Yep, thats what this is
It’s a dream come true far as I’m concerned.
I haven’t found anyone adding the detail that the photo is a bit deceptive.
The road is still there, it was just moved underground. It surfaces at the bridge in the background.
It’s definitely better, but the car traffic is still there, just hidden.
Source: I live a couple minutes from where the photo was taken
Yeah, I dunno why OP put quotes on it.
Luckily for op they can edit the title, so please do @tictac2@lemmy.world
He was just making a point"."
Sarcasm.
Yep, lame.
Obviously just being grammatically correct by putting the title in quotes!
My guess is OP is being sarcastic because progress to many people means more highways & cars. More construction and development.
I wish we had more of this kind of progress near me (Colorado USA).
Well, it certainly beats how it was before, but there isn’t less traffic now – they just put it in a tunnel.
Germany’s public transit is fantastic too tho
thank you, but are you sure? It’s pretty shit except for a few cities.
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.
Think about it this way, it’s even worse in big parts of the world.
The road and cars still exist, they just put it underground
This is exactly what happened. They just needed the roads AND the view. The amount of cars is still the same, if not more.
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.
Yes, replacing surface roads with greenery is good for climate change, or more locally for reducing the heat island effect.
They likely also redesigned the roads to reduce stop and go traffic, with all the extra pollution that creates.
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.
I think it’s better from a polluting point.
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.
I wish Colorado would seriously put forth a passenger train between Pueblo to Denver or even Fort Collins.
Utah has one from Provo to Ogden and it’s amazing. Beats driving in the psycho traffic.
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
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.
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.
Wondered the same.
The new look is sexier.
I mean look at the curves of that beach!!
As an American I’m just assuming that road was moved to be widened and a bunch of low income housing and many blocks worth of historic buildings were demolished in the process.
Low income housing is a far better use of space than preserving “historic” buildings that are actually just out of code, poorly designed, and slowly decaying old houses that never actually had any historical significance.
The needs of people who are alive and struggling today are infinitly more important than your nostalgia for the homes of dead rich cunts.
Way to miss the point and go out of your way to be mean to someone who probably strongly agrees with you
Don’t worry, the historic buildings were destroyed years ago to meet minimum parking requirements
No, the street is now underground.
why the quotation marks?
Maybe it’s an art installation titled “Progress”
Are you suggesting this is not progress? Because this is honestly amazing.
What’s the point of water if you can’t chill by the water
All my homies like chilling by the water
edit: oh wait - it actually exists?!
Hell yeah my homies are here! 💦 💦 💦
I think there should be some shading structures around the walkway.
Maybe some self-building ones that also act as a carbon sink.
Har har, what I meant was having a shaded overhead thing every couple of yards right along the actual walkway next to the water.
Assuming its mostly concrete having shading could help break up heat absorption and help reduce heat radiation.
Maybe some self-building ones that also act as a carbon sink.
Pretty sure they are referring to trees here.
You know people drink water too right? It’s not just a backdrop for your selfies lol
Not me, I’m a purist. I drink only hydrogen and oxygen.
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
It’s a worldwide phenomena. The “Big Dig” is a great example of urban space reclaimed from above-grade highways.
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.
Sure did. I’ve lived in RI my whole life save for when I lived just barely into MA about 5 years ago.
Pardon the Reddit link, but as soon as I saw a before and after a few months ago, I was awestruck.
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.
Yes. Yes it is.
I wonder why there is a second completely unused road on the right of the 1990 picture
Here is another picture. you can see the church in the background.
The right side is the road to the houses, and on the left is the speed-way with 2x2 lanes.It was (still) crazy back then.EDIT: I was corrected. Its not. It is the substitute road.
Here is a recent picture looking from the other direction. Again the church now on the left. It was a crazy project but it was well received by the Altstadt/Oldtown.
In the German Wikipedia you can find another nice picture of the Rhine-Bank (Rhein-Ufer). It shows the Steps to the Rhine in 1900 - before the asphalt rolled over all that land. Notice the church and Tower in the back. And today.
the substitute road
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That is a good find. Those Picture are great!
Oh I see. Judging by the ‘step’ above the road on the first picture it looks like there might have been a dock there before the road was built?
Seattle did the same thing. So much better.
I think we need a middle-vote button.
Wish we could do this in my town, miles of undeveloped lakefront access blocked by an 8 lane highway… it sucks.
Wasn’t it just moved underground?
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great. put them all underground.
Then seal the ends.
I mean, leave ladders to escape. I don’t want to murder people. I’d just like to bury all the cars is all.
And in effect still murder people by lowering their standard of living.
Holy crap, dude. Obviously I’m not actually literally suggesting we should just bury all cars with the people still inside them. Long term cars are actually terrible for standard of living, but there needs to be a rational transition and effective mass transit in place before we start getting rid of cars. It is stupidly, ridiculously obvious that no one in their right mind would actually want to bury people alive for doing the only things that work with our current terrible transit system.
Maybe don’t just go around assuming everyone who says anything you don’t like is a monster in a medium famous for it’s lack of a serious tone?
Well, yeah. That’s why it would be nice to work on walkable infrastructure isn’t it? Because then we can reduce cars without lowering anyone’s quality of life. That’s the whole discussion.
Lowering the standard of living in that way is murder? That sounds a bit melodramatic. You’re probably even saving people since there are less traffic accidents.
Also speak for yourself. For me, not having to drive means a better quality of life.
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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.
I agree with you but its sorta funny given peoples reaction to the quotes which im like pretty sure was not intended to invert the words meaning.
You forgot the /s
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.
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Idk. That was very obviously sarcastic. I wouldn’t care about the opinions of those who took it seriously.
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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
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Don’t worry, he didn’t mean it, he was obviously being sarcastic because no reasonable person actually dislikes the /s.
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’d argue that jokes not being written for everyone to understand/enjoy isn’t a matter of being wrong. It’s part of the entire subjectivity of comedy.
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 think it’d be cool if Lemmy had an option to select tone the same way you can select language, and an option to hide tone by default
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.
Should have bulldozed the whole Rhine
They basically did that.
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“):
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinbegradigung
(don’t have an english article, just look at the pictures)
I started writing a comment of confusion because I thought I was on the mildly infuriating community not the mildly interesting community.
Overall yes this is wonderful progress that more cities need to adopt
Most cities just can’t really afford it
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.
yeah, car infrastructure is expensive and they should just get rid of it entirely.
By replacing it with more expensive car infrastructure? That’s what happened in this picture
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.
Sure, I agree, but you do realize where the highway went in this picture, right? It’s still there…
Edit: Cease fire! Friendly fire!!! FrieNDLY FIIIIREEEE!!!
Sure, that wehicle part might as well live underground, if the country has enough money for that.
Fuck cars
Not sure why the quotes exist, but this is beautiful to see.
Better late than never, and I hope we can take these examples to other car-centric places to fix.
