FARGO — Working toward a more connected city is a passion for Zachary Taylor, an electrical engineering student at NDSU and core member of the group that is working for safer streets, stronger neighborhoods and more financial stability in Fargo.
Strong Towns Fargo is the local chapter of a national organization that recently started hitting the pavement in the metro, drumming up support for a reimagining of how Fargoans travel about town.
To create a more liveable community, Fargo will have to stop thinking solely about cars and instead focus on other transportation options, including bikes, buses and feet.
“A lot of people get defensive right away,” Taylor said. “They kind of see it as an attack on their way of life because a lot of people like getting around by cars.”
However, it’s all about providing choices and independence to Fargo families, he said.
The city of Fargo has been built entirely on cars and car travel, he said, leaving people struggling for more walkable communities or alternative means of transportation.
By providing these commuters with viable alternatives, the city of Fargo would free up more parking spaces and roadway for drivers, which would decrease traffic volumes and commute times, reduce the wear and tear on roadways as well as increase safety by limiting the potential for crashes.
Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County
“I’ve seen a lot of excuses like ‘We get snow here, we need to drive everywhere,’ but there was a time when Fargo didn’t have cars everywhere,” Taylor said. “Snow removal should not be an excuse for unsafe streets.”
Streets nowadays are designed to efficiently transport large numbers of cars as quickly and efficiently as possible, he said, but that has an impact as they cut through neighborhoods.
“Many streets and roads in Fargo are unsafe for those outside a car and much of the focus of safety in road design accounts for drivers first,” Taylor said.
Driving down the two-lane, one-way streets of University Drive and 10th Street is a prime example of the wide lane, high speed streets that make life louder and more dangerous for the people who live in the homes along the corridor or for unprotected cyclists in the attached bike lanes.
To address this, motorways should clearly differentiate between “streets” and “roads,” he said.
Streets, he said, are found in neighborhoods and should prioritize safety through low speed limits. The purpose of these streets is only to provide motorists with access to businesses and housing.
Roads, however, should be high volume and higher speed with the goal of transporting vehicles efficiently over long distances through the city. Similar to an interstate, access onto these roads should be limited, with motorists hopping onto a street when they wish to slow down to turn into a business or home.
“Often in the U.S. we design our streets like roads, promoting high speeds, but unlike roads, which limit or remove pedestrian and car conflicts, many roads in the U.S. expect both high speeds and pedestrian access,” he said.
These hybrids, which Strong Towns has dubbed “stroads” fail to function properly as either a road — providing safe passage to travelers — or as a street — moving traffic quickly and safely through town.
The city of Fargo and the Metropolitan Council of Governments are currently reexamining those streets, he said, and Strong Towns is urging them to study the impact of turning them back into two-way streets to slow down cars and make the neighborhoods quieter, even if it means removing the bike lanes to make room.
Strong Towns Fargo is seeking support for this measure from various neighborhood groups and plans to present the idea to members of the Fargo City Commission at a later date.
Decades of prioritizing cars over people has made an impact in the sense of community and identity within Fargo neighborhoods, he said.
Gone are the days of children playing catch in the street in front of their home, he said, or neighbors gathering to chat up and down their quiet block.
To regain a sense of community, the city has to shift its understanding of streets from a place just for cars to something that’s for everybody.
“Before the automobile and before we started building out cities centered around them … cities were designed to work for everyone,” Taylor said.
People used to live close to each other, he said, fostering a sense of community as they walked to the store, to work or to school.
Before long, American cities began fully investing in vehicle infrastructure by building a lacework of gridded streets and massive parking lots that ate up whole blocks, pushing neighborhoods, commercial spaces and workplaces farther and farther apart.
“I don’t think we should have thrown thousands of years of human civilization away in favor of this idea,” he said.
Now there is a sense of isolation, he said, with people hopping in their car to drive 20 minutes to the same large grocery store that serves huge swathes of the community.
Roads are quiet save for the thrum of cars and an occasional dog walker.
Streets could be designed differently, he said, built to foster green space and community gatherings,
with a local store on every corner and a safe route to school.
Building large, sprawling cities has an impact on the price tag, Taylor said.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is when you sprawl out cities like we’ve done in the U.S. is that the tax base in these neighborhoods isn’t enough to maintain the costs for the piping (of utilities) in those neighborhoods or the maintenance of those streets (longterm), never mind the cost of services like police and fire,” Taylor said.
The city’s growth is also having an impact on infrastructure funds. From 2006 to 2021, the city’s network of pavement has grown by 399 lane miles, according to the
2023 Capital Improvement Plan
, marking a 39.4% spike in infrastructure miles. That network is valued at around $1.2 billion.
Cities finance this type of development by continuously expanding the tax base, Taylor said, because as soon as the growth stops, the cost of maintenance catches up and there isn’t a dense enough tax base to support the development.
Downtown Fargo makes up 1% of the city’s land area and it produces 6% of the city’s total taxable revenue, he said.
The goal isn’t to turn every neighborhood in town into the same level of density and walkability as the downtown core, he said, but Strong Towns wants to ensure that development brings in enough new tax base to help everyone thrive.
This year, Strong Towns Fargo is focusing on safer transportation citywide but this growing organization has plans to expand their mission to include city planning, zoning reform and more.
Those looking to contact Strong Towns Fargo can do so via email at [email protected] or on the following social media accounts:
- Reddit: r/strongtownsfargo
- Instagram: @strong_towns_fargo
- Facebook: Strong Towns Fargo
- LinkedIn: Strong Towns Fargo
