14 ms·
The A2 motorway no longer divides Maastricht
- apexalpha 7y agoMy 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 7y ago>>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.
- logicchains 7y ago>Bad Oeynhausen Town name checks out?
- Tomte 7y agoBad means spa.
- midgetjones 7y agoIsn't it more literally 'bath'? I thought the English word came from it.
- Tomte 7y agoYes, but as a town prefix it means that they've got medicinal springs. I think that's called spa, isn't it?
- midgetjones 7y agoYes, that's indeed true. The English city of Bath, home of the famous Roman baths, is also known as "Bath Spa". Glad we've cleared this up :|
- pintxo 7y agoYes, more precisely the town needs to have a medical spa ("Heilbad" in German) [1]. Which can be a medicinal spring, but also other potentially beneficial effects [2], there are towns on the sea, which have the prefix "Seeheilbad" [3], which is purely based on the positive climatic effect of the nearby sea. And then, this is Germany after all, there is a long list of other boxes that need to be ticked, see [4]. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_(Kurort) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_(Kurort) [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heilbad https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heilbad [3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heiligendamm https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heiligendamm [4] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeheilbad https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeheilbad
- bogomipz 7y agoNot a German speaker, but is baden the plural form then? I feel sometimes spa towns have baden in the name and others are just "bad."
- Tomte 7y agoThe plural would be "Bäder", but I'm not aware of any town using that plural form. It would be very strange, too, because a town is a single entity. Baden-Baden is the only one I know that comes close, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baden-Baden#Name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baden-Baden#Name explains how it got that name. It's not the spa prefix, but part of the name proper. Also, "Baden" is a region in the south-western state of Baden-Württemberg that probably has lent its name to other towns. It is home to one of the two big dialect families in Baden-Würrtemberg: Badisch, the other being Schwäbisch/Swabian.
- Tomte 7y agoAfter decades the road work has been finished and the missing link between Autobahn 2 and Autobahn 30 is finally in place. It leads you around the town and it saves at least 20 minutes.
- gambiting 7y agoYeah, I'm looking at google maps now and it looks like you can just stay on the A30, drive around the entire town, and just take the exit to A2 - amazing. Almost a shame I'm not planning a trip anytime soon to experience it hahaha
- brnt 7y agoOh, I was so happy this year that the highway around was finally opened. I thought I'd forever have to go through that town and pass Hans Wurst.
- BigJ1211 7y agoReminds 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.
- brnt 7y agoEven though Luik has a highway without stoplights, it's narrow, winding and most of it maxes out at 60 (or was it even 40). Outside of rush hour driving through the city is actually faster. And Cheratte... Can't wait for a proper north-south bypass there.
- stingraycharles 7y agoYeah as someone who travels through all three, Luik / Liège definitely eats the cake. Not only is it slow, it’s also difficult to navigate if you’re not familiar with the area. Maastricht was always mostly pleasant, and Bad Oeyenhaus I typically use as an excuse to take a break at one of the McDonalds there.
- bogomipz 7y ago>" 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.
- PuffinBlue 7y agoWow, that brings back memories. I travelled that road twice a week, most weeks, for about 2 years. I had almost blocked this from my memory! That said, I think there was a KFC and a McDonalds there pretty much just off the road that you can stop at which was just about the right time when my bladder ran out of mileage. It was nice to slow down and stop somewhere other than a motorway service station!
- Infernal 7y ago> And IIRC the entire project was within budget From TFA, "the one billion euro project is still ongoing, it will not be finished before 2026." There's plenty of time yet!
- roel_v 7y agoThat's only for finishing the park on top, and the new parks in the vicinity that are being build in one big project but that don't really have anything to do with the tunnel per se. The tunnels and all the connector roads are done now.
- BurnGpuBurn 7y agoYes, one of the better managed (and not outright corrupt) public works in the Netherlands. Cool stuff.
- brnt 7y agoI 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.
- Merrill 7y agoIn Google satellite view, there appears to be a railway about 400 meters west which similarly divides the city. Will that be buried as well?
- varjag 7y agoNearly every sizable European city has a through railway, it is super common here. They are rarely any obstacle.
- Symbiote 7y agoNo: they are often obstacles, but they've been obstacles since the 19th century, so we have adapted the city and forgotten. They are often lesser obstacles, since they were built when all other traffic was on foot or by horse, and routes for people had to be maintained. Some motorways were built without this consideration, in the period of 20th century motorcar idealism.
