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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 mid
by apexalpha 7y ago
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 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?