Stroad Wins 'Most Dangerous Road' Award for 15th Consecutive Year, City Celebrates With Ribbon-Cutting

Route 9, the seven-lane arterial commercial corridor known locally as 'The Stroad,' has been named the metropolitan area's Most Dangerous Road for the fifteenth consecutive year by the Regional Transportation Safety Board, an achievement the city marked with a ribbon-cutting ceremony held in a parking lot because the road itself has no safe pedestrian gathering point. 'Route 9 continues to lead the region in pedestrian fatalities, vehicular collisions, and what we've started calling "near-death experiences per capita,"' said Board chair Karen Thoroughfare. 'It is simultaneously too fast to be a street and too slow to be a road. It fails at everything it attempts. Congratulations.' The corridor, a 4.5-mile stretch of strip malls, drive-throughs, and surface parking lots separated by five lanes of traffic moving at variable and unpredictable speeds, was originally designed in 1972 as 'a forward-thinking approach to suburban commerce.' It has since accumulated 847 reported collisions, 34 pedestrian fatalities, and zero safe crossings. 'There are technically two crosswalks,' noted transportation planner Isaac Bollard. 'Neither has a signal. Both are painted in a shade of white that became invisible approximately nine years ago. Attempting to use them has been described by residents as "playing Frogger with real consequences."' The city has announced a $200,000 study to explore 'potential safety improvements,' which will be the fourth such study commissioned since 2008. The previous three studies all recommended the same solution — a road diet reducing the corridor to three lanes with protected bike infrastructure and a center median — which the city rejected each time as 'too disruptive to traffic flow.' Mayor Phil Grade attended the ceremony via Zoom, explaining that 'parking near Route 9 is frankly terrifying.'