Strong Towns advocates for incremental improvements.
Fundamentally, it makes more sense to focus on "downtown", or whatever traditional development still exists in your town.
Making a small change to rejuvenate a traditional walkable neighbourhood will always result in better payoffs than any stroad repair.
See Dundas Street in Fake London.
This cost less than any stroad repair, but will do way more to improve your city than adding bike lanes to 5 lane stroad.