You can't fix what you can't name. A lot of the problems with San Antonio's streets come down to a few design failures that show up almost everywhere you look. These two videos explain the ideas behind safer streets, and the graphic below shows exactly how it plays out across our city.
Learn the language of better streetsWhy Bad Street Design is Both Costly and Deadly
Bad street design can lead to serious injury or death. San Antonio has adopted a Vision Zero plan to eliminate traffic fatalities, but we have a long way to go. This video breaks down how the way we design streets, not just how people drive, is what makes them deadly.
“Stroads” are Ugly, Expensive, and Dangerous (and they're everywhere)
A stroad is a street designed like a road, and it fails at being either one. Too sprawling and hostile to be a good street, too busy and complicated to be a good road. Stroads are inefficient, unsafe, expensive, and ugly, and they are everywhere in San Antonio.
Most of San Antonio's most dangerous corridors, the ones on the city's High Injury Network, are stroads. The graphic below shows why: they try to do two jobs at once and end up doing both badly.
To combat the danger that comes with building neither streets, nor roads, Strong Towns San Antonio and affiliating organizations advocate for a complete streets policy. Our friends at ActivateSA describe this policy as one that “supports the creation of a safe, equitable multimodal transportation network through the strategy of requiring that every road construction and reconstruction project makes a street safe and comfortable for all users, preferably with prioritization of investment in communities that have historically been underserved.”
Read more about the Complete Streets Policy through the link below:
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