14 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY march 9-15, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com In everyday parlance, most of us don’t make a distinction between the words “street” and “road.” Some roadways are streets, others roads or drives or avenues or boulevards and this seems, in terms of common usage at least, a mostly aesthetic distinction. In urban design, however, a “street” is fundamentally different from a “road”—and understanding what separates the two can open up a whole new way of thinking about mobility. “In a simple form…a road is really about mobility and a street is about access,” explains Todd Muck, executive director of the Transportation Agency for Monterey County. In other words, a road is primarily about connecting two points, and about allowing people (most likely traveling in cars) to get from point A to point B as quickly and easily as possible. A street, meanwhile, is lined with buildings and businesses and destinations—the goal of the street is to allow people, whether they are on foot, on a bicycle or in a car, to comfortably access those destinations. But streets and roads have become confused, and not just in our language—they’ve melded into one another in real life, too. This is where the term “stroad” comes in, a portmanteau of the words street and road that was coined by land-use planner and civil engineer Charles Marohn. In Marohn’s thinking, a stroad takes both street-like qualities (like driveways and businesses) and road-like qualities (like wider lanes and faster speed limits) and mashes them up to create something that’s the worst of both worlds. Imagine (we bet this won’t be too hard) a four-lane roadway with long blocks, few crosswalks and businesses (or strip malls) lining each side of the road. Maybe the speed limit is 35mph, but people are driving faster—which makes it difficult to access those businesses if you’re in a car and downright dangerous if you’re not. That’s a stroad. “They don’t function well for anybody, really,” Muck says. Stroads are everywhere. But they don’t have to be—part of Muck’s work with TAMC is helping cities turn bad stroads back into good streets (or good roads) as part of the agency’s Complete Streets Program. In this package we take a hard look at some of Monterey County’s streets, roads and stroads to ask what’s going wrong—and what’s going right—in our urban design, and how the streetscape can impact downtowns in Monterey, Salinas, Seaside and King City. -Tajha Chappellet-Lanier, associate editor Flourish vs. Flounder Monterey’s Alvarado Street succeeds while Lighthouse Avenue struggles under the strain. By Pam Marino Sometimes history, geography and economics can help or hurt a good road, as is clear by comparing two of Monterey’s most important thoroughfares: Alvarado Street and Lighthouse Avenue. Alvarado’s history, stretching back nearly 200 years as the center of the growing city’s economic life, laid a foundation for the successful “main street” that it’s become. Lighthouse, on the other hand, has always been a road to somewhere else, struggling as both a road and a business district street, a quintessential “stroad.” It’s been a balancing act for Monterey officials over the decades, figuring out how to serve the needs of motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists while managing the demands and expectations of residents and business owners. A vision for Alvarado Street forged a decade ago in the city’s Downtown Specific Plan has led to what is now a flourishing destination. The vision for Lighthouse Avenue, laid out in the Lighthouse Specific Plan adopted in 2016, has been clouded by its geography and competing opinions on how to make it work as best it can for all involved. Fire is what clears out the dead wood of a forest to bring renewal, and it was a fire that eventually brought renewal to Alvarado Street. The T.A. Work building, a prominent structure along the street, burned to the ground in February 2007. It left a gaping hole in the downtown streetscape but the disaster eventually helped spur the city in to create a new plan for downtown that led to a revitalization that brought Alvarado as a street back to life. Included in the plan was creating sidewalk bump-outs where permanent seating for outdoor dining was Streets & Roads In his work with the Transportation Agency for Monterey County, Todd Muck helps cities (like Seaside, seen here) assess whether their streets and roads are truly serving the needs of the people that live, work and travel on them. He says changes to the built environment take a phased approach, starting with a holistic look at the streetscape before breaking it down into component pieces and implementing specific suggestions. Daniel Dreifuss
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