The Street Type that Breaks the Hierarchy 

Louise avenue in Brussels is a really good example of this as well.

It even has trams running along the avenue as well.

The reason why you don't see it as much in the United States they're definitely are a lot fancy parkways. But state and local governments won't pay for them. For instance we have a parkway where I live that is tree lined on both sides It is very beautiful but it is not paid by the state or local it's paid by the homeowners association. It's basically one of those very nice residential places with golf courses and mansions. Not all of them are mansions, and it does have some apartments, smaller homes, townhouses etc but it's still much more well to do area.

While parkways are more aesthetically pleasing and provide for multimodal mobility, they encourage high speeds and thus are inherently dangerous and detrimental to the environment (noise, pollution). Bypasses are really the only logical solutions to alleviating traffic through main streets. As far as stroads, I’m not even sure there’s hope for those.

@@badhombre4683 In the Netherlands main streets are usually pedestrianised. The arterials often (not always) run outside of the bussy city cetre, and they are flanked by local streets, if there is enough space for that. This even happens on a lot of small 2 lane arterials. I really don't like to go shopping, or sit on a terrace in a street that has cars going trough it, now that I'm used to pedestrian areas.

I was like, these are quite common, but I would never call them boulevards. And for sure don’t want to sit next to them.

Yes, I was about to make the same observation about them being used in The NLs where they work exceptionally well.

Yeah, like 6 years ago they took out 4 lanes of car traffic and made it to BRT. As someone who lives in Buenos Aires, 9 de Julio is still a mess. I mean it’s not that bad as it used to be a couple of years ago, but it’s still a mess lol. Also I find it weird how the most iconic part of my city is a super wide stroady-boulevard that constantly has traffic 😩

Can confirm. I don't live there, but while visiting, 9 de julio it wasn't too bad to cross. Maybe having to do it daily is a nightmare

I'm sorry to tell you that this semi BRT didn't take traffic lanes, but the green spaces in the middle, that's why it didn't fix sheez

@@matiasbarraquero9347 At least it took all the buses from Cerrito/Lima and Irigoyen/Pellegrini.

They main problem is it should be a highway, not a boulevard.

I was thinking the same thing when watching the video. I was in Las Vegas and it’s a very difficult place to walk by. San Diego is a more pedestrian friendly experience. But comparing to Brazil, I think here it’s much easier to ditch the car.

Big 24!

Not everywhere, though. We really do miss them here in the countryside.

A Av. Presidente vargas no Rio seria um boulevard? Pq sempre que eu vou atravessar ela, é uns 2 min só esperando nos sinais

​@@Thelaretus Do we? I live in a reasonably big city in the inner country and even with some 200k people we don't seem to have enough traffick to justify a boulevard

Is it myopic, or is it corrupt? Often these kinds of games are played primarily for power. We need to pay engineers more, so we can fire them publicly and humiliatingly whenever they start gaming the system. Only way to fix these problems is terror.

FDOT can be a joke at times with their strict regulations

​@@ohhgodineedmoore2845 they're getting better but still a ways to go

The reason is, doing things right is un-american.

Did they even give you a reason as to why they're not "ever building that?"

This version also does a great job of slowing down traffic so that it’s safe for combining with Bike traffic. In my town, they put speed bumps all over the neighborhood roads. As a bicyclist I love this. But I definitely still see drivers trying to treat it like an arterial street and getting mad when it doesn’t work.

Yeah, local access roads can act as neighborhood streets that keep the street frontage human scale

Okay, you've inspired me to start a new city and do this... ...once my treasury gets the funds, that is... ...or I could activate the "unlimited money" mod...

I've been doing boulevards in Cities Skylines, forming rings of green parks and greenery around my cities. I live in Chicago so I make a lot of cities inspired by the Chicago Park Boulevard System. I'm kinda bummed he didn't mention Chicago in this video. Boulevards were a huge part of Burnham's plan for Chicago

That's why I don't build arterials. If a collector needs an upgrade, my citizens just have to cope as I use eminent domain to bulldoze through their homes and split their neighborhood in half for my traffic-solving urban freeway

There are a bunch in Brooklyn. For example, 3rd Ave underneath the BQE viaduct. Also, you could argue that some of the sunken sections of the BQE and others with parallel local roads function much like boulevards.

I think Ocean Parkway is pretty nice too

Narrow lanes and wide crossing refuges are important elements to a good boulevard. Crosswalk timing should also be multistage and timed well so that crossing can be seamless most of the time, and easy enough to cross in stages otherwise, instead of having to cross a huge stretch of open pavement completely unprotected from cars. Bollards and sturdy traffic light poles can be helpful in enforcing the barrier between cars and pedestrians.

