Compared to other countries, yes. And that’s not even comparing it to the US, which would be like kicking someone lying on the ground.
Try riding a train in rural France, outside the 5 TGV lines, for instance, and you’ll pray for Deutsche Bahn. Ever been to the UK?
But we could have much better PT if Germany weren’t the world’s greatest car exporter by far and the ministry of traffic deep in the pockets of automobile makers, that’s true as well.
Been in Colorado for the past week or so. You guys are a lot further ahead than Illinois is. Lots more bike paths and lanes, better traffic control that doesn’t result in stop and go movement, overall a lot more green space in your shopping centers and in human spaces, also lots more walking areas.
Don’t beat up your state too much, it’s fantastic compared to mine. :'c
I’m from So. IL originally and been to CO 4 times. Colorado is so much better in my opinion. People biking and jogging everywhere, everyone I met was really nice, like went out of their way to help my friends and I nice. Obviously that’s not everyone there, but it was the experience I had. Overall, it’s probably my favorite of the states I’ve been to and hope to go back, maybe permanently, someday.
I’d love to be a gatekeeper saying “we’re already full, turn back around”, but I’m a CA transplant myself. Personally, I’m looking to leave myself: too cold most of the year, and it’s getting really $$$. YMMV
So, as a not very smart man. Wouldn’t underground roads be better? I feel with it being underground it’d be easier to manage pollution and install some things to fight it.
Underground roads are crazy expensive. You need something to hold up the earth and anything else above it. There’s issues with water leaking in. Piping will have to go around it. If it breaks down somehow it will take longer to repair. It’s only really an option if the detour would be a lot longer or within urban areas for the extra space it frees up.
Or if you know, having greener spaces and roads underground are actually better for climate change. I’m not sure if this would help in that matter or not, but I think it’s a possibility. Not everything is about our made up concept of money.
What’s better for climate change is less cars on the road, not underground roads. If we are going to be digging these expensive tunnels in every city they should be for subway systems. That would be a substantially better use of the funds and would be a good step towards reducing the emissions of a city. This is all assuming that we stop subsidizing car ownership so heavily of course.
The entire process of building and repairing roads is pretty carbon intensive due to the amount of concrete involved.
I doubt it would affect pollution significantly. It’s not like both ends of the tunnel aren’t open to the air. It would definitely locally displace it so it’s not distributed across the above ground length of the road, but the same amount more or less (minus whatever adheres to walls) is still coming out of either end.
Underground tunnels also have the danger of fires rapidly spiraling out of control and in the past have killed dozens of people, and that was before electric cars became common. I would not want to be in a tunnel when a Tesla’s battery explodes.
I’m not saying this has no advantages, but for the trouble and cost it seems like a train would be better.
Nothing underground generates oxygen, but moving the roads from above to underground gives more “it’s free real estate” to grow grass and trees, like in the second photo, which generates oxygen and stores carbon. It’s not the best thing like suppressing the cars all together, but it’s better than the first picture.
Yeah, I completely forgot about the whole fire thing.
When yku say it like that. It makes more sense. It’s a shame we don’t have super efficient ways to convert exhaust gasses into healthier gasses. But yeah, if it’s just a short tunnel, the entrance and exits would just not funnel it right. I wonder if really long tunnels would be better. Maybe being able to use the entrances with a system to input clean air and force the exhaust through vents.
And I wonder if those fire suppression systems that starve the fires of oxygen could be something that could be useful? But that’d require automated doors to seal the tunnel, and then if someone is trapped on there, the fire is the last of their issue. Unless there were refugee points that also seal, but then you’ve gotta make sure everyone’s in them. I wonder if some form of scanner could be used to allow humans in. But then there’s that thing where a fire has been starved, but then gets a sudden burst of oxygen and it becomes explosive. I forgot what it’s called. I’m sure someone actually smart could brainstorm it better.
It’s so backwards. Making this stretch of coastline walkable means more people show up, and if businesses realize this potential then they can capitalize. Makes sooo much sense
Fun fact this is actually the Rhine river that runs sort of ⅔ of the way through Düsseldorf, similar to the Thames in London or the Seine in Paris.
