The Awful Canadian Stroad Thread

[MolsonExport]

A place to post pictures and to discuss Stroads.

Sometimes, you see something in the world that you want to talk about and you realize there isn't really a name for it. So you have to make one up.

That's the situation Chuck Marohn found himself in when looking at the four- and-six-lane-wide thoroughfares, built for speed but also lined with retail and residential developments and all the intersections those entail.

Marohn, a self-described "recovering traffic engineer" and founder of the nonprofit Strong Towns, observed this thing spreading unchecked through suburban and rural America. It was neither fish nor fowl, neither street nor road. It was a strange mutant creature he decided to call a "stroad":

The STROAD design -- a street/road hybrid -- is the futon of transportation alternatives. Where a futon is a piece of furniture that serves both as an uncomfortable couch and an uncomfortable bed, a STROAD moves cars at speeds too slow to get around efficiently but too fast to support productive private sector investment. The result is an expensive highway and a declining tax base.

The most (in)famous stroad in London, Ontario is Wonderland (St)Road. there is nothing wonderful about it. I hate driving on it. I hate biking on it. I hate walking along it. I hate the view from it.

It is so ugly, that it is almost impossible to find pictures of it (I think it would crack most lenses with its sheer ugliness)



https://www.google.ca/maps/search/Wo...3.35z?hl=en-GB


Is that Siberia? No, it's London Ontario!
https://www.google.ca/maps/@42.98424...i8192?hl=en-GB

Irkutsk? Nyet. London, Ontario.
https://www.google.ca/maps/@42.98392...i8192?hl=en-GB

Ahh!! My eyes!!
https://www.google.ca/maps/@42.93260...i8192?hl=en-GB

[ue]

Winnipeg is pretty much a stroad city, even right downtown...

Portage Ave Downtown, near Portage & Main


Portage outside of downtown, but still in pre-war neighbourhoods


Main


St Mary's in Central St Boniface, not far from Downtown


Pembina


Notre Dame a bit outside the core city


Notre Dame downtown


Henderson


McPhillips


Academy (this one is less obvious as the street is narrower, but it has signalling geared towards through traffic, which is at very high speeds while the sidewalks are pretty narrow)


Grant


Route 90


Marion in Central St B

[ue]

And Edmonton isn't much better. The main thing is the two most prominent main streets in Edmonton - Jasper and Whyte - are relatively tame in comparison to Portage or Main in Winnipeg. That being said, once you leave the immediate Downtown, Jasper becomes a major stroad, and so does Whyte when you leave the main part in Strathcona/Garneau.

Jasper Ave west of downtown in Oliver


Whyte Ave east of Strathcona around Edmonton's French Quarter


Gateway at the "entrance" to Old Strathcona


104 Ave


97 St


118 Ave in Beverly


Fort Road


Stony Plain Road in Jasper Place


Connors Road (maybe doesn't fit the definition of a stroad because it doesn't even try to have any pedestrian infrastructure)

[esquire]

Originally Posted by ue

Winnipeg is pretty much a stroad city, even right downtown...

Man, this post was a tour de force. You captured most of the big ones... Regent strikes me as another classic Winnipeg stroad, and there are others too.

[ue]

Originally Posted by esquire

Man, this post was a tour de force. You captured most of the big ones... Regent strikes me as another classic Winnipeg stroad, and there are others too.

It's one of the most infuriating things about Winnipeg's built form because you can clearly tell many of these stroads weren't always like this. Portage still has really wide sidewalks and a lot of street-facing buildings, but it is still an unpleasant place to walk because of the 6-8 lanes of traffic roaring by constantly. And everybody is assumed to be driving because the transit system sucks and automobility has been prioritized for decades while the city is oddly freeway-adverse. So you get stroads everywhere. A cheap version of auto-centric planning.

I was going to add Regent, but my post was getting long. I also missed St Anne's, Roblin, Corydon west of Crescentwood, Confusion Corner, Keewatin. Hell, even Osborne can feel stroad-like at times.

[esquire]

^ Yes, very true... on one hand we can say that Winnipeg avoided demolishing neighbourhoods to build expressways and freeways, but on the other hand a lot of arterial streets have been converted into de facto expressways anyway. The major arterials are unpleasant places to walk outside of downtown.

