---
title: "Main Street"
url: "https://commonwaysystem.org/patterns/local-streets/main-street/"
id: "LOC-MST-05"
description: "A Local Typology built around retail frontage and pedestrian priority, the defining Local pattern at Compact and Urban density."
updated: "2026-09-26"
---

# Main Street

`LOC-MST-05`

Recommended Local

Main Street

A Local street lined with retail and commercial frontage, where pedestrian movement and lingering are treated as primary and vehicle movement is subordinate.

## Related Media

The items below come from outside the Commonway System, external videos, podcasts, and articles related to this page's topic, not part of the guidebook itself.

Aligned

### [Are Streets Too Complicated Now?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Xs5EA5_uU)

City Beautiful

Asks whether today's proliferation of lines, signals, and lane types on streets is overcomplication or a needed response to modern demands, a question that runs directly through CS's Element-scale catalog and the density-tiered Corridor retrofit paths this video is tagged to.

Aligned

### [South Carolina's Freeway for Bikes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxGYs8kHxw4)

Road Guy Rob

The Swamp Rabbit Trail's rail-to-trail history and its treatment as genuine transportation infrastructure, plus the Travelers Rest Main Street road diet that reallocated car lanes to parking and bike parking.

Typical at: Compact Urban

Rural, Suburban, and Core are edge cases: a small-town pattern at Rural, less common at Suburban, and tapering at Core where retail frontage folds into larger mixed-use blocks. Undeveloped is an unlikely pairing.

## Speed and modal hierarchy

Design speed & speed limit

\[SPEED LIMIT 20\]

Follows the Local default: 20 mph hard maximum, no exceptions.

See [Design Speed & Speed Limits](https://commonwaysystem.org/guide/design-speed.md).

Modal hierarchy

Pedestrian > Transit > Bicycle > Vehicle > Freight

This ordering is a judgment call, reasoned from the Typology's purpose rather than derived cleanly from a listed override trigger, and is open for correction.

## Design notes

Main Street is the clearest case where a Local street's identity comes from its edge condition, retail frontage, rather than from a special traffic control treatment. It shares its defining density range with Stroad, the Arterial-scale pattern for commercial frontage done wrong.[1]

## Related patterns

[Stroad (Commercial Arterial)](https://commonwaysystem.org/patterns/arterials/stroad.md) (ART-STD-05) (shares this pattern's defining density range), [Downtown Thoroughfare](https://commonwaysystem.org/patterns/collectors/downtown-thoroughfare.md) (COL-DTH-07) (the Collector-scale pattern for a comparable commercial-thoroughfare hybrid)

## Getting there: Retrofit path options

[One-way to two-way conversion](https://commonwaysystem.org/retrofits/corridor/one-way-to-two-way-conversion.md) (RFT-CDR-04)

## References

1.  Precedent-based [NACTO, _Urban Street Design Guide_, "Neighborhood Main Street."](https://nacto.org/publication/urban-street-design-guide/streets/neighborhood-main-street/)