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Urban planning in current events

Started by noahclem, November 06, 2014, 06:04:14 AM

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builder

Quote from: roadgeek on January 05, 2015, 02:17:39 PM
Quote from: Themistokles on December 17, 2014, 10:43:04 PM
Developing countries everywhere are building their own interstate systems, because they follow an outdated road-model. Getting stuck in traffic is going to lead developing nations nowhere, except giving them emissions problems, debts and an unsustainable infrastructure.

Recent developments in highway building are much more innovative in getting highways built properly with plenty of space available. Many highways are being built, frontage road first, with huge medians for future main-lanes. Examples of where space constriction have been overcome, include the Wichita Falls downtown freeway and Dallas' Central Expy widening project. The newest innovation is High Occupancy/Toll lanes with adjustable rates, which helps pay for the improvements, so the remarks about debt/expense is rather moot, because these highways can literally pay for themselves. Some of these places where space is a concern, it doesn't appear that there are any high rise buildings that need to be blown up..just a bunch of homes that are too close to the highway. Other viable solutions include double-deckers, rerouting rail lines that run parallel to a highway, and building outer loops around cities. This in addition to my aforementioned idea about removing 18-wheelers from designated highways during rush hour, which could optimize road usage, makes this far from an "outdated road-model".

This is so stupid that I don't even.

noahclem

@ builder: Try to find a little more elegant way to make your point next time. I really don't want to have to lock this thread because people can't discuss city planning in a civil manner  &mmm

Interesting information on the Alaskan Way replacement, Vortext. Having lived next to the area of Milwaukee mentioned in the "What Other Cities Learned" article I can say that the removal of that highway completely changed the way I thought about urban highways. There is one thing that bothers me about the people taking credit for all these bike/walking/park/mass transit areas replacing highways though: they are the same people vehemently opposing the construction of the highways whose later destruction made their new urban spaces possible.

These kind of things always make me think of what the best way to minimize the negative impact of highways on their immediate surroundings is. Conventional viaducts seem the worst, followed by sunken, and then double-decker viaducts (I accept that the Alaskan Way had some negative effect of separating the city from its waterfront but a relatively narrow strip of shaded parking area doesn't seem too terrible and it's a relatively attractive structure). Then there's highways through buildings or buildings built over highways which seems like a quite rarely used technique that should be able to achieve most of the advantages of tunneling at lower cost and finally the option of tunneling itself which shouldn't have almost any negative effect besides cost. Visually aesthetic sound reduction structures are a neat option too. Of course there remains the option of not having urban highways but it's hard for me to believe they should all go. The cities mentioned have other highways which could be related to the success of their removals. And anecdotally I remember driving to downtown VanCouver from the south, which doesn't have freeway access, and it was just terrible.

I checked out Wichita Falls--wow. Interesting highway but it's hard to understand why they took the effort to build it over a road rather than over the parking lots that are everywhere else in that "downtown". I hope I'm not offending anyone from there but I actually feel really sad for the 100k or so people living there. In any case it's quite well-established that elevated highways lower property values and divide neighborhoods, whether or not they're built over a road with local access.

roadgeek

Quote from: builder on January 06, 2015, 07:43:22 AM
This is so stupid that I don't even.

This is known as the Abusive Language Fallacy.

roadgeek

Quote from: Flatron on January 06, 2015, 04:43:30 AM
yeah, building even more roads is obviously THE solution...
//irony off

Well, Dallas tried the rail solution as well as expanding Central Expy, and look at the results. They still keep trying to pour $$$$ into this Dart rail boondoggle, but it hasn't resolved the congestion.

vortext

Alright everyone, which ever mode of transport you prefer, cool your engines . .

Bit of topic but here's a neat map I came across. Anyone want to take a guess which city it is? The info is a bit misleading, instead of year of construction it should rather say year of completion since construction of the cathedral started way earlier than 1900-1930. At any rate, it's a nice way to visualize city developments. Also crazy to see the amount of development that has taken place over the last 50 years or so. Astonishing really.
time flies like a bird
fruit flies like a banana

MandelSoft

Quote from: roadgeek on January 05, 2015, 02:17:39 PM
Quote from: Themistokles on December 17, 2014, 10:43:04 PM
Developing countries everywhere are building their own interstate systems, because they follow an outdated road-model. Getting stuck in traffic is going to lead developing nations nowhere, except giving them emissions problems, debts and an unsustainable infrastructure.

Recent developments in highway building are much more innovative in getting highways built properly with plenty of space available. Many highways are being built, frontage road first, with huge medians for future main-lanes. Examples of where space constriction have been overcome, include the Wichita Falls downtown freeway and Dallas' Central Expy widening project. The newest innovation is High Occupancy/Toll lanes with adjustable rates, which helps pay for the improvements, so the remarks about debt/expense is rather moot, because these highways can literally pay for themselves. Some of these places where space is a concern, it doesn't appear that there are any high rise buildings that need to be blown up..just a bunch of homes that are too close to the highway. Other viable solutions include double-deckers, rerouting rail lines that run parallel to a highway, and building outer loops around cities. This in addition to my aforementioned idea about removing 18-wheelers from designated highways during rush hour, which could optimize road usage, makes this far from an "outdated road-model".

How different is this kind of planning in the Netherlands; not only do we have little space available, there is a whole procedure of permits to just demolish one building, or to build anyway. Protests can delay construction quite a lot. One part of the motorway A4 (for which no houses had to be demolished), was delayed for 40(!) years:


Quote
Midden Delfland missing link

The A4 connects three of the four most important cities in The Netherlands, but there are still sections missing. A notorious 7000 meter gap lies between Delft and Schiedam, which causes huge traffic jams on the adjacent A13 connecting The Hague and Rotterdam. Plans to close this gap were made decades ago, but there has not been any construction yet.

