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The A2 motorway no longer divides Maastricht

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Re: The A2 motorway no longer divides Maastricht

#11

Post by brnt »

petre wrote: post #10
apexalpha wrote: post #2

My hometown! Cool to see it on HN. Maastricht uses to be the only traffic lights on route from Amsterdam to Paris. Yes. Traffic lights on a highway, in the middle of a city. As if the highway in the middle of a city wasn't annoyinh enough the traffic lights added some extra noise, fumes and pollution. The new tunnel has been the most magnificent change I've ever seen. And IIRC the entire project was within budget and…

Cool. Now try to picture those fumes and pollution in a tunnel.

Cars come with HEPA filters. Most (non-Asian) pedestrians don't.

Re: The A2 motorway no longer divides Maastricht

#13

Post by dsfyu404ed »

brnt wrote: post #11
petre wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. Now try to picture those fumes and pollution in a tunnel.

Cars come with HEPA filters. Most (non-Asian) pedestrians don't.

Many don't anymore. Same story as timing belts. There was period in the late 90s through 2010s where they were standard until the OEMs realized nobody actually changes them and they generally become nasty to the point where they make the air dirtier. Now a lot of cars are omitting them again.

Re: The A2 motorway no longer divides Maastricht

#14

Post by est31 »

lawlessone wrote: post #9

Does burying a whole road like this make it possible to capture and prevent vehicle smog in the streets above?

Any tunnel needs lots of ventilation. That air has to go somewhere, and that's above ground. Unless they employ (expensive) measures to filter and clean the air, most of the pollution has to be released. So it's concentrating the pollution to the few spots where the ventilation systems stand instead of having low but mostly equal levels along the entire road. So the health of anyone who lives far away from those systems improves, and anyone who lives close to them faces more pollution with corresponding health consequences.

Re: The A2 motorway no longer divides Maastricht

#15

Post by Merrill »

brnt wrote: post #7
apexalpha wrote: post #2

My hometown! Cool to see it on HN. Maastricht uses to be the only traffic lights on route from Amsterdam to Paris. Yes. Traffic lights on a highway, in the middle of a city. As if the highway in the middle of a city wasn't annoyinh enough the traffic lights added some extra noise, fumes and pollution. The new tunnel has been the most magnificent change I've ever seen. And IIRC the entire project was within budget and…

I crossed the parky boulevard on top the other day. I had to double take because I've never driven in Maastricht, but I recognized the flats and didn't know why I would recognize them in the middle of the city I'd never been in. Until I realized I recognized them from the times the A2 went straight through! Google streetview has images taken last year and 2009, so you can see the diff yourself.

In Google satellite view, there appears to be a railway about 400 meters west which similarly divides the city. Will that be buried as well?

Re: The A2 motorway no longer divides Maastricht

#16

Post by oh_sigh »

petre wrote: post #10
apexalpha wrote: post #2

My hometown! Cool to see it on HN. Maastricht uses to be the only traffic lights on route from Amsterdam to Paris. Yes. Traffic lights on a highway, in the middle of a city. As if the highway in the middle of a city wasn't annoyinh enough the traffic lights added some extra noise, fumes and pollution. The new tunnel has been the most magnificent change I've ever seen. And IIRC the entire project was within budget and…

Cool. Now try to picture those fumes and pollution in a tunnel.

Any tunnel of appreciable size will have designed ventilation and other auxiliary systems(life support/escape, maintenance, power, etc). It isn't just a tube in the ground.

Re: The A2 motorway no longer divides Maastricht

#17

Post by Fnoord »

apexalpha wrote: post #2

My hometown! Cool to see it on HN. Maastricht uses to be the only traffic lights on route from Amsterdam to Paris. Yes. Traffic lights on a highway, in the middle of a city. As if the highway in the middle of a city wasn't annoyinh enough the traffic lights added some extra noise, fumes and pollution. The new tunnel has been the most magnificent change I've ever seen. And IIRC the entire project was within budget and…

I'm from near that region. It was called N2 (not A2) in Maastricht for a long time, while the rest of the road (from Eijsden near Belgium to Amsterdam) was mostly [1] called A2 though some parts were called N2. Why? Because you were only allowed 80 km per hour there. Also, the traffic jams were huge.

[1] There used to be parts which were also called N2, such as the part between Eindhoven and 's Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch). This has been rebuild and has become A2 somewhere in the 90s. After that project (I don't remember exactly when), they rebuild the N2 in Maastricht to become A2.

Re: The A2 motorway no longer divides Maastricht

#18

Post by dsfyu404ed »

gumby wrote: post #6

Quite an amazing effort, and the passing comparison to the Boston central artery/"big dig" was sobering.

Compare the culture of the respective locations and it's obvious why the Netherlands had the better outcome.

The feedback loops are all wrong for getting a high value tunnel under Boston. They are at least less wrong in "beer Europe"[0] + Scandinavia.

Massachusetts government "pays itself first" Massachusetts people consider the problem unsolvable and tolerates it. Netherlands and the adjacent parts of Europe (i.e I make no claims about construction projects in Italy) generally takes a hard line against anything that's not "pro-social" so heads would roll if politicians and bureaucrats misused their public works on graft like the Massholes do.

Source: Masshole who geeks out on government accountability

[0]https://eu.greekreporter.com/files/tearing-europe-apart1.jpg

Re: The A2 motorway no longer divides Maastricht

#19

Post by LeonM »

melling wrote: post #5

Los Angeles is going to build a wildlife overpass: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/worlds-largest-highway-overpass... Pedestrians and nature need to be given a higher priority.

The Netherlands is also well known for their ecopassages over highways (also known as ecoducts), according to Wikipedia there are 66 eco passages in the Netherlands as of 2015 [0]. There are some nice pictures of them in the wiki article as well.

[0] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecopassage

Re: The A2 motorway no longer divides Maastricht

#20

Post by glenndebacker »

melling wrote: post #5

Los Angeles is going to build a wildlife overpass: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/worlds-largest-highway-overpass... Pedestrians and nature need to be given a higher priority.

We have multiple of these here in Belgium and the Netherlands. Even between countries.

https://www.thebulletin.be/first-wildlife-bridge-over-brusse...

https://www.thebulletin.be/wildlife-crossing-flemish-brabant...

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