Hacker News Reader

Comment by 15457345234 | Hacker News Reader

> This is trying to solve the wrong problem.

That's kinda what I concluded, these guys seem to have a relatively good point but there's no practical way to action it; in the US about half the country has already been laid down according to this template. Trying to disrupt that is just disrupting the economy and will do an infinite more amount of damage to livelihoods in the short term than good in the long term.

I'm reluctant to characterise anything as a 'wrecker' movement but... I get a bit of that vibe from them. A bit like those environmentalists that use environmentalism to disguise their misanthropic tendencies.

I really don't know why I think that about this movement, though. It's weird. Just rubs me the wrong way.

View on HN

Why would it do any damage? Stroad usually can easily be converted into road, and with some political will and investments into a street. In both cases economy will improve - either by making roads safer and faster, or by bringing jobs to the newly created streets.

That is the whole point of being against stroads - they are rotten compromise between roads and streets.

I guess all I can really say at the end of the day is that I get a weird 'feeling' from the Strong Towns movement, and I can't put my finger on why. Guess that isn't very helpful, is it.

I get the same feeling from other such organisations and people.

They seem to be focused on aspects that are typically less important to the rest of society.

The most head-scratching example of this that I've seen was a guy saying that people should move to Chicago because it's underrated and has a decent transportation network.

Y-yeah. But that's not the only thing that people consider when they move and let's just say the city itself has a reputation.

In my corner of the world there's a lot of putting the cart before the horse in this regard - typically via closing streets for traffic without improving public transport.

Net effect is just more congestion because people have places to go regardless how much you reduce "induced demand".

It always feel like they are changing something different, but I am not entirely sure if it actually will work or make my life better. And this is as European.

At same time. I'm pretty sure sprawl would be better with more mixed zoning. Ofc, with buffers to oil refineries... If some idiots starts that argument.

>I get a weird 'feeling' from the Strong Towns movement, and I can't put my finger on why

An organization with a subtly culturally imperialist name ("the cities are all fine, but all small towns are all broken everywhere") is unlikely to have your best interests at heart even if its conclusions may have some validity.

The thing that this lobby group misses is that, ultimately, most smaller towns are in maintenance mode (we soft-banned most resource extraction and what is left only requires a tenth of the workforce) and that's true to a degree for smaller cities as well. This isn't something you can easily do with a major city because the infrastructure is more heavily used and won't as gracefully degrade, but you can keep rural roads serviceable for a long time with simple maintenance.

And this is why "stroads" exist in the first place- that's already the cost-optimized solution (take 2 lane road, expropriate some front yards/front parking, now you have a 4-lane road that can support through traffic and exiting traffic), and reworking them is not going to help a town that Strong Towns claims in the same article "are financially irresponsible and don't even have enough tax revenue to sustain maintenance".

Surely, if they don't have bread, perhaps they might consider cake?

> Why would it do any damage?

Sigh. Because roads with turn lanes CAN NOT be converted into straight roads without forcing cars to take long detours through slow streets.

This will inevitably slow down the traffic, which is the goal of these propaganda outlets. They WANT traffic to become untenable. Just read their suggestions on "improving" roads with turn lanes.

Well, the point is to get rid of a lot of the traffic. And that's a good thing actually, with better air quality due to less pollution, more safety since there are fewer cars going around, which in turn helps with emergency services as it becomes easier for them to reach their destination, you get more incentives to use public transit, a bicycle or even walk places. Hell, for those times when you absolutely do need a car, lessening traffic makes that nicer as well, since you don't need to sit in traffic as much.

So yes, this propaganda is good for the environment and the planet, good for communities and good for individuals.

That's why they are a propaganda outlet. They have a goal, and they will lie and spread misleading information to further it.

Go ahead and point out the lies and/or misinformation.

You are asserting anecdotes ("it'll make driving slower for sure!"), compared to strong towns and https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes, who are professional planners and civil engineers.

They specifically address your exact points in their videos, stroads are bad for everybody, even cars.

No, you can't easily convert a stroad into a road. A stroad is surrounded by development and people need access to these businesses and residences.

Usually stroad development is surrounded by parking spots and it is easy to change where the entrance is. Sometimes entrance from the street is already in place (parking has multiple entrances), you just need to block the road access.

I just tried implementing this on some random stroad and you can easily remove more than 2/3 access points without any investments.

> I just tried implementing this on some random stroad and you can easily remove more than 2/3 access points without any investments.

No, you can't. Who's going to remove these access points? Like actual physical labor. Are you going to rent heavy equipment with your own money and remove them on a 5-mile stretch of a stroad?

What's so hard to understand?

My guestimate is that will cost around 10% of annual upkeep to remove access points for particular stroad. If access point is already under maintenance of stroad owner then removing it will pay off quite quickly (~10 years). If not the benefit will "just" be faster and safer (st)road.

"What's so hard to understand?"

but it's easy to point out what's wrong, why this initiative is misguided.

i'm a misanthrope myself. ironic that you're pointing out what's wrong with the misanthropic take.

Car dependent cities are a terrible health hazard! I get it, different strokes for different folks, but iono, have car dependent owners really experienced anything else? You warn of economic damage as if that's the only Good there is.

We can't A/B tests our lives, so we're gonna bias the life we know. So it's self perpetuating. The take isn't throw up your hands because economic damage, that can't be it? Eh that's why im a misanthrope.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com