#stroads

The Walk Light

While the older part of the city near the lake is dense, walkable and relatively well-served by transit, the rest...well...isn't.

The intersection of N. Cicero and W. North Avenue, where stroads collide.

As newcomers to Chicago, my wife and I like to explore parts of the city we haven't seen yet, and familiarize ourselves with different neighborhoods.

This week, we took a trip westward along Irving Park to Six Corners, then turned down Cicero, then back along Division, with a couple of detours until we went back northward along Lake Shore Drive. In all, we went about six miles west (a little under 10km).

W. Irving Park Road, aka IL-19.

Irving Park, Cicero, and to some degree Division are arterial roads. Arterials are defined as "higher traffic" urban roads, ranking below actual highways.

However, using the Strong Towns definition, these are really stroads - the unfortunate street-highway hybrid that is designed for higher speeds like a highway, with wider lanes; but have multiple potential points for conflicts and accidents such as driveways, turning entrances and exits to parking lots, intersections and crosswalks. Plus, they're usually just a block from residential streets, meaning residents are exposed to highway levels of noise and pollution.

Stroads are highly unpleasant places to walk. The sidewalks, where they exist, are usually narrow, and (as in one spot we noticed along Cicero) obstructed by telephone poles, street signage, utility hardware, and too often, people illegally parked on the sidewalk. They're often impossible to navigate for people using mobility aids like wheelchairs; there's also little to no tree canopy, leaving pedestrians exposed to harsh weather conditions, particularly in summer.

N. Cicero Avenue is mostly a depressing series of new and used car dealerships, gas stations, car repair shops, Jiffy Lubes, and empty storefronts with papered-up windows.

Using Jan Gehl's definition of pedestrian-scale urbanism, there is nothing of interest here; you're faced with long blank walls, nondescript low-rise strip developments fronted by mandated parking, chain-link fences, and empty lots dominated by weeds.

It isn't a place you would willingly walk to, it's a place you drive to and usually only because you have to.

There's no rapid transit to these neighborhoods; just buses. This means residents are often forced into car dependency, and they're also to some degree cut off from jobs, education and other opportunities because of the transit time involved.

For instance, to travel from a typical house in Belmont-Cragin to Columbia College on transit is, at best, about an hour using the bus and CTA trains.

Using buses only (for instance, if the trains are down) it can get closer to two hours.

Imagine if there was a REM-style automated rapid transit line to downtown, at an average speed of 51km/hr; It could make the trip in 11 minutes. Even if there were six additional stops of 30 seconds each along the way, that means you could get from Belmont-Cragin to downtown in maybe 15 minutes, tops.

This is all doable, but it requires money and political will.

Fixing Chicago's Stroads

Thankfully, there are groups, like Strong Towns Chicago, that are advocating for change.

In an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune, Aaron Feldman backs the new plan to redesign Western Avenue, a north-south arterial, using transit and rezoning for higher density housing:

A big part of this proposed transformation is Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), where buses are given dedicated lanes to get them out of car traffic, priority signaling, and (ideally) dedicated boarding stations.

While it'd be wonderful to magically build out a network of REM-like lines to transit-ize these arterials, BRT is a lower-cost option that can be built out relatively quickly.

Rezoning, densification, BRT, and road diets (lane removals; widening sidewalks; installation of protected bike lanes; more crosswalks, etc.) could positively affect all of the stroads we've mentioned, transforming them back into community-centric destination streets, and connecting residents to more opportunities.

This could be supplemented by programs to put short-term "pop up" retail, arts, and other community services into vacant storefronts, to breathe life back into "dead" sections of these streets.

If you're interested in learning more, or participating, here's the links for Strong Towns Chicago:

📷 Strong Towns Chicago on Instagram

💬 Strong Towns Chicago Slack