improved since 08 the ghetto moved now to orange blossom trail
@@heinuchung8680 I definitely agree about the ghetto OBT. It was the former Home Suite Home near the I4 interchange
As somebody who's still living in Nevada a lot of the time (college student returning home edition) not a whole lot has honestly changed. The area up towards the top of Henderson gets a bit more respectable by a small margin but as you head out into the valley it really gets odd. The jaywalkers on that street actively want to get hit I swear, they wear all black including black hoodies like 50% of the time and a good number of them don't even try to run, they just walk like nothing is happening as you come barreling towards them. As for the racing, yeah that's still a problem but the freeways actually deal with it too late at night.
The artist drawing had really wide bus lanes and really narrow places to wait in the median. The future vision really needs a really safe place in the median for bus passengers to wait and so crossing pedestrians only have to cross half the stroad at a time.
I'd love to hear your take on making transit fares free. In one of your old vids you mentioned Kansas City's poor (but free) bus system as an example of "you get what you pay for". I always thought lifting fares was a no brainer - is there an argument against it?
I think it depends how ur system is funded. BART gets a huge portion of it's funding from fares but I think most get less than 10%
My 2 cents: spend that money on more frequent service. Usually the reason people are not using transit is because it is inefficient and unreliable not because it costs $2.
Connections between bus routes are not synchronized in Las Vegas. It is common to arrive a few minutes after your connecting bus has left, even when the buses are not late (as they often are).
If you wanted to expand to a 7x7, another square could be debris in the bike lane (if there is one) and on the sidewalk (if there is one). Bonus points for it being auto debris (hub caps, tire bits, broken pieces of tail lights, etc.), which adds an extra fun dimension to intermodal relations of these facilities.
You could add squares for every type of illegal drug.
Most recently in my case, an entire box of nail gun nails spilled along 20 feet of bike lane. I thought it was shredded paper until I got a flat. As a bonus there's also several bungee cords, presumably what was securing the boxes of nails to a truck. It's been two weeks and the city hasn't done anything about it. I just ride on the sidewalk for that section now.
The strangest thing I've ever seen on a sidewalk was a large white plastic bucket full of watermelon slices. The sidewalk was along a highway and it was between the bus stop and my work, so I passed it twice a day for 3 or 4 days. Then, after the weekend it disappeared. It wasn't anywhere close to a driveway and it would've been an awkward spot for someone to pull their car over to the side of the road, so that means someone walking down the sidewalk set it down and forgot about their large bucket of watermelon slices and continued on?
I live near the far south end of Boulder Highway. The speed limit increases to 55 MPH. Sadly I witnessed an elderly lady get hit in a marked crosswalk. She had the green and a car ran the light. They were already going over 55 MPH and then sped up to run the light. The end result was horrific. Pedestrians don't just get hit often on Boulder Highway but tend to get die when they do. The only thing worse than a stroad is a highway stroad. You couldn't pay me enough to cross Boulder Highway on foot.
On the plus side Boulder Highway does have plans for a re-design. While the re-design does make improvements it is still very much cars first. I find it funny the land next to Boulder Highway has been attempted to bring about higher value development that never seems to show up. Huh I wonder why. Instead of Boulder Highway re-imagined why not make Boulder NOT a highway. Seems that would go a long way to truly improving the problems.
Also thanks for the shout out in the video for me suggesting Boulder Highway. Try to hang out around Boulder Highway and Lake Mead Blvd and ped watch. I once observed a ped need four light cycles to cross that intersection. As in crossing Boulder and then crossing Lake Mead.
Unfortunately, the majority of people go 5 to 10 miles above the speed limit or higher!!
This is especially bad when the road or stroad hasmany areas that walkers need to cross.
@@enjoyslearningandtravel7957 Doesn't help that the design of it is basically a drag strip.
The plan for this looks a lot like the new plan for Richmond Highway in Fairfax County, VA. If you’re ever in the DC area, check it out
Avenida 9 (or 5) de Julio in Buenos Aires won a sustainable transport award (it went from 14 car lanes, to dedicated lanes for BRT and cycleways... Maybe you can talk about that "stroad" some day
Sidewalks should not only be wide and set back from traffic, but they should be level. I hate all the entrances where the sidewalk gets slanted so the cars can drive in without having to jump the curb. Very difficult to walk across. Walking was much, much better the two years I lived in the Netherlands.
all of those sloped driveways are murder for wheelchairs. I am always pointed into the nearby traffic. nice.
Love it. I might add insurance offices, pawn shops and the section of the stroad that is all new car dealerships.
Those 4-way-drivethrough lanes will indeed haunt my dreams, thank you very much! "Monstrosity" can't even begin to describe some of the infrastructure in this video.
I'd love to see a video about smaller cities (less than 500k). Check out Downtown Little Rock and/or North Little Rock. We have trolleys and a very walkable downtown, and there are other parts of LR such as Hillcrest that one can easily maneuver without a car. Unfortunately the trolley system in the latter area was ripped out in the 60's.