The other bank is much more residential and a little high end so it’s not really a gathering place for the population, whereas the bank shown in the picture is 2 blocks from a tram line that runs parallel to the river and runs into the heart of the CBD making it an extremely approachable body of water and pedestrian strip.
On the weekends, the city holds public events to draw people to gather on this bank like food fares, carnivals, concerts. It’s always packed on the weekends and generates a shit ton of foot traffic for all the pubs and restaurants in adjacent streets.
I had no idea all this was covered in highways just a few decades ago, making the city more walkable was an amazing choice. If you’ve never been to Düsseldorf before or don’t know anything about it, it is definitely one of the highlights of Germany once you’ve had your fill of all the war sites. Extremely liveable city without feeling overcrowded, and just a stones throw from the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France.
I feel it’s more likely they don’t understand proper usage of quotation marks like that. They probably think they give emphasis; I see it all the time.
This title is under a few layers of irony, there are similar pictures floating around of green spaces converted to highways in the US with the same title, OP is suggesting the European version actually is progress
I remember as a kid hearing this vague ideological warfare around it. The Boston Science Museum had a big exhibit on it, as a kid I learned nothing about it. Then it was lamented for being wasteful spending - and only now do I hear about how it was meant to give us back urban areas.
That’s surprising to me. I remember at the time, NBC Nightly News and PBS Newshour (my family’s news diet in the 90s) did stories about it, and they both definitely mentioned reclaiming city space as one of the benefits.
I think the Big Dig, while it ended up costing several times what it was supposed to, will go down in history as one of the best highway projects of its era. It also proved infrastructure naysayers wrong. A lot of people insist that any highway projects always just induce demand, resulting in even more congestion, but the Big Dig did nothing of the sort. To this day, 30 years on, Boston traffic is still not as bad as it was pre-Big Dig.
A lot of people insist that any highway projects always just induce demand, resulting in even more congestion, but the Big Dig did nothing of the sort. To this day, 30 years on, Boston traffic is still not as bad as it was pre-Big Dig.
Induced traffic does not mean that traffic on a specific place inevitably goes back to what it was before a new highway. It means that total traffic, including old and new infrastructure, always goes up if the total road capacity goes up.
Do you think the total car traffic in the Boston area today is greater than it would have been had the Big Dig not been built? If yes, the ‘infrastructure naysayers’ were correct.
Of course, this means new highways can be locally beneficial, for example when they are used to divert car traffic from a city center. But they still deepen the overall car dependency. Investing in rail-bound transportation while imposing heavy fees on car traffic into the city would likely be a better use of resources.
Do you think the total car traffic in the Boston area today is greater than it would have been had the Big Dig not been built? If yes, the ‘infrastructure naysayers’ were correct.
It’s probably gone down, actually, at least in per capita terms. Boston’s population is a lot bigger than it used to be, so that has to be taken into account.
Keep in mind, the Big Dig actually reduced the total number of highway ramps, which is part of why it increased traffic flow. And by reclaiming neighborhoods from elevated highways, it reconnected areas. You can easily walk places that were not possible before.
But they still deepen the overall car dependency. Investing in rail-bound transportation while imposing heavy fees on car traffic into the city would likely be a better use of resources.
Boston is far from car dependent; it’s probably one of the worst cities in America for drivers, and best for cyclists and pedestrians.
It’s probably gone down, actually, at least in per capita terms. Boston’s population is a lot bigger than it used to be, so that has to be taken into account.
The comparison is between today and ‘today but without the highway’, not between today and before the highway was built. If the population increase is greater with the highway there, that’s still part of the induced demand.
Boston is far from car dependent; it’s probably one of the worst cities in America for drivers, and best for cyclists and pedestrians.
A city being “bad for drivers” is not a great indicator of it not being car dependant. Cities in the Netherlands are probably the most walkable and bikable on the planet, and also great to drive in because there are hardly any cars.
