Illustration by Rich Hauck
It’s nine o’clock on a Wednesday.
No, I’m not messing up the lyrics to that old earworm, “Piano Man,” but I am standing at the corner of 2nd and Verbeke streets on a recent mid-week morning, watching the traffic roll by.
What there is of traffic, that is.
Harrisburg has seen lots of changes to its roads in recent years, but none more profound than on 2nd Street, much of which is being transformed from a high-speed, three-lane mini-highway back to a two-way, two-lane neighborhood road.
Standing at the intersection, I’m floored by the difference.
Two or 10 or 50 years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to hear myself think here, with cars and trucks roaring by at 50 mph or more. Today, however, a small line of vehicles trickles up the street, doing 20 mph tops. There’s little noise, little road blight and little danger to pedestrians.
N. 2nd Street has been returned to its neighborhood, fitting snugly into the urban fabric as it was designed to do—before the 1950s convinced everyone that we had to sacrifice our cities to the car and suburbs.
You might say that, after 60-plus years, 2nd Street has been “de-stroaded.”
About a decade ago, urban planner Charles Marohn coined the word, “stroad,” to describe dangerous, multi-lane thoroughfares that can be found throughout the United States.
A stroad is not exactly a city street, nor is it a purpose-built road for fast travel. It’s the worst of both worlds—a high-volume, high-speed motorway that, somehow, is also supposed to serve bicyclists and pedestrians; through traffic and local traffic; the straight and the turning.
Harrisburg is full of stroads: State Street, Front Street, Forster Street. But thankfully, we can remove 2nd Street—well, most of it anyway—from that list.
Standing at that intersection, I was struck by the pointless destruction that these stroads have wrought. Judging by the lack of traffic, I felt certain that three high-speed, one-way lanes were never needed on 2nd Street. Meanwhile, I haven’t noticed a major increase in traffic on alternative routes in the city.
Harrisburg has suffered greatly since these streets were turned into stroads during the 1950s. I can’t blame the city’s post-industrial funk solely on its urban highways, but they certainly contributed—making Harrisburg a place to drive through, not live in.
N. 2nd Street itself serves as a perfect case study.
In 1956, after little debate, Harrisburg turned most of the street into a three-lane stroad. Almost immediately, residents were up in arms over speeding and drag racing along their once-quiet street.
“We have a new club,” then-Mayor Nolan Ziegler told the Harrisburg Patriot soon after the change. “It’s called the ‘Second Street Speeding and Reckless Driving Club.’”
Over time, 2nd Stroad became increasingly unlivable, then increasingly blighted. After all, who wants to live on a noisy, dangerous highway?
In contrast, north of Division Street, 2nd Street remained two-way, quiet, leafy. Today, it anchors one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the city. The difference within a single block—by simply crossing the intersection from three-lane stroad to two-way city street—could not be starker.
Recently, an acquaintance asked me why I write about infrastructure so often, as opposed to the many challenges facing Harrisburg.
The reason, I responded, is because it’s fixable. I don’t know how to solve deep social ills like crime or poverty, but I do know how to fix Harrisburg’s overbuilt road system—it simply takes will and money.
As for will—I think Harrisburg has it. But, unfortunately, the city will have to drag the commonwealth into the project, as most of the roads in question are owned by the state.
As for money—these days, Pennsylvania is flush with cash. It easily could allocate a small portion to righting a historic wrong that it suckered its capital city into so many years ago, nearly destroying it in the process.
I almost wrote that it also takes “vision.” But it really doesn’t. In recent years, many cities have undone the damage wrought during the 1950s-era stroad-building frenzy. They’ve slimmed down thoroughfares, reduced speeds, converted back to two-way, returned streets to the urban fabric—and have benefitted greatly with more residents, more visitors and more businesses.
We know what needs to be done.
Over the past 60-plus years, Harrisburg has run an unintentional experiment along one of its most important arteries—N. 2nd Street.
North of Division Street, we have an area that has remained two-way, a neighborhood that is beautiful, livable and desirable.
South of Division Street, we have an area now in transition, where the switch to two-way is just being made, with very promising early signs.
Then, south of Forster Street, we have an area—downtown—where the 2nd Street mini-highway remains. The stroad is fast, harsh, noisy, ugly, unwelcoming and dangerous, and the area is struggling.
To me, the case is clear.
Lawrance Binda is co-publisher and editor-in-chief of TheBurg.
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