[Truenorth00]

Thank you for creating this. And just to show how car dependent we are, we have the highest allocation of auto infrastructure per capita anywhere:



Source:https://transportgeography.org/conte...nd-area-roads/

That is what leads to ugly nonsense like stroads. And just because nobody posted it yet, a video by Not Just Bikes explaining what stroads are, why they are bad and how they can be eliminated:

• Video Link

[ue]

Originally Posted by esquire

^ Yes, very true... on one hand we can say that Winnipeg avoided demolishing neighbourhoods to build expressways and freeways, but on the other hand a lot of arterial streets have been converted into de facto expressways anyway. The major arterials are unpleasant places to walk outside of downtown.

There was still some demolition for the Disraeli and IIRC around the Slaw Rebchuk Bridge (Salter-Isabel). And urban renewal in Lord Selkirk Park (which I'm honestly mostly fine with... it provides good public housing). And the endless demolition of Indigenous spaces throughout Downtown (most notably the Main St strip and the "SHED" area). But yeah, it's not like Winnipeg has the Gardiner ripping through Downtown and the West End.

It's just a really weird situation. Winnipeg stopped caring about walking, cycling, and transit, despite so much of the city being built for it, and full on embraced automobility as an ideology but did it in the cheapest way possible.

I'd also argue that Portage and Main can both still be unpleasant to walk on right downtown, depending on where you are.

[Truenorth00]

Nobody ever talks about how horrible it is to drive on a stroad. You're moving fast, but yo have to pay attention to so many things. Insanity like putting painted bicycle gutters for cyclists just a foot away from cars going > 60 kph. Or angled lanes exiting to highway onramps, which gets pedestrians and cyclists killed. Ironically, this is where some new subdivisions are better in that the major avenue is usually more road than stroad.

[Architype]

Stroads are the anathema of modern civilization's infrastructure. Fortunately, living in inner city Vancouver means I don't have to deal with them too often.

[ue]

Originally Posted by Architype

Stroads are the anathema of modern civilization's infrastructure. Fortunately, living in inner city Vancouver means I don't have to deal with them too often.

It's not like inner Vancouver is immune to the stroad...

[Architype]

Yeah, there are a few 4 lane streets, but those carry actual traffic with actual destinations. They are the minority, and the city has been working diligently to narrow streets at crossings for pedestrians, creating pedestrian friendly streets (as planned for Commercial Drive) and reducing traffic lanes for bike lanes. We don't have freeways after all.

[ue]

Originally Posted by Architype

Yeah, there are a few 4 lane streets, but those carry actual traffic with actual destinations. We don't have freeways after all.

That's a bit disingenuous, because the City of Vancouver is a relatively small part of the metro area. Vancouver has freeways, they're just out in Burnaby and Richmond mostly. If you carved out a city boundary for Edmonton that included only the 1800s-1950s neighbourhoods like Vancouver, you would also not find any freeways. And Winnipeg famously doesn't actually have any true freeways anywhere unlike Metro Vancouver which is why the stroads are so prominent. A stroad can still carry "actual traffic with actual destinations" - they're often lined with strip malls and big boxes and office parks, after all. And inner Vancouver still has the viaducts.

[Architype]

Originally Posted by ue

That's a bit disingenuous, because the City of Vancouver is a relatively small part of the metro area. Vancouver has freeways, they're just out in Burnaby and Richmond mostly. If you carved out a city boundary for Edmonton that included only the 1800s-1950s neighbourhoods like Vancouver, you would also not find any freeways. And Winnipeg famously doesn't actually have any true freeways anywhere unlike Metro Vancouver which is why the stroads are so prominent. A stroad can still carry "actual traffic with actual destinations" - they're often lined with strip malls and big boxes and office parks, after all. And inner Vancouver still has the viaducts.

The viaducts are doomed for demolition, and some of the "stroads" you illustrated are surrounded with high density. Stroads are things normally surrounded by a bunch of cheap shoddy commercial shite with ubiquitous parking lots; maybe Kingsway is one, which I avoid. And remember I am speaking for the inner city, not Surrey or other burbs. I frequently traverse every street you've shown here, and they are mostly considered unimportant traffic arteries where no one goes much as a pedestrian (semi industrial etc.), and do have traffic.