Oh and thank you for this channel. I'm obsessed with the states of America content (did all 50 by 50). All the other well made channels are men who talk about poor black and poor white areas in very different ways (black area = this area has fallen to crime, while white poor areas are "salt of the earth people who have fallen on hard times".
Great video. Really love this channel, it’s helping me tap into a whole new sect of my geography/urbanism hobby that’s inexplicably developed in my 20s lol. If you want a fun few hours of google maps stroad torture, check out Broad Street in Richmond, Virginia. I’d say from maybe Lombardy Street to as far west as you can go without wanting to rip your hair out first. It’s a truly miserable experience as both a pedestrian and motorist.
I like that you found a way to end on more of a high note. I'm always interested in discussions about how places like this can be and in some cases have been improved. I hope that one of those Boulder Highway plans can actually be implemented some day.
The horror, the horror! Where is contemporary America's Joseph Conrad? Las Vegas is America's heart of relentlessly upbeat darkness. Does that make CityNerd Kurtz? Has he gone native in the heart of darkness as he chronicles America's colonization by the automobile? And who is King Leopold in this drama? Keep your wits about you, Mr. CityNerd. You may lose your outsider's perspective. Nah, probably not. Keep up the great work!
They're called "Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man" according to Family Guy, who are the premiere experts on American culture. Or something, IDK.
When will you show a stadium in Australia? When you reach 100,024 subscribers you could show the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). It has 2 stations near it serving 8 rail lines.
I love this channel! Keep up the incredible work.
y'all have Lerner & Rowe injury attorneys too? I see that exact billboard every day in Chicago, im starting to think they may not be friendly local lawyers who have my best interests in mind
Lerner used to have ads where he called himself "the heavy hitter". Some of them looked like ads for a hit man.
It feels absolutely insane to me to go "hey here's this highway, let's just slap a four-way intersection on it as if it's a boulevard, and also build a load of driveways directly onto the highway, and level pedestrian crossings, what could go wrong?"
No mega-church on your bingo card?
I’d love to hear your analysis of some of the ridiculous roads/intersections that exist here in Boston. For example, the intersection at Mass General Hospital is essentially a 7-way intersection with a busy T station directly at its center
Or the double roundabouts near Fresh Pond in Cambridge.
What's so expensive about adding bus/bike lanes? I assume it's not just the paint...
The most sickening thing about this is, in significantly smaller Australian cities I've seen almost equally bad stroads. The only thing keeping them from being just as bad, if not worse, is that they have fewer lanes. Pick any stroad in Mackay, Queensland, for example, and you could probably black that bingo card out (except we rarely have billboards for personal injury lawyers. I think there's some advertising regulations that stop it). *note that I have not lived in Mackay for several years now, so maybe some planner waved a magic wand and made it livable in the past seven years, I don't know.
Another fine example is Bell Street, a great scar cut east-west across Melbourne's northern suburbs, which itself intersects with many north-south running stroads.
A few fine examples of what I consider Stroads here in SEQ:
Ferry Road/Bundall Road (same road, different names)
Logan Road (from Garden City to Old Cleveland Road at least)
Old Cleveland Road through to Carindale
Brisbane probably has stroads, but I wasn't thinking in that term. It did have 2 minute wait times for a walk signal. On Kangaroo Point it took me 4.5 minutes to cross 4 busy lanes. 2.5 to safely cross two lanes to the median, 2 minutes to cross from there to the other side.
what if "Pet's Welcome" isn't misspelled: when you get there, they jump up on your leg and lick your hand?
I love your videos. Might I make a minor suggestion that you either turn down the high end of your eq, or maybe put up a blanket or two to cut the high frequency reverberation.
Surprised all the displaced grocery carts didn't get an honorable mention
every city has them. by law it is theft, but who cares?
Do a video of a the best urbanist international cities. I recently went to Barcelona and Amsterdam and would love your feedback on both places.
Another great video, thanks for the tour. I’ve been to Vegas a couple of times only to change planes - very glad I never left the airport terminal.
BTW, the bus stop shouldn’t have the tactile edge - those are to help the visually impaired at signalized intersections.
In fact the sidewalk shouldn’t be a street level because this makes the ramps into the bus steeper than if coming from a raised sidewalk.
Ray please see if you can rent a power wheelchair in Las Vegas. If so, then you can experience riding a bus, narrow sidewalks, lack of sidewalks, and all other manor of issues in a whole new way.
Also please visit St. Louis and see an MLS match in our new stadium. First match a week from today, first official season match in 2023.
wheelchairs, narrow sidewalks, abandoned shopping carts are a miserable combination.
I live in Lafayette, LA (2 hours from New Orleans) and we eat just as much, if not more gumbo than they do there. And I can say that all of us in South Louisiana do eat gumbo constantly, as I am eating a bowl while watching this.
10:05 The proper term is "wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man" 😆
The bike corral is so cool! BTW Disneyland has one bike rack in front of the employee trailer and that is it. PS around here, they block pedestrians from crossing certain parts of the intersection. At one intersection, where a bike trail starts, they expect you to cross three streets and 14 lanes to get to it, from the other side of the street.