- rocqua 7y agoThere are more level-crossings, which are less of an impediment since traffic is much less constant on railways. Similarly, there tend to be a lot of under and over passes. These are generally easier since railways are less wide than roads. As such, railways are less of a dividing barrier.
- gpvos 7y ago
- petre 7y agoCool. Now try to picture those fumes and pollution in a tunnel.
- brnt 7y agoCars come with HEPA filters. Most (non-Asian) pedestrians don't.
- Sharlin 7y agoNoise and particulate pollution are perhaps the most external of the negative externalities of automobiles, riders being mostly insulated from their own emissions and from those of their peers. It feels fundamentally unfair.
- jakobegger 7y agoI don't think HEPA filters are of any use against NOx?
- andrepd 7y agoI had the wonderful privilege of, by pure coincidence, having no cars pass through the road that I walk on my way to work, for about 4 or 5 minutes. I was stunned at the sheer peaceful silence of it. No "broooom" noise, no metallic screeching of brakes, no gasoline smell, no burnt clutch smell, no "dirty auto shop" smell in general. Just the trees rustling softly, faint chatter from the primary school kids some 100m away. I believe we are so used to it that we don't even realise what it is to be in relative silence in the middle of the city. I walk that street every day and I was just stunned to be in that place with no noise. My brain probably associated that walk with that constant background noise, and was freaked out when it wasn't there x) Electric cars cannot come soon enough.
- mrguyorama 7y agoMost car noise on high speed roads is tire noise, not engine noise
- Fnoord 7y agoI'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.
- gpvos 7y agoThere is still a motorway with traffic lights: the A59 is interrupted for a few hundred metres so it can have traffic lights at Knooppunt Hooipolder where there is an interchange with the (more important) A27. A major source of traffic jams. It is not signposted as having a different road number, although I guess administratively can't have an A number for that stretch.
- equalunique 7y agoI got to experience that A2 traffic on a trip back in 2015. Maastricht was one of the most memorable parts of a 4-hour drive!
- gield 7y ago>Maastricht uses to be the only traffic lights on route from Amsterdam to Paris. I know Belgian traffic can be hell but going through Maastricht on the way from Amsterdam to Paris would be quite the detour :)
- tectec 7y agoAccording to Google Maps it's only 30 minutes longer to go through Maastricht, so it's not that far of a stretch to imagine that some people use it.
- apexalpha 7y agoExactly and if you're going to be on the ring of Antwerp, or god forbid, the ring of Brussel during rush hour... you are rushing nowhere for at least an hour.
- brnt 7y agoAntwerpen and Lille/Rijssel are still absolute terror (and used to be worse). But perhaps the real reason: the road signage in Belgium and France is substandard to Dutch sentiments, and with the route through Maastricht, there are fewer wrong turns to take ;) These sentiments are so widespread, a Dutch comedian made a well known sketch about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIpgGigrV_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIpgGigrV_s
- mcv 7y agoTrue. I tend to take either Brussels or Ghent. Maastricht is more appropriate if you want to go to Lyon rather than Paris.
- mdemare 7y agoI think you mean Amsterdam to Lyon
- flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago>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. This is an all too common sight in small town America, unfortunately. Highways running directly through small towns seems almost the rule, not the exception.
- toast0 7y agoIn small town america, the towns usually grew on the side of the highway. That's where you put the businesses, because that's where the customers are. Then, that's where you put the houses, because it's close to everything. Small towns exist away from the highway, but you're unlikely to see them, and they're more likely to be on the decline, because they're hard to get to. See also towns that die when the highway is moved.
- LeifCarrotson 7y agoI think this is a causality problem, not anything out of malice or bureaucratic foolishness. Roads connect people. Towns are groups of people. Bigger roads connect larger groups of people. Bigger roads are the reasonable choice to convert to highways. People like/find utility in highways and roads, so they live near them. It's an unfortunate extension of this logical process that results in 18-wheeler jake brakes thundering to a stop at the one red light in downtown Podunk, Nowhere at 3AM, on their way between Megatropolis and Port Industry, which leads to complaining at the town hall that they need "no engine braking" local ordinances and proposals that the 5-lane road speed limit should be reduced from 35 to 25. Nevermind that Podunk was established as a town because it was a convenient distance to stop at in horse-drawn buggies passing through 200 years ago between Megatropolis and Port Industry, and that every business in the town survives only because travelers stop there and inject money into the local economy... Maybe at some point in the past, the major road should have been diverted around downtown by a half mile. But the local optimum the town currently sits at is far below the peak desirable state not because people love noise and pollution but because it's a straightfoward hill climb to the present state and it's hard to avoid that.