[ue]

Originally Posted by Architype

The viaducts are doomed for demolition, and some of the stroads you illustrated are surrounded with high density. Stroads are things normally surrounded by a bunch of cheap shoddy commercial shite with ubiquitous parking lots; maybe Kingsway is one, which I avoid. And remember I am speaking for the inner city, not Surrey or other burbs.

Stroad is a portmanteau of street and road - something that attempts to be both but failing twice over as a mediocre compromise. In this sense, a street is something that facilitates traffic by various means of transport, meaning they are safe and viable places for pedestrians, cyclists, transit users, and drivers. A road is something that is purely designed to facilitate automobiles. They are often imagined as these wide suburban roads with big box shopping centres on either side, but in truth they can be bordered by any sort of urban development, including otherwise walkable areas, which are the more egregious examples IMO that I highlighted from Winnipeg and Edmonton above. It's far more infuriating that Main St in Downtown Winnipeg operates like a stroad than King George Blvd in Surrey.

[Architype]

Originally Posted by ue

Stroad is a portmanteau of street and road - something that attempts to be both but failing twice over as a mediocre compromise. In this sense, a street is something that facilitates traffic by various means of transport, meaning they are safe and viable places for pedestrians, cyclists, transit users, and drivers. A road is something that is purely designed to facilitate automobiles. They are often imagined as these wide suburban roads with big box shopping centres on either side, but in truth they can be bordered by any sort of urban development, including otherwise walkable areas, which are the more egregious examples IMO that I highlighted from Winnipeg and Edmonton above. It's far more infuriating that Main St in Downtown Winnipeg operates like a stroad than King George Blvd in Surrey.

You mean a place where you can drive faster than normal, yes I do like that , so they aren't all bad. The traffic has to go somewhere, but our inner city stroads are nicely landscaped, and generally without ridiculous setbacks and parking lots, and that actually helps a lot.

[Nite]

Any city in Canada with plans to remove some of their stroads?
Winnipeg seems like it would benefit the most in removing the ones downtown and turning them intro streets

[ue]

Originally Posted by Architype

You mean a place where you can drive faster than normal, yes I do like that , so they aren't all bad. The traffic has to go somewhere, but our inner city stroads are nicely landscaped, and generally without ridiculous setbacks and parking lots, and that actually helps a lot.

Of the Vancouver examples, I'd only say West 6th has nice landscaping, but it still has a wide road, small sidewalk, many driveways, and is designed to facilitate speedy through traffic. I've walked Terminal Ave and the Kingsway and they're both hostile spaces for pedestrians.

That being said, I do agree with you overall -- Vancouver is probably the least stroad-y major city in Western Canada. Which makes sense as its urban planning is generally also well ahead of other Western Canadian cities.

[Architype]

Originally Posted by ue

Of the Vancouver examples, I'd only say West 6th has nice landscaping, but it still has a wide road, small sidewalk, many driveways, and is designed to facilitate speedy through traffic. I've walked Terminal Ave and the Kingsway and they're both hostile spaces for pedestrians.

That being said, I do agree with you overall -- Vancouver is probably the least stroad-y major city in Western Canada. Which makes sense as its urban planning is generally also well ahead of other Western Canadian cities.

So we understand each other. Georgia Street, which you've shown at the top is pretty nice considering the traffic, attractive new skyscrapers, nice parks, plazas, water features, wide sidewalks, etc.

[ue]

Originally Posted by Nite

Any city in Canada with plans to remove some of their stroads?
Winnipeg seems like it would benefit the most in removing the ones downtown and turning them intro streets

Unfortunately Winnipeg has some of the dumbest urban planning gaffes I've seen in Canada. As recently as 2019 the city actually shrunk the sidewalk on Main Street downtown due to complaints from local businesses about needing loading zones and the bike lanes taking up the space that was used for that. This is despite there being a perfectly good alley on the other side of these buildings.

However, in Edmonton, the first example I showed, of West Jasper Ave, is actually in the process of being turned into a more equitable space for non-drivers. The sidewalks are being widened, street furniture is finally being added, green buffers are being added. The project is currently in its first phase, so only from 109 St to 114 St (the part shown earlier is further west, at 121-122 St mid-block).

More info (and where all the images are sourced from): https://www.edmonton.ca/projects_pla...er-avenue.aspx