@@mrmaniac3 boulards, and also on street parking. No boulards are going to outperform 2+ ton hunks of metal to deter cars from entering the sidewalk.

@@16randomcharacters bollards are made of steel and concrete. They are designed to withstand the onslaught of a loaded truck. Bollards will stop a car dead in its tracks.

Vienna's Ringstraße is great, but part of the reason for that is that it doesn't serve as a major arterial. At least on its eastern half, there's a major arterial running parallel to it, a little further away from the centre. That's something that I don't really get about this video: to me the example shown from San Francisco is horrible, because of the sheer volume and speed of the cars on it. I don't know where exactly it's located within the city, but really I wouldn't want a road like that in my city centre. When I think of multi-way boulevards I think of streets like Vienna's Ringstraße, or even more so smaller streets like Obere Augartenstraße or Heinestraße (to take examples that happen to be near where I live), where even the middle lanes receive relatively low volumes of traffic, travelling at reasonable speeds.

@@titusbird6101 I've walked along both smaller boulevards you mentioned quite a few times, and they're equally nice places to be. From a North American perspective, in which cars and highways all too often dominate and divide cityscapes, I suppose what they have in San Francisco can be seen as an improvement over the high-speed alternative. That doesn't make it great, however.

@ Yeah, I guess everything is relative and something like that road in San Francisco might be good as a compromise, or as a stepping stone toward something better.

What do you think of King Edward?

I always dream of them turning 1st Avenue from highway 1 into a beautiful boulevard. They would definitely need to demolish a bunch of houses and businesses to widen. They could more easily make big improvements to Grandview/12th avenue for cycling.

Yeah personally I think this kind of road is actually better for replacing stroads then freeways. Octavia Blvd replaced a STUB, which really makes it the exception and not the rule.

Looking at you, Kingsway

I live in Langley BC, right by 200 street. It's a major arterial road that is not pedestrian and cyclist friendly. However, the part I live by has a wide green space filled with plants and a rain garden. We could use more rain gardens here in rainy Vancouver

That's why I'm a fan of running freeways on the boundaries between the neighborhoods, or through industrial areas. Conduct the long distance traffic around the neighborhood, instead of through it.

Its really some point that random City Skylines players know better of traffic planning than the US.

@@Delibro C:S actually forces some constraints on the player that aren't realistic. Mainly because the vehicles choose a route without taking traffic into account (even though everyone's phone has Google Maps or Apple Maps nowadays, and it will tell you the fastest way to get to your destination _taking traffic into account,_ not just using the nominal speed limits). This leads to underuse of, say, separate access roads to industrial zones, and causes truck traffic to clog the road into the residential side of town just because it's "faster."

why did they add hawk lights? couldn’t they just make the street safe to cross?

@@lamegaming9835 could have been worse

@@lamegaming9835 I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that the traffic engineers didn’t want to lower the speed limit, as it’s still a busy street used by many commuters. Also, unfortunately, a lot of drivers just don’t pay attention unless a traffic light is in front of them. A lot of pedestrians here have been injured or killed because of that. So HAWK lights are the next best/safest option.

@@Westlander857 exactly, instead of caring about pedestrians, they care about the throughput of cars. accommodate pedestrians, only as long as it doesn't impact drivers because we all know if you can't afford a car at absolute best your overlaid onto the existing car infrastructure and at worst your completely forgotten about its not "pedestrian safety", its "people are walking here so lets make it so that their not messing with the car drivers"

Wow! I didn’t know Tucson did that

Yeah, I was surprised to see Octavia being heralded as a “solution” when it has such serious capacity limitations that lead to heavy traffic. I suppose with the 101/80 on ramp, it was never intended to be such a main thoroughfare. But now that it is, the multiuse elements only seem to exacerbate the traffic issues.

Paseo de la Reforma is indeed beautiful and iconic, but when I was there, I felt it was not the nicest environment for pedestrians because there’s just so much car traffic. And crossing the roundabouts as a pedestrian can take a while. That said, Paseo de la Reforma nowadays has an excellent bike lane and a really cool BRT line that uses double-decker buses and provides excellent views of the street.

I've heard some of the boulevards in Mexico City were actually built by the Aztecs!

Probably, Actually inspired by Paseo Del Prado, Madrid

Really??

I actually remember visiting Paris this year for the first time and walking on one of these boulevards, feeling totally safe and with my dignity intact, only to realize later that it's a street probably wider than a North American stroad with less traffic and more life. Forgot to include this in the original comment lol

Exactly. They took a 6 lane elevated highway and just spread those lanes across ground level and even added 2 more lanes of parking. All the "green space" is narrow padding between speeding car lanes. I'm sure that in the drawings for this project there were people sitting on those benches but in reality no one really wants to spend any time unless they are trapped waiting for the light to change.

