"The fundamental flaw of the entire automated vehicle concept revolves around our confusion between a road and a street."

I'm thinking Google didn't quite grok my intent in searching.

I'm not interested in this purported autonomous panacea, and it isn't because I'm a Luddite in terms of technology (although I'm getting there). Rather, Marohn explains it; we're merely substituting one form of car-centrism for another.

And eff all that.

AUTOMATED VEHICLES WILL MAKE OUR STREETS WORSE, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

There are a lot of people very excited about automated vehicles and their potential to transform our cities. I’m not one of them. I think we as a society seem all too enamored with technology, all too trusting of those pushing it and all too forgetful of the fact that we’ve been down this street before.

SNIP

Let me be very clear: I think the fundamental flaw of the entire automated vehicle concept revolves around our confusion between a road and a street. Roads are connections between places where speed and travel efficiency is the emphasis. Streets are the framework for growing a place, a platform for building wealth where the quality of the human habitat is more important than the throughput of vehicles.

The promise of automated vehicles is the promise of the stroad, the street/road hybrid. Adherents believe that, with AV, we will be able to move vehicles quickly and — simultaneously — improve safety and comfort for people not in a vehicle. This is nonsense, or stated more clearly, this is nonsensical unless we are willing to destroy the street as a platform for building wealth in a place.

Let me provide a simple mind experiment. I’m going to call it the Cambridge Test after my experience last week at the Harvard campus for a Strong Towns speaking engagement ...

At Strong Towns: "4 Reasons We Must Build Our Streets for People (Not Just Cars).

A reprise of the conversation (paraphrased) that I had with 3rd district councilman Greg Phipps last week.

Me: We need to talk about the street grid.

Greg: I know you have issues, but look, at times you have to compromise, and it's better than it was before. It's a start.

Me: Okay, for the sake of argument, let's say it is better than before (the two-way street project). It can still be improved, so we need to talk about the next phases for improvement.

Greg: Well, you know, probably nothing else is ever going to happen.

When the weather gets warmer, I'll be going back out with the radar gun, and then we'll see the degree to which traffic is being slowed by two-way friction alone.

4 REASONS WE MUST BUILD OUR STREETS FOR PEOPLE (NOT JUST CARS), by Kea Wilson (Strong Towns)

 ... Here are the four things I wish I could say not just to Jamie Wilson, but to anyone who thinks that stroads aren’t one of the most pressing issues facing our cities today.

1. Human life is not a traffic problem to be solved.

 ... Ask yourself this: Should the punishment for being a flawed human being who gets distracted (or plays too rough, or has an addiction, or any of the other messy human things we do) be a painful, sudden death under the wheels of a high-speed automobile?

2. Pedestrians safety is a two way street. But too often, that street is a stroad.

 ... To say that pedestrian safety is a two way street is to imply that pedestrians and cars are moving in equal lanes. And, both literally and metaphorically, nothing could be further from the truth.

78 people died in my city over the course of ten years when they were crossing roads designed almost exclusively for cars moving at high speeds, upon which they were also expected to walk. I have yet to hear of any comparable epidemic of automobile drivers being killed when they swerve to avoid pedestrians.

3. Fixing stroads isn’t expensive. And not doing it is what’s making us go broke.

 ... The idea that there’s only way to build a road network — that is, to vastly overbuild it, adding lane after widened lane until no one would blame a driver for forgetting he’s not on a highway — is not only incorrect, but deeply limited, and I think officials like Wilson are in for a pleasant surprise when they begin to think differently. For one, it’s forgetting hundreds of years of human history, in which roads were simply never built this way. For another thing, it neglects the vast range of creative solutions available to us when we dare to think even a little bit differently — many of which cost next to nothing at all.

4. Everyone is a pedestrian — or they were, or they will be.

 ... To say these people are “pedestrians” or “non-drivers” is to forget that they are all of us at some point in our lives. They’re people who are too young to drive a car, or too physically infirm in their old age, or too poor to afford one. They’re people who have visual or physical or other disabilities, and people who simply just want to go for a walk on a sunny day. When our city streets are designed properly, a pedestrian is, simply, anyone who feels like walking — and if you look at St. Louis’ many non-stroads on a summer night when the Botanical Gardens are hosting a concert series, you’ll see that more people than not will get out on foot if it’s even remotely an option.

"10 Steps to Fix a City," including axing anyone on staff who believes the fixes are unworkable.

Imagine you attend a meeting of City Council, the Redevelopment Commission or the Board of Public Works and Safety, and as you're sitting there, expecting the same ol' same ol', an elected representative or appointed official begins explaining what he or she read at Strong Towns.

It's an old link, one worth viewing again.

It's also a list for comparing platforms in 2019. I've included explanations for some, though not all of the precepts. Give the website a click, and by doing so, pole vault to the head of the queue.

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10 STEPS TO FIX A CITY, by Andrew Burleson (Strong Towns)

1. Don't issue any new bonds until the city's current debts are fully paid off.

2. Don't accept unfunded maintenance obligations.

3. Throw out your parking ordinances.

No parking ordinance is better than no parking ordinances. Allow on-street parking everywhere, and use parking meters as needed to limit on-street congestion in high-demand areas. Let the market figure out the off-street supply and demand balance.

