Why Our Streets Feel Broken: Understanding the Problem with Stroads in the GTA and Beyond

Living in Kitchener-Waterloo, I’ve often found myself wondering: why are so many of our roads so frustrating to walk, bike, or even drive on? They’re not quite highways, but they’re definitely not people-friendly either. The answer, as I’ve come to learn, lies in a strange hybrid we’ve accidentally built into the core of our cities, something urban planners now call a stroad.

But before we get into that, it’s worth understanding the difference between the two types of infrastructure we’ve mixed together and why each has a valuable role to play in a well-designed city.

Streets vs. Roads: A Necessary Distinction

A road is meant to move people and goods efficiently over long distances. Think of a rural highway or a regional connector. Roads are high-speed, limited-access, and optimized for mobility. They’re useful when you need to get from one town to another quickly or bypass urban congestion.

A street, on the other hand, is designed to create a place. It’s where people live, shop, gather, and move at a slower pace. Streets prioritize local access and social interaction. They support small businesses, walking, biking, transit, and community life. A good street doesn’t just connect you to somewhere, it is somewhere.

When cities respect this difference, they function well. Roads move people efficiently across space, while streets create vibrant, walkable places that foster economic and social life.

The “Stroad”: A Dangerous Hybrid

Unfortunately, in cities in the GTA like Mississauga, we’ve blurred this line so badly that many of our most familiar spaces are no longer streets or roads they’re something in between.

Urban planner Charles Marohn of Strong Towns coined the term stroad to describe these confusing, hostile corridors. And once you start noticing them, you can’t unsee them. A stroad is too fast to be safe for pedestrians or cyclists, but too slow and cluttered to function like a true road. It’s wide, full of turning lanes, driveways, signs, and stoplights.

It encourages driving but punishes anyone who tries to walk, roll, or take transit. It’s the default layout for commercial areas across North America. In my own experience, walking from an LRT stop to a nearby store in Kitchener meant dodging cars, navigating disconnected sidewalks, and waiting several minutes at lights just to cross a short distance. It felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there unless I had a car. I noticed the same goes for areas in Mississauga around EnvironFocus Inc. where wide, busy corridors dominate. Ironic how an environmentally-minded organization trying to promote sustainable living is surrounded by infrastructure that makes walking or biking feel unsafe and inconvenient.

Unsafe by Design

Stroads are dangerous because they combine features of both streets and roads without committing to either. Wide lanes and higher speeds make drivers feel like they’re on a highway, while frequent intersections, turning vehicles, and side access to businesses demand constant attention and quick reactions.

The result? Accidents, especially involving vulnerable road users. These aren’t just unfortunate incidents. They’re the predictable outcome of a system that prioritizes vehicle flow over human life. Whether it’s a student trying to bike to class, an elderly person crossing to get groceries, or a transit user trying to reach a stop, stroads put people in danger simply for existing outside a vehicle.

Environmental Backwards Thinking

One of the most frustrating things about stroads is how they work directly against our environmental goals. In Waterloo Region, we talk a lot about building a green future. But it’s hard to promote low-carbon living when our everyday infrastructure pushes people toward car use. Stroads make walking difficult, biking dangerous, and transit inefficient. Even short errands often require a car.

All those extra car trips add up, to more emissions, more noise, and more local air pollution. Then there’s the stormwater runoff from all that asphalt, which overwhelms sewers and pollutes rivers. We’re lucky to have strong environmental organizations like EnvironFocus in the GTA, but even they are surrounded by car-first layouts that contradict their mission.

A Drain on City Budgets

Stroads aren’t just bad for people and the planet, they’re expensive.

They require wide roadbeds, complex signals, constant maintenance, and ever-larger intersections. But the development they attract big-box stores, chain restaurants, and parking lots doesn’t generate much tax revenue per acre. Walkable main streets with small businesses and apartments are far more financially productive. But because stroads spread everything out, they demand more infrastructure and services while delivering less in return. In a time when many cities are struggling with tight budgets, the math simply doesn’t add up.

Communities Divided

One of the saddest effects of stroads is how they divide people physically and socially.

They carve up neighborhoods, making it harder to access friends, family, services, or green space. For residents without a car, whether by choice or necessity, stroads can isolate them completely. You might live a few blocks from work or a grocery store, but if you have to cross 6 lanes of traffic to get there, it feels like you live in another world. This hurts everyone, especially seniors, youth, people with disabilities, and lower-income residents who already face barriers in urban life.

Can We Do Better?

Absolutely. And in some places, we’re already starting to.

In Kitchener-Waterloo, recent improvements to transit corridors and bike infrastructure are steps in the right direction. Some areas are experimenting with “complete streets” that balance the needs of drivers, cyclists, transit riders, and pedestrians.

In Mississauga, the city’s “Dundas Connects” plan aims to transform a busy corridor into a people-first, mixed-use, transit-oriented space. The vision is there, but these plans need public support and political courage to succeed.

The first step is simple: Stop building stroads. Instead, let roads be roads, fast, limited-access, outside urban cores. Let streets be streets, slow, walkable, and full of life. And stop trying to force the two into a single corridor.

What You Can Do

You don’t need to be a planner or politician to make a difference. Here’s how you can help:

Get informed. Watch Not Just Bikes’ videos and read Strong Towns articles to better understand how our cities were built, and how they can be fixed.
Speak up. Attend local consultations. Ask why a road is being widened instead of made safer. Support projects that prioritize people, not just cars.
Talk about stroads. Share this article. Use the term. The more people recognize the problem, the more pressure there will be to fix it.

Final Thoughts

Stroads are a symptom of a deeper issue: decades of prioritizing car movement over community life. But they’re not inevitable. In Kitchener-Waterloo, in Mississauga, and all across Canada, we have the chance to build cities that are safe, connected, and truly livable. We just have to stop pretending that one road can do everything.

Let roads move. Let streets live. And let’s leave stroads behind.