In general, I think the Bronx has HUGE potential. The right developer could make it an incredible place to be.

​@@alexanderfretheim5720yeah, but it can't be turned into another Brooklyn.

Cant wait for for the 494/694 loop to be even more clogged. (Or they will have to build a freeway from St Cloud to Cameron Wisconsin as the new bypass)

@@commentor3485 MnDOT's own studies show that I-94 between the two downtowns is virtually all local anyway (i.e. originates in Minneapolis or Saint Paul and also terminates in Minneapolis or Saint Paul), whereas thru-traffic already tends towards I-694. So traffic would either remain in the boulevard out of necessity or move to another adjacent local route like University or Lake/Marshall, but it would be unrealistic that it would divert to I-694 or I-494, since those freeways are out of the way if you're coming from either of the Twin Cities and going to the other or even staying in town

@@commentor3485 and I say this as someone who lives downtown in MPLS and travels on I-94 to visit family in Saint Paul every weekend. I doubt that trip would be any greater than 5 - 10 minutes longer, whether I'm on the proposed boulevard or detouring to MN 36

Also 100 years old, filled with spave efficient side road parking, and connects the 3 crown jewel western parks with greenspace.

was looking for this. some very beautiful homes on logan.definitely my favorite street, makes driving through so much more pleasant!

Thank you - I scrolled through the comments to ensure that someone said this. That street is clearly not safe for everyone.

I volunteer with Rethink35!! We saw this video and couldn't agree more!

but this adds parking.. in a more aesthetic manner.

Hell, Paris under Hausmann itself bulldozed tons of old houses to build them.

The idea is more for more suburban areas like he mentioned with the part replacing parking lots with this.

@@MenwithHill In history class we compared pre- and post redesign maps and paintings of Paris. As our teacher pointed out, "you can recognise these new buildings on two things. First, they are next to a boulevard, second they have 'French Balconies', as they're known." Indeed, the paintings of old Paris did not feature them like that.

​@@klobiforpresident2254 Old Civil Parisian architecture was ugly.

I believe China has less congested road compare to several years ago?

Have you seen the roads in China?

At the height of the Bakken oil boom, ND really prioritized making their cities more desirable to millennials, who were the young people then and, in 2013, we're a higher percentage of NDs population than any other state.

Good point

Was thinking about Woodward while watching this video.

The problem with a boulevard like West Grand blvd is that is has a hugh, almost 20 metre, middle berm with trees and the 2 driving lanes close to the entrance of housing. Without a seperated parallel access street ! So it is still dangerous like a stroad If you would narrow the middle berm to like 8 metre, put the driving lanes more centre and add a berm/hedge/tree seperated low speed (30kmh/20mph) parallel acces road to the sides it would be a lot more nice. The acces road can also be used for bikes. More so Grand West blvd has junctions and traffic light. In that case I would assume to reduce it from 2+2 to a 1+1 road (with the seperated acces roads to the side. On a YT video by Geert Kloppenburg (with Eng subs) who discusses the Maastunnel in Rotterdam, NL. The Maastunnel is a 2+2 tunnel that can handle 2000 cars per lane per hour max. (With per day 40k vehicles per direction.) Unfortunately that capacity is undone 800 metre beyond the tunnel at a traffic light junction , with a capacity of just 150 cars per lane, per hour !! So basially it has no sense to use 2+2 lanes for cars when there is a bottle neck at 150 capacity. That would also count for West Grand blvd. An extra advantage is that on a split 1+1 road cars can't overhaul and cannot drive faster speeds than the car before them. Also for pedestrians and bicyclists it is easier to cross without getting caught by an overhauling car. So it is safer as well. btw : Woodward Ave is a 5-6 lane Stroad ! nothing more, nothing less . without mid berm, frontage road treelines ! What do you mean with "a lot of multi-way functionality" ? 🙄 The side walks , which might seduce you to risk your life crossing the street ? What they did with Cass Ave looks a lot better ! With the use of just mostly paint defining cycling lanes, protected with painted vehicle park lots ..... (Might have used traffic islands though ...)

Same case here in Roxas Boulevard in Manila. It is congested for most of the time, mainly because trucks coming to and from the Port of Manila also pass through the Boulevard, as well as a lot of buses and cars.

Sometimes just reducing the number of lanes of a road, of and by itself, frees up the space that you need. I won't say wide roads are never necessary, but sometimes the traffic you are creating isn't worth it's cost. Of course, there are other approaches to handling demand: in New York State, they generally don't build more than one freeway exit per 5-8 miles of road, freeways will literally "miss" entire towns! Building exits every mile is one of the reasons West Coast cities have such bad traffic.

This type of configuration is rather common in many large Latin American cities, especially Hispanoamerican capitals.