If you had told me a few years ago that 4-lane drive through banks exist in the US I probably would have laughed it off as a joke
I've been through Las Vegas many times, but I've never driven down this regrettable piece of pavement. It must be the ur-stroad. I'm having a hard time thinking of one I've seen that has been worse, and I've been on some bad ones. State Street and Redwood Road in the Salt Lake City metro area and Miramar Road in San Diego come to mind; these stroads and the environments around them are places that are not conducive to human contentment. If I want to have an unpleasant experience the next time I'm in Las Vegas, I'll have to drive the length of Boulder Highway and try to go for a walk somewhere along it. To be fair, it is easy to have an unpleasant experience in Las Vegas, but this looks worse than some of the other options. I'm not a fan of Las Vegas, but I will give it one bit of credit - the restaurant scene there is amazing. If I ever stop there, the search for a fine meal and some top quality booze is the reason. I should avoid the dreaded ur-stroad if I want to preserve my sanity.
I would be interested in one statistic for this stroad. How many mattress stores are located along it? And how many of them are "going out of business" but never actually shut down for good? Surely the ur-stroad must be well supplied with purveyors of the finest mattresses.
Say, Mr. CityNerd, have you taken a glance at the MWRRP, the Midwest Regional Rail Plan? One thing that interested me was its examination on population growth in certain areas like the twin cities, and I wondered if that would affect the value of such high speed rails in the future. Thanks for the hard work!
O boy. Seeing these stroads and parking lots as far as the eye can see all I can think of is: cut the amount of car lanes in half. Tramline in the middle, protected bikelanes next to proper sidewalks. Mixed-use infill development... Maybe one day
As a sometimes RVer, the last thing I want to do when I've finally parked my house after a long drive is secure every drawer, unplug and drive my house on an errand. Unfortunately, most RV parks have little to no public transit or walkability. The best I've found was in Kelowna, BC, where you walk to the beach across the street in one direction, or to sushi and ice cream cream across the street in the other direction.
I hope you do Atlanta, for it has almost every stroad/stroadevard you can think of. Moreland Ave, Peachtree Rd/ Industrial Blvd {the non-freeway portion of it}, Buford HWY, Lawrenceville HWY, Tara Blvd, Candler Rd (S of Memorial Dr. which itself is a stroad), Metropolitan PKWY, Northside Dr/Pkwy, Cobb PKwy, Clairmont Rd/Ave, Scott BLVD, Piedmont RD/Ave, Lenox/ Chesire Bridge Rds, Ponce de Leon Ave, Covington Hwy, etc. And that's in the ATL area whose very car-centric, pedestrian unfriendly and public transportation is horrifically unreliable.
That's an encouraging plan, a light rail would be great.
The plans for Boulder Highway is LOLSTUPID.
1. NDOT is full of incompetent decision makers.
2. Removing traffic lanes does NOT reduce traffic congestion.
3. NDOT could have kept all the traffic lanes with the new plans but they decided not to go with that. WTF?!
here in texas, so many businesses have gigantic signs right at the front of their driveway that completely blocks the view of the oncoming traffic as every single one of their employees and customers has to pull out of their parking lot onto the street every single day
Terrible, that’s definitely a safety hazard to say the least.
As someone from just outside New Orleans, yes, I will eat gumbo everyday given the opportunity but I'm not crossing a stroad for it 🙃
And red beans and rice every Monday mmmmmmmm.
@@james-p the best part of monday righ chere
You're right, transforming stroads into great streets should be at the top of transportation funding priorities. I do wonder whether some of those costs could be covered by developers if the transformation came along with the appropriate allowances for high-density commercial and residential development?
OK, I was totally expecting a "fine dining" square and pan across a Cheesecake Factory.
The casinos have restaurants. The overpriced ones can be considered "fine dining".
At the end there you showed the combination bar/laundromat on Boulder Highway, which is actually something I enjoy and we have some neighborhood ones here in San Francisco, but in my mind I had never thought about one being on a stroad. Getting a $17 beer bucket, drinking 6 Bud Lights while doing laundry, tossing my clean clothes in the back seat, then hopping in my car and driving home. If I'm going to get a little buzzed while doing laundry, I'd prefer having the option to just stumble a block or two by foot.
the idea that a bar is essentially only accessible by car is a recipe for disaster O_o
alcohol and operating a multi ton high speed projectile do not mix well...
IMO, stroads seem to occur in developing low density residential areas. Businesses that can afford high rents are almost completely "big box" and often are built at the same time that parallel residential areas are constructed. Parking seems based upon strict formulas with parking based upon maximum usage criteria, i.e., build parking for that 1 day per year or 30 minutes per day peak usage. Lot signage seem predicated upon time visible at 45mph from any lane of traffic (walking at 4 mph means that the pedestrian sees the same signage at least 11 times longer. A 200 foot store parking lot frontage for one big box store takes approximately 34 seconds to walk past. A 150 wide street takes approximately 25 seconds to walk across. At 45 mph the respective times are 200ft is passed in 3 seconds and 150ft is passed in approx 2.27 seconds.)
I spend a big amount of time looking at billboards as I walk by, depressing.
I just want to defend the honor of the old skool skate rink. It's a great part of authentic American culture