09-19-2022, 07:32 AM
(09-19-2022, 04:51 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: So I've been thinking on stroads for the last little while here and I am thinking that service streets can provide a solution to them.
I am trying this idea out with a case study on Fairway Rd. (one of our stroadiest stroads). Here I've added service streets along the road to service all the retail businesses along Fairway Rd. between Wilson and Manitou. It eliminates dozens of driveways and two fully signalized intersections. It would clearly be a far far safer road, and would have bike infra for very cheap.
The cost is of course to access (as it always is) drivers in the other direction would have to go ~1 minute out of their way to make a U-turn. I feel like this is an easy price to pay, but given our traffic engineers love affair with stroads, I figure it'd be a hard sell.
You guys have any other thoughts on this.
I think that would make a Fairway into a true road. Could something not quite as goo be accomplished by requiring all developers to at least connect their parking lots to one another and removing some access driveways. The Starbucks to MEC plaza is connected, unfortunetely the car dealership breaks up the frontage to the Toys R US plaza. On the other side if the shoppers plaza could connect to the Former Williams parking lot, you are then linked all the way to the Former RBC site.
This did make me think, our worst Stroads did develop in the 50-70s. Roads from the 80s onward are mostly roads with a few nodes of Stroadiness here and there.