[apexalpha]

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]

>>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.

[Tomte]

After 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]

Yeah, 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

[BigJ1211]

Reminds 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.

[bogomipz]

>" 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.

[stingraycharles]

Yeah 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.

[brnt]

Oh, 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.

[PuffinBlue]

Wow, 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!

[logicchains]

>Bad Oeynhausen

Town name checks out?

[Tomte]

Bad means spa.

[midgetjones]

Isn't it more literally 'bath'? I thought the English word came from it.

[Tomte]

Yes, but as a town prefix it means that they've got medicinal springs. I think that's called spa, isn't it?

[pintxo]

Yes, 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)

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heilbad

[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heiligendamm

[4] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeheilbad

[midgetjones]

Yes, 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 :|

[bogomipz]

Not 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."

[brnt]

I 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]

In Google satellite view, there appears to be a railway about 400 meters west which similarly divides the city. Will that be buried as well?

[apexalpha]

No it doesn't for a few reasons.

One is that most rail traffic doesn't continu 24/7. A train comes by, the crossings open again and it's anormal road for 15 minutes until the next train.

Cars just run constantly. Cars also have exhausts that blast fumes in your face.

Furthermore the rails are usually 2 or 3 tracks next to each other outside the station. That's 20 meter or so vs a whopping 50m+ for a highway.

[lucb1e]

> Cars also have exhausts that blast fumes in your face

Yeah I never noticed this as much as the small city where I live now. Both bus stops (near home and near work) are next to a busy road, which is one thing, but one is also right before a traffic light, so lots of accelerating traffic. (The other one is right after, which is much better already.) I regularly hold my breath for a few seconds as a particularly bad cloud (invisibly) passes over me.

I sometimes wonder if, instead of speed limits, we need acceleration limits. Or just emission limits. Accelerate to highway speed in 50 seconds instead of in 20: so long as you're not in traffic that goes from 0 to 100 km/h every two minutes, it should hardly matter for your arrival time. Yet most of the time when I accelerate at a reasonable (not slow) speed onto the (uphill-going) highway, the person behind me thinks they should go alongside to accelerate 5% faster and lock me into the merging lane that is by now running out of space. Must spend 80% more CO2 for 20 seconds to arrive 4 seconds faster at the destination!

[varjag]

Nearly every sizable European city has a through railway, it is super common here. They are rarely any obstacle.

[Symbiote]

No: 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]

There 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.

[Merrill]

For the section of rail parallel to the tunnel, there is only one grade crossing at Sphinxlunet and one foot crossing in the station. While it is hard to see from satellite view after the tunnel is built, there were likely more crossings at the aforementioned stop lights on A2. Width of right-of-ways is not too important if there is no way to get across the narrower one either.

Most likely the tunnel is really due two conflicting desires - wanting to remove stoplights from the A2 to expedited the flow of through traffic while not wanting to route A2 around the city's east perimeter where there is ample open land. Usually the city retailers and other businesses want to keep the central routing to prevent the development of competing business centers along perimeter highways.

[gpvos]

With the removal of level crossings (not always replaced with an over or underpass) to make the route suitable for higher-speed trains, railway lines are becoming more of a barrier. But they're still narrower than motorways.

[gield]

>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]

According 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]

Exactly 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.

[mcv]

True. I tend to take either Brussels or Ghent. Maastricht is more appropriate if you want to go to Lyon rather than Paris.

[flyGuyOnTheSly]

>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.

[LeifCarrotson]

I 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.

[zymhan]

I really enjoyed this comment

[toast0]

In 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.

[Fnoord]

I'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]

There 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.

[Infernal]

> 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]

That'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]

Yes, one of the better managed (and not outright corrupt) public works in the Netherlands. Cool stuff.

[mdemare]

I think you mean Amsterdam to Lyon

[equalunique]

I 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!

[niftich]

Was an eastern bypass for long-distance traffic studied?

[petre]

Cool. Now try to picture those fumes and pollution in a tunnel.

[oh_sigh]

Any tunnel of appreciable size will have designed ventilation and other auxiliary systems(life support/escape, maintenance, power, etc). It isn't just a tube in the ground.

[w-m]

But the ventilation doesn't go to the void, it will just be blown into the same neighborhood. So unless it's filtered in the tunnel ventilation system, you still get the same fumes there.

[apexalpha]

But you get considerably less fumes because the traffic isn't in a constant traffic jam because of the traffic lights on the highway.

Also, the end of the tunnels are a bit more out of the town centre than the road that was dead in the middle.

[oh_sigh]

You can have ventilation stacks that at least distribute the exhaust higher into the atmosphere, or at key points where fewer people live. I don't know specifically if they do that here though.

[Merrill]

It looks like there are 66 fans installed with venting at the tunnel ends. https://www.novenco-building.com/media/1166/king-willem-alex...

[petre]

I know. They're designed with fire in mind. What I don't know is what they're rated at and if they run at higher flow rates depending on traffic and/or pollution levels.

The alternative was to run the highway around the city, which is probably also cheaper. Though it's nice that they recovered some space and planted grass and trees over it.

[brnt]

Cars come with HEPA filters. Most (non-Asian) pedestrians don't.

[Sharlin]

Noise 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.

[andrepd]

I 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.

[PeterStuer]

Above 22Mph it is the tire noise that the most dominant source of noise pollution by cars. In most noise pollution scenarios EV's will change nothing.

[mikeyouse]

Most city driving is below 22mph, so this is a useless bit of info. Living next to a stop sign in San Francisco, 100% of the traffic near my place is at speeds less than 22mph and I can assure you that the tire noise is completely inconsequential compared to the revving engines and obnoxious exhausts.

[mrguyorama]

Most car noise on high speed roads is tire noise, not engine noise

[205guy]

GP comment sounded like it was in a town or city (school nearby), where average speeds are lower and "high speed roads" are not the norm. In towns and cities, engine noise definitely dominates tire and wind noise, especially revving from stops, and would thus be vastly improved by electric vehicles. Not to mention smell and air pollution which are always worse in fossil-fuel vehicles.

[jakobegger]

I don't think HEPA filters are of any use against NOx?

[dsfyu404ed]

Many don't anymore. Same story as timing belts. There was period in the late 90s through 2010s where they were standard until the OEMs realized nobody actually changes them and they generally become nasty to the point where they make the air dirtier. Now a lot of cars are omitting them again.

[jandrese]

Well before the end of this tunnel's lifetime most cars will be electric.