How about comparing the before, where rush hours totaled like six hours a day of bumper to bumper, stop and go, just sitting there polluting, wasting so much time, money, health. Today, while rush hours is still too long, traffic continues to move, no stop and go, much less time sitting there, raging. Today, on the surface in Boston, there is likely much less traffic, benefitting everyone
Because the point of the comparison is to determine if the infrastructure investment was cost effective. What would traffic look like today if the money had instead been used to build public transport, bike lanes, and walkable streets? If the alternative investment had improved traffic even more, building the highway was the wrong thing to do.
– just look at those pictures someone linked, and they don’t actually do it justice. Before, you might have to cross under a six lane elevated highway with surface streets. Now getting from one part of the city to another is a literal walk in the park. Reconnecting parts of the city to be walkable was one of the main goals, and it achieved
– part of the mitigation was required transit improvements. Of course, some of that was delayed by politics, but I believe it did happen.
The comparison is between today and ‘today but without the highway’, not between today and before the highway was built. If the population increase is greater with the highway there, that’s still part of the induced demand.
I wouldn’t suggest that highways never induce demand, but the idea that people are driving more in Boston because of the Big Dig seems doubtful to me.
A city being “bad for drivers” is not a great indicator of it not being car dependant. Cities in the Netherlands are probably the most walkable and bikable on the planet, and also great to drive in because there are hardly any cars.
The Netherland has pretty robust car infrastructure too.
And I agree; a city can be bikable, walkable, and drivable all at once. That should be the goal.
The cars are still there, in massive numbers. You just can’t see the tunnel they built between those two pictures. It’s right beneath the feet of the pedestrians.
At least they can´t kill cyclists and pedestrians this way and the emissions get somewhat contained. Of course this is only a compromise but on the way to car free cities it might be a useful intermediate step before we can actually get rid of carbrainitis.
Yeah, it will probably work out if all 1.4 billion people all drive alone in a car, occupying at least 15m² each. Needs one more lane, but then traffic will be solved!
Titles are OP not realizing that the roads have been moved underground and are still there even though the picture doesn’t suit his metropolitan dystopia thematic preferences. Or at least that’s the only way they make sense.
It’s a bit vain to want it at the expense of logical city planning. If the destruction of that road caused major traffic issues or inhibited road access to areas, that would explain why OP added quotes.
Logical city planning is planning a city in such a way that provides the greatest overall loving experience to it’s inhabitants and passers-through.
This depends on the location of the city. Traffic prevention and green spaces are 2 things that need to be balanced. If a road that thousands travel on daily is being demolished to make way for a park that a few hundred people will maybe use, then it could be doing more harm than good.
This is ultimately a decision for communities to make, not us armchair planners, and it looks like they valued the park more.
By your own definition “logical city planning” is best done with a good and well integrated public transportation network and the spaces thus freed by having fewer cars being repurposed for uses with proven health benefits compared to roads … which just happen to be green spaces as there are actual proven benefits for human mental and physical health, both from the greenery and the reduction in noise an particulate polution when big roads with heavy traffic are removed.
Favoring individual cars in a urban environment is actually worse in pretty much every metric: not just mental and physical health but even timewise as better public transportation means way less time wasted in traffic jams, because of all the cars removed from the road and because paradoxically more roads incentivise more cars, so new/bigger roads solve traffic jam problem for a while and then eventualyl it get as bad or worse than before only now there are even more cars, hence more people, stuck in traffic, so more public transportation means shorter commuting times even when you reduce the number/size of roads.
I get the impression that your logic in thinking of more roads for cars as “logical city planning” comes from never having experienced living in an urban setting with a proper well integrated public transport network or widespread use of cycling for short commutes, which is a critical blindspot in knowledge when claiming to understand urban planning.
“Logical city planning” for you does not include planning a city that people enjoy living and breathing in. Just one that cars dominate more every year.
After WW2 cities in NRW have been rebuilt with cars and cars only in mind. You’ve got major roads with 6 lanes crossing right through city centres and residential areas. Traffic is killing people. Roads in favor of public transport makes people buy cars if they want to go anywhere. More cars need more roads. It’s an endless cycle and results in hostile living environments. We need less cars. A lot less.
