Emphasis on designed.
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Tunnels!! Right under the core of DTR and let the thru traffic zip through!
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Stroads are the crap we see up Wake Forest/Falls of Neuse, out Glenwood past Crabtree, up Capital north of downtown and especially between 440 and 540, etc. They are neither a street (which is what we have in the downtown grid), or roads (which are like NC 50 north of 540 and take us from one place to another). While the couplet of one way roads may pass traffic through the core of the city, they do not meet the definition of a stroad. Most of the stroads we and other cities have used to be roads that have absorbed the role of a stroad as suburbia transformed them over time.
Itās perfectly reasonable to not want pass-thru traffic patterns of the couplet downtown, but Iād remind us that this was the compromise that kept a freeway from plowing through the east side of downtown, and I think that Raleigh was damn lucky to have made that deal with the state. While there is definitely traffic that just passes through downtown on the couplet, their north and south terminuses also represent the main access points to downton from points due north and south of the city center.
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Better yet, regional rail service to do more of the heavy lifting.
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Stroad is a combination of āstreetā and āroad,ā in the case of a corridor that tries to prioritize through traffic while also building wealth in the form of businesses and residences along it, and fails at both tasks.
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Stroads are very simply just any subdivision street, road, highway, interstate that is maintained by NCDOT. That is it. Nothing else. Speed limits donāt matter. Number of lanes donāt matter. Nothing else matters. If you noticed on the picture that I posted earlier that Hillsborough St (Between Glenwood and 440) and Lake Wheeler Rd (Dix area) are no longer stroads. Raleigh has now taken over these in order to construct them in the way that they desire.
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I was being dumb. Like @GucciLittlePig said, StoakCityDylan.
That would translate to Stupid Oak City Dylan.
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I thought it was a street that has been watermarked with OakCityDylan 
This is getting weird.
Stroad is a term coined by Charles Marohn in 2011, the founder of Strong Towns.
From Wikipedia:
Poor mix of street and road functions[edit]
According to Marohn, a stroad is a bad combination of two types of vehicular pathways: it is part streetāwhich he describes as a ācomplex environment where life in the city happensā, with pedestrians, cars, buildings close to the sidewalk for easy accessibility, with many (property) entrances / exits to and from the street, and with spaces for temporary parking and delivery vehiclesāand part road, which he describes as a āhigh-speed connection between two placesā with wide lanes and limited entrances and exits, and which are generally straight or have gentle curves. In essence, Marohn defines a stroad as a high-speed road with many turnoffs which lacks safety features.[9][10] In the commentary, Marohn states that stroads do not function well as either a street or a road.[11] According to Marohn, the problem with stroads is that engineering codes tend to emphasize speed and traffic flow rather than safety, so that stroads try to be āall things to all peopleā but end up failing in every way as a result.[5][12]
It does have to do with speed, and it does not have anything to do with who owns and maintains the corridor.
Yes, the textbook Stroads in our area are Six Forks at NH, Capital BLVD north of 440, etc. but in my opinion the McDowell/Dawson couplet represents a stroad as well because it mixes the competing goals of high speed throughput (by design - now weāre timing lights and adjusting speed limits to try to combat the design speed which we have identified as being higher than it should be at that location) with place-making and value creation (business entrances, retail, outdoor dining, sip n stroll, bike/ped, etc.). Itās a mix of the goals of a road and a street that make a stroad, quite literally, not whether or not it has a Taco Bell or who owns it.
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Been personally using the term stroads here in Wake County for over 20 years. Itās basically just State Roads (or Secondary Roads) shortened and you will see SR 1010 for example on street signs. Some SRās are slow city streets 20 to 25 mph. Not designed for high speed. Most of the rural neighborhood roads in Wake County are SRās and are maintained by NCDOT and not designed for high speed. For example NCDOT does not generally do sidewalks. Cities have to work with NCDOT and pay for the sidewalks. Itās up to the cities to work with NCDOT to help design, build, and pay for those things that most people on here desire for their streets. Cities can opt out of the SR designation and simply just design and build their own streets. Most donāt.
Well thatās interesting! Very different definition, but makes sense
Gosh it would do so much good to just take one lane away from Dow and McDawson and widen the sidewalks accordingly on both sides.
The new hotel next to whiskey kitchen will have a treacherous walk
EDIT: Iām just going to leave my voice to text exactly as it came
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Are they not required to have the 14 ft sidewalk like everywhere else downtown?
McDowell and Dawson would be much better even if they were rebuilt to a consistent 3-lane one-way cross section from end to end.
No turn lanes, no deceleration lanes, no parallel parking. Especially the parallel parking along these streets has always seemed incongrouous to me and highly at odds with the notion of traffic flow. To me, if youāre going to pick a pair of streets to bear the brunt of downtownās through traffic, you might as well let them focus on doing that job.
If you also skip the bike lanes - probably appropriate here- This gives something like 16ā for sidewalks on on either side of the street. This would yield a pedestrian experience comparable to Hillsborough Street near the capital. A generous 6ā buffer for street trees, and a similarly generous 10ā sidewalk. If you add in a cycle track then you lose the ability to widen the sidewalks.
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Just a thought: I feel like the parallel parking helps encourage drivers to slow down, so Iāve never really been so against the parallel parking on M & D. Obviously with the light timing being set to the 25mph speed limit on M & D, it might be a redundant way of reducing travel speed, so I guess Iād be okay with them getting removed.
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One thing that does bug me about the parallel parking (and the turn lanes), is the way you have to swerve to stay straight in a couple spots - like on Dawson crossing Hargett. It always makes me nervous, the lane painting isnāt the most clear and you can feel drivers realizing at the last second theyāre about to sideswipe the cars next to them.
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Sorry if thereās a better thread for this. I looked and didnāt find anything.
Iām sure thereās a lot of opinions about this.
Tons of really dangerous red light running all over the Triangle, so not sure if these actually helped. Iād imagine most of the people who get tickets also have revoked licenses, warrants, expired registration, etc and just hide from all that stuff. Occasionally they probably get normal people who mis-timed entering the intersection
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Itās legal extortion, and the city gets essentially zero money from the fines - most goes straight to the company that installed the cams. Itās a scam, and I can only see this as a positive!!!
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Iām sure they helped. Knowing these were there would definitely keep people from running the lights. Now with them gone, people would be able to run without having any type of penalty. The only penalty would be hitting someone (which might lead to hit and run anyway since that already happens) and additional crashes.
An easier approach: just change every light intersection to a roundabout or stop signs. Less speed, no traffic light upkeep, no reason to have red light cameras.
As far as the fines go, even if the city didnāt get fines, it still wastes the time of people who try to save 1 minute by running the light (if that). The trade off is 1 minute saving for a fine plus hours of fighting the fee (if thatās what they chose).
Iām sure the cameras allowed the city to allocate officers to other type of crime instead of those running the lights. (Even though they were not already enforcing that).
Just an overall bad move in my opinion.
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Agreed itās a win! Surprised there was never much reaction to the downtown-wide speed limit reductions or no right turn on red implementation. Those two changes did more to actually encourage/create walkability than any new development has or ever will. And they happened relatively quickly with no widespread negative reaction from the community. These changes and others could have reduced the need for red light cameras now.
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