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Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

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Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

#161

Post by mytailorisrich »

logifail wrote: post #154
Ntrails wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no political force to make actual improvements in London, or in the UK as a whole. HS2 was an attempt at an infrastructure project for the long term greater good but quickly devolved into nothing but bad news cycles. Everyone is too busy flinging shit and whipping out soundbites to actually do anything, in part because anything worthwhile is hard and mistakes are more punishing than not trying? It all just…

> HS2 was an attempt at an infrastructure project for the long term greater good [..] Simon Jenkins' 2016 article entitled "HS2: the zombie train that refuses to die"[0], is worth reading: "HS2 was always a project born of political vanity. Like several other unstoppable megaprojects, it was not rooted in commercial reality or value for money – and it has therefore not been halted by accusations that it is not needed…

One of the British national pastimes is to complain about the state of the railways and then to complain about infrastructure investments in the railways (whic, granted, often turn into an omnishamble).

My take-away from HS2 is that the UK is not able to build a relatively short high-speed railway. HS2 (so just London to Birmingham) is 134 miles/215 km long, that's nothing and yet...

Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

#162

Post by flurdy »

Tade0 wrote: post #47
vasco wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how the cost of one policeman posted there every night for 50 years compares to continuing to run 24/7 ferries. Specially dilluted on top of the cost of building the tunnel itself.

In suppose it's not a question of money, but the lack people willing to take such a position. It's not a glamorous job and most have better things to do with their time.

CCTVs for a long bridge/tunnel might be enough. As it would take quite a while to leave they do not seem like an ideal mugging place?

Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

#163

Post by riffraff »

Hanschri wrote: post #98

Bergen municipality released a 25 minute video[0] of the bike ride through the tunnel and into the downtown area of Bergen. If 'sakte TV' or slow TV is something you like, I could also recommend checking out The Bergen Line minute by minute[1], which is a seven hour broadcast of the train going between Bergen and Oslo. A peaceful and beautiful train ride. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42q15E2YE8Y [1]: https://…

holy cow this is a beautiful tunnel

Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

#164

Post by Denvercoder9 »

bloak wrote: post #142
gns24 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the potential loading is annoying. I remember wondering why predestrian/cycle bridges were always so annoyingly narrow despite having low loads. The issue is of course that they have to be strong enough to support being crammed with hundreds of people when everyone is there to watch the local fireworks/rowing race/anything else that's happening, even if that happens almost never.

This is interesting! But how does a dense crowd of people compare to a queue of lorries carrying cement or building materials in terms of mass per square metre? Let's try to find some data ... ... ... A fully loaded Hanson cement lorry seems to be 32 tonnes / 2.55 m / 9.15 m, which is about 1.4 tonnes per square metre. That corresponds to 20 x 70 kg people per square metre, which would be a disaster whether or not th…

Lots of roads and bridges have a limit on axle load permitted on them. You can't do that with pedestrian bridges.

Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

#165

Post by itsoktocry »

smikhanov wrote: post #91

Rotherhithe tunnel in London screams to be repurposed this way -- to become "colorfully lit, art-lined" thing where psychologists give input on how to make it more welcoming

>where psychologists give input on how to make it more welcoming

I'm sure the psychology field is full of pseudo-scientific, un-replicable research into what makes something "welcoming"!

Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

#166

Post by cyclecount »

Bergen's population is just over 200k. European cities or even large towns have prioritised public transportation and liveable infrastructure like this in a way that only New York really has in the US. I don't think there is a single 200-thousand-person city in the US where you can do a single things without a car.

Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

#167

Post by yakireev »

Tade0 wrote: post #47
vasco wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how the cost of one policeman posted there every night for 50 years compares to continuing to run 24/7 ferries. Specially dilluted on top of the cost of building the tunnel itself.

In suppose it's not a question of money, but the lack people willing to take such a position. It's not a glamorous job and most have better things to do with their time.

Would you take that job for 50k/year? I wouldn't. Would you take it for 500k/year? I would. So, it is a question of money at the end of the day.

Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

#168

Post by jeffbee »

cyclecount wrote: post #166

Bergen's population is just over 200k. European cities or even large towns have prioritised public transportation and liveable infrastructure like this in a way that only New York really has in the US. I don't think there is a single 200-thousand-person city in the US where you can do a single things without a car.

Do you mean that 200k is a particularly bad size of U.S. city? There are certainly smaller cities that have _some_ accommodation for cyclists, like Davis, California, or Boulder, Colorado.

Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

#169

Post by dsfyu404ed »

cyclecount wrote: post #166

Bergen's population is just over 200k. European cities or even large towns have prioritised public transportation and liveable infrastructure like this in a way that only New York really has in the US. I don't think there is a single 200-thousand-person city in the US where you can do a single things without a car.

I think what you mean to say is that there are few "medium" cities in the US where "techie and richer" people elect to voluntarily live without a car.

You absolutely can live without a car in a lot of these cities but if and only if you want to bike. If you want to ride a lot of public transit it's gonna suck.

What you can't do is do it in a trendy way that "befits your tax bracket" so to speak and prevents the white collar types from looking at you like you're inferior when you bike lock your cargo bike to the lamp post beside the liquor store.

As for bigger cities, you absolutely can live without a car in Boston, DC, SF, Atlanta, Chicago, and the list goes on but toward the bottom it's gonna require more biking and less public transit.

Re: Europe’s Longest Bicycling Tunnel Opens in Norway

#170

Post by goodpoint »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #123
cubefox wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One absurd but conventionally normal thing is that cities have to build wider streets just because car drivers will inevitably transform them into parking lots, on both sides, halving their width. Old streets often seem narrow, but they aren't really narrow when they aren't full of parked cars.

It would be lovely to see parked cars disappear if autonomous cars become common enough. However, that would also rely on people deciding against car ownership and moving over to a shared vehicle model.

> against car ownership and moving over to a shared vehicle model.

We already invented this: public transportation.

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