[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.