- 7y ago
- niftich 7y agoWas an eastern bypass for long-distance traffic studied?
- melling 7y agoLos Angeles is going to build a wildlife overpass: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/worlds-largest-highway-overpass-for-wildlife-on-track-in-california/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/worlds-largest-highway-overpass... Pedestrians and nature need to be given a higher priority.
- LeonM 7y agoThe 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 7y agoOne 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,296.19h,82.94t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sPcm58Pg7Ob2NYDQU6c-T2Q!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@52.1051185,5.3619931,3a,75y,296... [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/dutch-soldiers-are-shouting-bang-bang-because-theyve-run-out-of-bullets-10442332.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/dutch-soldie...
- learnstats2 7y agoIt was very noticeable to me in Dutch cities that there is wildlife.
- sailfast 7y agoMore remarkable than ecopassages are the underpasses built specifically for canals or major rivers. There are a few of these on the way from Den Haag to Utrecht that are pretty mind-boggling. It's also interesting to see cargo shipping going OVER the highway.
- 7y ago
- gumby 7y agoQuite an amazing effort, and the passing comparison to the Boston central artery/"big dig" was sobering.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoCompare 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 7y agoLove that illustration. Do you have a source? I'd like to pay attribution when I share it elsewhere.
- roel_v 7y agoIt's from this book: https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Prejudice-Chasing-Horizons-Vol/dp/1495395871 https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Prejudice-Chasing-Horizons-Vol/... .
- new2628 7y agoIt is a nice illustration, but they really missed an opportunity to include a fourth quadrant for "fruit brandy Europe". It would cover most of the Balkans and SE Europe, on the current dividing line between vodka and wine. It also makes a lot of sense: fruit brandies are made of fruit like wine, but are as strong as vodka.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lawlessone 7y agoDoes burying a whole road like this make it possible to capture and prevent vehicle smog in the streets above?
- StreamBright 7y agoYes, smog is usually heavier than air (oxygen+nitrogen mix). If you do not blow it up there on purpose you can filter it and get it outside of the city. https://ephtracking.cdc.gov/showAirContaminants.action https://ephtracking.cdc.gov/showAirContaminants.action
- dddw 7y agogood question, maybe some redirection and filtering in the airvents? dunno, interesting to look into
- est31 7y agoAny 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 7y agoUnfortunately 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.
- lqet 7y agoSimilar 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/styles/dz-node-detail/public/content-images/content/tunnel14.jpg?itok=Dfs2VQD9 https://www.stadttunnel-freiburg.de/sites/default/files/styl... [1] http://www.daub-ita.de/fileadmin/images/daub/TunnelDB/UBD2000316-01.jpg http://www.daub-ita.de/fileadmin/images/daub/TunnelDB/UBD200... [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freiburger_Stadttunnel https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freiburger_Stadttunnel
- sillyquiet 7y agoThere 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-bury-i-35-has-risen-from-the-dead/ https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2019/04/the-idea-to-bu... I very much doubt it will come to fruition any time soon given the political climate.
- jdhawk 7y agoBut, 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 7y agoWhy 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 7y agoResponsive 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 7y agoI 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.
- rayiner 7y agoJust 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.
- gpvos 7y agoDon't worry, we have public works that go way over budget too. Curiously that happens more often with rail projects than with road projects here.
- cesarb 7y agoDifferent 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 7y agoThe 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.)
- mcv 7y agoBoring tunnels is also hard in the muddy Dutch soil. It was used in Amsterdam for the new Noord-Zuid-lijn, which had tons of complications and went way over deadline and budget by an enormous amount. Although if there's a part of the country that is suitable for boring, it's probably Maastricht, which is in the tiny part of the country that has actual hills.
- MrGilbert 7y agoThere 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/7896702/27d2e4d96831a306f95b6429e0bd6eb9/data/2016-08-faltblatt-ueberdeckelung-a7-engl.pdf https://www.hamburg.de/contentblob/7896702/27d2e4d96831a306f...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- larrydag 7y agoSimilar to Klyde Warren Park in Dallas. https://www.klydewarrenpark.org/ https://www.klydewarrenpark.org/
- tomphoolery 7y agoThis is amazing, finally the ideas pioneered in EPCOT are making it to the real world.
- pelasaco 7y agoTo be fair, in Germany, on the A4, they did something similar and the results were awesome. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobdeburgtunnel https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobdeburgtunnel