Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash
Crossing the Stroad
The bumper on a speeding SUV stopped inches from my shin. I was crossing a lane of traffic called by urban planners a “turn lane on a horizontal curve.” [1] Crossing Northwest Highway at Skillman Street means crossing a stroad.[2] Stroads are evidence that street planners hate non-automobile traffic. They are streets that have been widened to accommodate increasing numbers of cars, leading to higher speeds, larger business setbacks for greater expanses of parking lots, and hostility toward bicycles, mopeds, scooters, pedestrians, and wheelchairs. Stroads are the sacrifice of the benefits of urban life for the convenience of suburban car culture. Stroads lead to the suburbs or to airports. They are not for the convenience of urban residents.
Walking home from the Half-Price Books on Loop 12, a locally infamous stroad that promises the threat of death and injury to pedestrians, I had the light to cross. In the center of the turn the SUV made a right turn at the aforementioned “turn lane on a horizontal curve” without noticing me. Fortunately, traffic was heavy enough that day that drivers were no getting up to full speed. The driver was doing only about twenty-five or thirty miles-per-hour- enough to fracture my leg and drag me under the car to an almost certain death.
I started walking the city when a mechanic handed to me a four-thousand-dollar repair estimate on my car. Every seal in the engine, he said, needed replacement. That meant pulling the engine. Rather than shell out that kind of money for a twenty-three-year-old car, I sold it for a fraction of its book value. Surrendering an only car is a scary decision under the best conditions, and my situation was less than ideal. I had no backup- no motorcycle, bicycle, not even a skateboard. And, I live in Dallas, Texas, a city known as one of the most car-dependent cities in the U.S. [3]
Pedestrian Casualties
Fifty-four pedestrians were killed in Dallas by automobile drivers in 2018 and 3,434 were killed nationally in the first six months of 2022. Texas was one of three states (along with California and Florida) that produced 38 percent of pedestrian deaths in the first six months of 2022 but are home to 28% of the U.S. population.[5]
The U.S. experienced 6,205 fatal pedestrian incidents and 76,00 pedestrian injuries in 2019. [6] How many of the increasing numbers of pedestrian casualties are due to the rate at which we turn streets into stroads? The numbers are not available.
Pedestrian Life
The problem with living sans-automobile became apparent the first time (two days later) I had a doctor’s appointment and learned the hard way that Uber is more expensive, calculated on an annual basis, than the car, its repairs, fuel, and insurance. I paid over fifty dollars for the trip to and return from my doctor’s office 0.08 miles distant. There could have been mitigating situations: I had no experience with the Ube app and didn’t know that I had a range of pricing options. My ignorance might have contributed to the excessive cost, but I belong to an economic class that believes that, for fifty dollars, the trip should have come with champagne and showgirls.
A problem acquiring food, medicines, and household goods revealed itself when I subscribed to a national super center delivery service. It became apparent that deliveries are a way for grocers to get rid of bruised fruit and dented cans. I received a couple of canned vegetables so badly damaged that they should have been labeled with a botulism warning.
I am a good tipper. I appreciate good service and I empathize with service workers. I tended bar for years, and I know what they must deal with. I tip twenty percent for even mediocre service. A twenty percent tip on a fifty-dollar delivery adds ten dollars to each grocery order, and for that, you get botulism.
I have since changed over to Instacart for deliveries. Much of the unpleasantness associated with that first experiment in acquiring food without a car has disappeared, and the cost of tipping and a service charge are offset by coupons and random reductions in the dollar minimum for free deliveries.
All those factors, though frustrating, have solutions. The planning of cites to favor the automobile with stroads, sidewalk obstructions, and right-on-red turns on high-speed stroads is a threat to the lives of those without cars. My city, Dallas, has acquired some infamy for its “unwalkability”. The city has its moments: Uptown, Deep Ellum, some parts of the Oaklawn/Cedar Springs neighborhood, Highland Park, and Downtown. My neighborhood, Vickery Midtown,[4] is a sea of low-rise apartment buildings and condos far enough from consumer and cultural facilities to discourage walking, but close enough to discourage ride shares who can’t make enough money from the fare to make it worthwhile. And no one wants to brave crossing Greenville Avenue at Park Lane or travel Skillman Street in a wheelchair, on a bicycle, or on foot. That is an adventure analogous to playing Russian Roulette.
Times change. The automobile culture is supported by the petroleum lobby and espoused by Dennis Prager, co-founder of PragerU, a right wing misinformation group; Randal O’Toole, Senior Fellow and anti-urbanist at the libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute; and corrupt politicians legally purchased by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.
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Citations:
[1] https://accessmanagement.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/TRB2015stover619.pdf
[2] https://www.thegazette.com/opinion/stroads-hybrid-of-streets-and-roads-make-linn-county-less-safe/
[3] https://www.walkscore.com/TX/Dallas
[4] https://www.niche.com/places-to-live/n/vickery-meadow-dallas-tx/
[5] 2018- 54 pedestrians killed in dallas
https://www.statista.com/chart/21013/pedestrians-killed-in-large-us-cities/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw98ujBhCgARIsAD7QeAhcTY-IlZseWh3uRlAc3BhZASlW_6BL4bBYsOUuCe1JDs8Qv6b8TA4aAhy0EALw_wcB
[6] https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/GHSA-Pedestrian-Spotlight23#:~:text=Over%20the%20past%20ten%20years,the%20start%20of%20the%20pandemic.