4. Don't permit greenfield development when existing infrastructure is highly underutilized.

Almost every city has a section of town with streets and sewers surrounded by vacant lots or abandoned buildings. As long as there are big chunks of your town like this, there’s no reason to issue building permits for new infrastructure. 

5. Require buildings to front the street.

That means no parking lots in front of buildings. The ground floor has to be inhabitable, parking can be beside or behind the building, but there has to be a “front door” that lets pedestrians enter the building directly from the street / sidewalk. 

6. Dramatically simplify your zoning.

First, just throw out your entire zoning ordinance because it’s surely horrible. Then try replacing it with just four zones: Heavy Industrial, Mixed-Use, Restricted Residential, and Restricted Agricultural / Natural. Read more about zoning.

7. Dramatically simplify your traffic hierarchy.

8. Stop building stroads.

In fact, it would be ideal if you could stop building any new roads until we, as a nation, came up with a better system for funding them. 

9. Set a maximum block perimeter of 2000' and enforce it.

10. Fire anyone on staff who believes the above is unworkable.

In today’s municipal world the professionals are a big part of the problem. There are plenty of good people out there who could work well within the constraints above. If the people in your city staff don’t think that’s possible, then the city needs new staff.

On the Stroad, Ferguson and the predictability of auto-oriented decline.

And what is a stroad?

A STROAD is a street/road hybrid and, besides being a very dangerous environment (yes, it is ridiculously dangerous to mix high speed highway geometric design with pedestrians, bikers and turning traffic), they are enormously expensive to build and, ultimately, financially unproductive.

Now, on to Ferguson, Missouri. As the author observes, he cannot comment on the racial aspect, but can offer a few ideas about how we Americans so enjoy designing for decline.

Stroad Nation, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

We can’t over-simplify the dynamics of all that has happened in Ferguson, but it’s obvious that our platform for building places is creating dynamics primed for social upheaval. The auto-oriented development pattern is a huge financial experiment with massive social, cultural and political ramifications. It is time to start building strong towns ...

... What I see with Ferguson is a suburb deep into the decline phase of the Suburban Ponzi Scheme. The housing styles suggest predominantly 1950’s and 1960’s development. We’re past the first cycle of new (low debt and low taxes), through the second cycle of stagnation (holding on with debt and slowly increasing taxes) and now into predictable decline. There isn’t the community wealth to fix all this stuff -- and there never was -- so it is all slowly falling apart.

Decline isn’t a result of poverty. The converse is actually true: poverty is the result of decline.

Duh: Slower street speeds and our urban quality of life go together like turkey and dressing.

Yesterday's post recorded roughly double the customary number of page views:

Georgetown resident: Top speed when driving on 'em is why we have 'em, so get us through New Albany as fast as humanly possible.

Suggesting that the sole purpose of streets is to transport people as efficiently as possible from one location to another is like suggesting that the sole purpose of sex is procreation. Surely, engaging in both forms of commuting can be about more than merely a speedy arrival at the destination.

Dear reader, to refresh your memory, here's what the suburbanite had to say:

#5 Reed Wrege 2013-11-22 21:57

The purpose of streets is to transport people as efficiently as possible from one location to another.

The intent of making more streets in New Albany two way is to slow down traffic. This is already being accomplished by the horrible lack of synchronization of the traffic lights.

I am not interested in having traffic slowed further...particularly as the volume is increasing!

Let's be clear about this: The correspondent is attacking the notion of two-way streets because two-way streets will slow down traffic, which he accuses traffic lights of doing already. His blithe assumption: High speed driving in urban areas is safe.

Here's another point of view, from Jeff Speck, which incorporates the counterintuitive world of traffic engineering and makes a series of crucial points about safety, which in an urban context necessarily involves ... that's right, slowing down traffic.

With fat lanes, traffic engineers kill in the name of safety
by Jeff Speck (Greater Greater Washington)

DC resident Jeff Speck wrote Suburban Nation, the best-selling book about city planning since Jane Jacobs. Greater Greater Washington is pleased to present 3 weekly excerpts from his new book, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time.
Contrary to perceptions, the greatest threat to pedestrian safety is not crime, but the very real danger of automobiles moving quickly. Yet most traffic engineers, often in the name of safety, continually redesign city streets to support higher-speed driving.

This approach is so counterintuitive that it strains credulity: Engineers design streets for speeds well above the posted limit, so that speeding drivers will be safe—a practice that, of course, causes the very speeding it hopes to protect against ...

... As with induced demand, the engineers have once again failed to comprehend that the way they design streets will have any impact on the way that people use them. By their logic, just as more lanes can't cause more driving, high-speed lanes can't cause high speeds. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to the second great misunderstanding that lies at the root of most urban degradation today. Widening a city's streets in the name of safety is like distributing handguns to deter gun violence.

Here's a primer on streets, roads and stroads.

And: Here's the handout.