
The A2 motorway no longer divides Maastricht - sgwil
https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2019/10/16/the-a2-motorway-no-longer-divides-maastricht/
======
apexalpha
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 time.

~~~
gambiting
>>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

Sounds like the beautiful little town of Bad Oeynhausen, which I came to
loathe(a bit) - I used to drive several times a year from Amsterdam to
Krakow(~1300km) and literally the moment you got off the ferry in Amsterdam
you were on the motorway literally all the way to Krakow.....except for having
to drive through the very city centre of Bad Oeynhausen, every single time. I
think last time I did that trip last year there were some intensive roadworks
in that area, maybe nowadays there is a way to drive around the town without
getting off the autobahn.

~~~
BigJ1211
Reminds me of Luik/Liege in Belgium just across the border form Maastricht.
It's far worse there especially when you look at how poor the construction is
there and how high the pollution seems to be. You can see that city has
suffered immensely economically.

The journey through Maastricht over the highway generally wasn't all that bad,
traffic would generally flow remarkably well. I think the primary concerns to
put a tunnel in was pollution, noise and congestation.

~~~
bogomipz
>" It's far worse there especially when you look at how poor the construction
is there and how high the pollution seems to be. You can see that city has
suffered immensely economically."

Interesting. I found Liege to be a charming little city. The Calatrava train
station is one of the most interesting stations in Europe in my opinion. The
bike path along the river is quite nice as well. I didn't perceive the town
was suffering economically. Would you mind elaborating? Genuinely curious.

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rayiner
Just 850 million euros of public money to build a mile and a half long tunnel
under downtown! (Under a billion euros total.) A bi-level tunnel, with
separate express and local levels, and four lanes on each level.

By contrast, the SR99 tunnel in Seattle was about 1/3 longer, cost $3-4
billion, depending on how lawsuits shake out, and has half the capacity (two
levels with two lanes each). The Big Dig in Boston was the same length, and
cost _22 times_ as much.

In timely news (another post on the front page), the A2 tunnel cost only
modestly more than it’s costing San Francisco to simply reconfigure Market
Street to shut down through traffic.

~~~
cesarb
Different technologies. Judging from this article, this Maastricht tunnel
seems to have been built as a "cut and cover" tunnel, while according to
Wikipedia, that SR99 tunnel was built with a tunnel boring machine. AFAIK, the
cut and cover method is much cheaper (but more disruptive during the
construction, and can only be used for shallow tunnels like this one).

~~~
RandallBrown
The TBM in the SR99 tunnel is also the largest TBM in the world. It was a bit
of a gamble, and it didn't pay off. Another huge problem was that it ran into
a huge metal caisson that had been placed while surveying the area to build
the tunnel... The contractors operating the machine "knew" about it, but still
ran into it, which broke the machine for a long time. (They were given
information that it was there, but they overlooked it.)

------
lqet
Similar problem in my home town, where the only major east/west highway across
the black forest cuts the city in two [0] (they actually demolished parts of
the old town which survived the WW2 bombings to build this road in the 60ies,
which I just cannot wrap my head around). Seeing what they have done in
Maastricht makes me very jealous! They already moved half of the highway here
into a tunnel in the 90ies [1] and there are plans to start extending this
tunnel in the next 5 years [2], but as the original plans already date back to
the 80ies, it will most likely take another 20 years until the project is
finished.

[0] [https://www.stadttunnel-
freiburg.de/sites/default/files/styl...](https://www.stadttunnel-
freiburg.de/sites/default/files/styles/dz-node-detail/public/content-
images/content/tunnel14.jpg?itok=Dfs2VQD9)

[1] [http://www.daub-
ita.de/fileadmin/images/daub/TunnelDB/UBD200...](http://www.daub-
ita.de/fileadmin/images/daub/TunnelDB/UBD2000316-01.jpg)

[2]
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freiburger_Stadttunnel](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freiburger_Stadttunnel)

------
MrGilbert
There is a similar project going on in the city of Hamburg for quite some
years now[1], covering the Autobahn A7, which goes from southern Germany all
the way up to the Danish border, thus being a pretty important route and
Germany's longest Autobahn.

Roughly 140,000 cars are crossing the city through the Autobahn per day.

[1]: (PDF, english)
[https://www.hamburg.de/contentblob/7896702/27d2e4d96831a306f...](https://www.hamburg.de/contentblob/7896702/27d2e4d96831a306f95b6429e0bd6eb9/data/2016-08-faltblatt-
ueberdeckelung-a7-engl.pdf)

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melling
Los Angeles is going to build a wildlife overpass:

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/worlds-largest-highway-
overpass...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/worlds-largest-highway-overpass-for-
wildlife-on-track-in-california/)

Pedestrians and nature need to be given a higher priority.

~~~
LeonM
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](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecopassage)

~~~
rocqua
One of those ecoducts [0] has a millitary shooting range on one side, which I
always found quite funny. It is of-course quite safe since shooting exercises
are rare. (Ignoring the fact that for some time, our soldiers would practice
by shouting 'pang pang' ('bang bang' translated) [1] because ammo was too
expensive)

[0]
[https://www.google.com/maps/@52.1051185,5.3619931,3a,75y,296...](https://www.google.com/maps/@52.1051185,5.3619931,3a,75y,296.19h,82.94t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sPcm58Pg7Ob2NYDQU6c-T2Q!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

[1] [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/dutch-
soldie...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/dutch-soldiers-are-
shouting-bang-bang-because-theyve-run-out-of-bullets-10442332.html)

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

~~~
dsfyu404ed
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](https://eu.greekreporter.com/files/tearing-europe-apart1.jpg)

~~~
edejong
Love that illustration. Do you have a source? I'd like to pay attribution when
I share it elsewhere.

~~~
roel_v
It's from this book: [https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Prejudice-Chasing-Horizons-
Vol/...](https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Prejudice-Chasing-Horizons-
Vol/dp/1495395871) .

------
sillyquiet
There were (mostly dead) plans for a while to do something similar with I-35
in Austin, Texas.

[https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2019/04/the-idea-to-
bu...](https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2019/04/the-idea-to-
bury-i-35-has-risen-from-the-dead/)

I very much doubt it will come to fruition any time soon given the political
climate.

~~~
jdhawk
But, where would the homeless camp?

All joking aside, if its not a toll road is not getting built in Austin. I'd
love to Dig & Cap I-35 all the way to airport blvd.

~~~
oneplane
Why would they still want to make toll roads? I makes no sense aside from
someone wanting to profit from essential public needs. You'd think if a bunch
of people designate a small group to do government stuff on their behalf to
make life better they do those sensible things centrally.

~~~
timerol
Responsive tolling on roads makes a lot of sense. Roads carry more people at
50 mph than they do at 30mph. So if you use the price of the road to keep the
road moving, you can make a more effective road, rather than letting it be
overwhelmed and less useful.

~~~
oneplane
I thought an article just a few days ago proved that money-based restrictions
or incentives only work if people are not left with any other choice and
generally makes everyone sad and angry. Perhaps it's a culture or locale
issue; we don't really have toll roads here.

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larrydag
Similar to Klyde Warren Park in Dallas.

[https://www.klydewarrenpark.org/](https://www.klydewarrenpark.org/)

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

~~~
est31
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.

~~~
jacquesm
Unfortunately they decided _not_ to filter the air at the egress points. This
has been the subject of much debate and several law suits by people living
near the tunnel ends.

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tomphoolery
This is amazing, finally the ideas pioneered in EPCOT are making it to the
real world.