Overview
1957: Road 19 adopted in the national highway plan of 1957.
1965: Route set by the government.
1968: Start of the construction of the embankment where the road is supposed to run across
1976: Government stopped the construction of the A4.
1985: Government voted in favor of construction.
1998: Finances for A4 diverted to construction of railway tunnels.
2006: Costs of the construction have risen to 700 million for 7 kilometers.
2009: Dutch government decided that construction will start.
2010: September 2: record of decision by minister Camiel Eurlings.
2011: July 6: the Council of State dismisses all appeals against the record of decision.
2011: autumn: construction will commence.
2015: motorway is planned to be completed.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A4_motorway_%28Netherlands%29

One doesn't simply build more roads...
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w_swietwoot


eggman121

I guess a highway is suppose to bypass an area as oppose to providing direct access as some highways do IMHO. I know in Melbourne that there where four freeways ending in the CBD / Downtown Limits before CityLink came through and connected 3 of them together. The Eastern Freeway (The last of the Freeways to be connected) has been a constant battle to get built with large amounts of opposition. In the end I guess Freeways are falling out of favor because of the large amounts of space required and the issue of Peak Car and Peak Oil. If I was designing a Freeway network from scratch I would design a orbital Freeway around the metro area with connections to major routes both into and out of the city.

I think there is a growing move towards public transport systems since they are becoming more popular and accessible too people (and you don't need all the overheads of owning your own car). Europe is especially embracing this and other countries and continents are starting to follow suit.

You only need to look a four way interchange design to find that there is a large amount of space taken up that could have been used for other purposes.

Just my opinion

-eggman121   

roadgeek

Quote from: MandelSoft on January 06, 2015, 10:43:00 AM
How different is this kind of planning in the Netherlands; not only do we have little space available, there is a whole procedure of permits to just demolish one building, or to build anyway. Protests can delay construction quite a lot. One part of the motorway A4 (for which no houses had to be demolished), was delayed for 40(!) years:

Yeah we run into some of that here in Austin as well. Highways require a five year Environmental Impact Study. The anti-road activists are fighting to keep the study from being completed on a stretch of 45 from I-35 to a future Mo-Pac extension. I ran into an excellent article where Austin residents mistakenly believed that if they did not build more highways, people would not come to live here.

vortext

#49
Quote from: w_swietwoot on January 06, 2015, 11:03:50 AM
At vortex: Den bosch.

Bingo! Which brings me to: canals! Now you may think: the Dutch and their canals, surely it's a thing of the past - in which case you're quite mistaken. Last month a 9km re-route of the Zuid-Willemsvaart was completed, which means 1) it can now handle larger container ships and 2) the center of Den Bosch will have less through traffic (i.e. no more excuse for being late because the drawbridge was open  ::)). Yesterday control over the old parts of the canal and the various locks and bridges therein was officially handed over from provincial to municipal government. Below a map which shows the new route. All in all it took around two years to complete the new stretch of canal, which included new bridges and some major changes to the existing road network.

time flies like a bird
fruit flies like a banana

noahclem

I'm so jealous of the lowland countries--I think the last route they opened around here was for husky dog sledding or cross country skiing :D

Came across an interesting comparison of airport size to traffic volume recently which I found particularly useful as I've spent most of my SC4 time lately scheming up an airport.

noahclem

Was going through my bookmarks looking yet again for bripizza's downloads and came across this. Says it's an archive of a magazine so should count as current events ;)  If you're interested in professional literature from a road geek's dream project....

noahclem

A project to replace an obsolete portion of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor in Baltimore is a bit interesting. But should they use rail tunnels or road over sunken rail dual network pieces?!

I vote the tunnel, just too bad SC4's can't curve like that  %wrd

noahclem


art128

"that's up to the reindeer herders' cooperatives"

pfff.
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

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noahclem

It'd be pretty grizzly to be one of the train drivers, huh? I've hit a couple with my car and that was bad enough. I bet they'll build the fences now though, since it's attracted major public attention and Finland has a pretty strong animal rights track record.

vester

So how would the reindeer move around then ?

Maybe combine it with some bridges/tunnels along the reindeers routes.

noahclem

Wow, I remembered a similar strategy being used very successfully in Africa to reduce problems caused by elephants crossing human-settled areas dividing their habitats so I looked up elephant bridge for more information--but it turns out this problem isn't limited to reindeer and in that case you have to think the train didn't come out of the crash in great shape either after 7 elephants' worth of collision.

There's basically only two railroads in Finland's reindeer husbandry zone, starting in the south a little north of Oulu, forking at Tornio near the top of the Gulf of Bothnia toward the northern tip of Europe and the northwest tip of the White Sea respectively, but in both cases ending a couple/few hours from the fork. Reindeer might want to cross but certainly wouldn't need to or suffer from overly-small habitat. I'd be more worried about wildlife wandering onto the tracks at road crossings and getting stuck between the fences than not being able to cross at the roads...

MandelSoft

Maybe fences and additional ecoducts could solve the problem?

Also:
Quote from: noahclem on May 05, 2015, 12:19:47 PM
There's basically only two railroads in Finland's reindeer husbandry zone, starting in the south a little north of Oulu, forking at Tornio near the top of the Gulf of Bothnia toward the northern tip of Europe and the northwest tip of the White Sea respectively...
Thanks to modding ETS2, I know exactly where each of these places are without looking them up on a map :D
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eggman121

It will be interesting when my parents get back too see what impressions they get of European cities. They are is Amsterdam at the moment in the Netherlands. They will be visiting other parts of Europe and will end up in Paris.

-eggman121