As opposed to trying to frame everything into the left-right pantheon? Did treating this as a completely separate environmental / city planning concern hurt people’s brain?
Ah yeah they should’ve just done the American thing instead and bulldozed the whole strip of town to put in a 20 lane wide interstate with a Bucees and Walmart/s
I think this is my first time seeing the “/s” on lemmy. And I really hope it doesn’t follow users here. We fully understood the sarcasm without it. It was honestly so much more a statement with ironic wording than it was even sarcasm.
I feel like we’re better than this. We can’t complain about Hollywood and advertising dumbing everything down to the level they think we need and then turn around and spoon feed each other the most basic forms of speech.
You might be able to easily spot sarcasm, but not everyone is blessed with that ability. Many autistic people, for instance, struggle to detect sarcasm. And comments being text only makes it harder. “/s” is an accessibility tool and implying that using these tools is “dumbing down” communication is honestly a very shitty move.
Beyond autism, that /s has become all the more necessary these days in the wake of this huge wave of anti-intellectualism. Outside of private circles, it's so hard now to tell the difference between absurd sarcasm and the genuinely ignorant takes some people proudly share, there's too much of an overlap between the two lol
Autistic person here, yeah I can’t read tone for shit through text sometimes, and especially online you never can tell if and when someone’s being serious.
I fully get and embrace inclusivity/accessibility but it’s starting to get to the point where people genuinely get super angry if they don’t get a joke or something and somehow that’s everyone elses fault. Like, it’s ok if you didn’t pick up on a joke. It’s not the end of the world. Every joke isn’t gonna be a reference or tone that you pick up on right away. Just delete your reactionary comment if it was cringy and learn from it. It’s not that big of a deal. I don’t know why people act like it is. It’s mildly embarrassing at most if you miss sarcasm and it’s pointed out to you later. Your comments aren’t critically important. Just wait for context or ask for it before popping off it’s not that deep lol
It’s sometimes impossible to detect sarcasm from just text, that’s why Poe’s law exists. You may be good at understanding sarcasm and satire, but some people aren’t and putting /s is making sure that everyone understands instead of just you.
I feel you on the dumbing down part though, but I think sarcastic comments are not a form of media that must be left only to be enjoyed by the people who are “better than this”.
I mean… They don’t have to be left to anyone. Is it really that hard to ask for or wait for more context before popping off? If I misunderstand sarcasm I just say oh oops I misunderstood my bad and move on with my day. It’s such a non-issue.
What people call „Rhine“ is a heavily straightened and channelized artificial water road.
Especially in the 19th century they cut off many loops and bends to make it more accessible for ships, to make the land useable and to get rid of flooding (narrator: „it didn’t work“):
Because when the word “progress” is used, it is usually a loaded term with some specific connotations. The quotes indicate this is a reference to the word “progress”, not a use of the word “progress”, and it’s intended to draw your attention to the fact that this change, while clearly a positive and desirable one, contrasts strongly with what is usually meant when a person says it.
Why scare quotes? I lived in Düsseldorf back in '90 (go alts - that was the name of my school team, and yes it was sponsored by Alt bier 🍺… different times), it’s always been one of Germany’s more clean cut, upmarket cities, but this picture makes me want to go back and check it out again.
Then again, I’m a queer transfem and I’m in BERLIN, THE QUEER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. Düsseldorf is in the last instance just meh.
I grew up next to Düsseldorf. I freaking love this city. Wouldn’t it be so expensiv i would live there.
Because it is a magnet for anime fans, i early came in contact with queerness and different worldviews. Düsseldorf still has a big connection to art and due to figures like Joseph Beuys the art community is still pretty progressive. I went to university there and the campus had a progressiv Atmosphere there as well.
But on the other side the city is full of rich and conservativ people. A weird contrast. I would say Düsseldorf is educated while cologne is more open and welcoming.
No, by replacing it with public transportation and human-scaled spaces. Well, leaving one small part of it for service vehicles and people who absolutely need to go buy car if there is no better option.
They actually can’t afford not to. Walkable cities improve the economies of cities because people are actually able to get to stores on roads that would otherwise be swamped with cars. It improves health and safety as well.
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