e-biking in Kansas City

Street or road? That’s the question I’ve been asking myself as I ride through Kansas City ever since I read the book “Confessions of a Recovering Engineer” by Charles Marohn, founder of the organization Strong Towns.

A road serves to move traffic from one place to another as quickly as possible. A street is a stage set for wealth creation, serving to enhance the activities of wealth creation: housing, working, shopping, dining, education and entertainment. The primary functions of a street are access and safety.

Both streets and roads are desirable.

Sadly, our city is filled with neither streets nor roads, but what Marohn calls “stroads,” which try to function as both streets and roads but fail at both.

As you might guess from the book’s title, Marohn blames traffic engineers for this. Driven by “drive time” metrics (how long it takes to get from point A to point B), which are appropriate for roads, they have ruined streets by concerning themselves only with the smooth flow of traffic to the detriment of all else–especially the safety of everyone not encased in a vehicle.

Corners are given larger radii, allowing cars to turn at a higher speed, endangering pedestrians and increasing the distance they must travel to cross the street. Lanes are widened, increasing speed. Obstacles along the street like trees are removed. Lanes are added. Walk lights are not automatic. Posts are mounted on sheer pins so they break away when hit by a car, and therefore don’t protect the pedestrians that might be standing on the other side. All of these encourage faster speeds and less attention to safe driving.

Our most notorious stroads are Noland Road in Independence, Metcalf Avenue in Overland Park, and Wornall Road in Kansas City, but even a grand boulevard like Ward Parkway hasn’t escaped the clutches of the traffic engineers, with its freeway-like speeds and towering clusters of traffic signals, reducing its function to that of a (dangerous) freeway.

After decades of arrogantly imposing their will on cities across America, the grip of the engineers is finally loosening. Gillham Road now has bike lanes that caused the elimination of a lane of traffic and improved many of its intersections with traffic-calming islands and bump-outs. Accessing Gillham Park no longer requires crossing four lanes of fast moving traffic, and, driven by this and other improvements, usage of the park has skyrocketed. And more people in the park at all times of day increases the safety of not only the park but all adjacent neighborhoods.

Other stroads that have seen improvements include Gregory Boulevard, Cleaver II Boulevard, Rockhill Road, and Main Street (south of the Plaza).

Why are we talking about stroads on an e-bike web site? Because stroads are dangerous for e-bikers and streets are not.