stroad

thumb|A five-lane stroad on NY 78 (Transit Road) in [[Amherst, New York, surrounded by auto-oriented commercial development with empty sidewalks]] A stroad is a thoroughfare that combines the features of streets and roads. Common in the United States and Canada, stroads are wide arterials that also provide access to strip malls, drive-throughs, and other automobile-oriented businesses.

Stroads have been criticized by urban planners for safety issues and for inefficiencies. While streets serve as a destination and provide access to shops and residences at safe traffic speeds, and roads serve as a high-speed connection that can efficiently move traffic at high volume, stroads attempt to serve both purposes. Critics argue they are often an expensive, inefficient, and dangerous compromise. == Etymology == In 2011, the American civil engineer and urban planner Charles Marohn, founder of Strong Towns, coined the word "stroad" as a blend of the words street and road to illustrate what he characterized as failures in the North American pattern of development. The concept of the stroad was popularized in large part as a result of an April 2021 short documentary by the Canadian-born, Amsterdam-based Jason Slaughter of the urban planning YouTube channel Not Just Bikes.