The Big Dig also had significantly more issues to deal with, including actually tunneling rather than just digging a hole and then capping it, corrosion resistance due to being below the water table a few hundred yards from the harbor, tunneling under active trains and through old unstable landfills, etc.
US infrastructure costs are far too expensive, the Big Dig was a catastrophe of a project, but it's not really fair to compare this project to Boston's.
I think Japan has started to learn from the US a lot, rail lines have become pretty expensive (recent example being the Tokyo Oedo subway line costing about $300 million per kilometer).
At least things actually get built though. It's very depressing to see the length of infrastructure projects (decades even in Europe), but maybe it's always been like this...
there's going to be a bit of a price differential when one project is in the middle of dry land and the other is in the middle of a metropolis built on top of a landfill next to an ocean
If you take a look at the financial and technical desaster of the new Berlin Airport, you'll quickly change your mind. Financially off by factor of ten and with such serious flaws that some people actually suggest to scrap whats been built (almost done) and restart from zero.
Same goes for the new music hall in Hamburg. Projected cost around 70mio, actual cost around 700mio.
Agreed about BER. If you go to google maps and look at existing large and medium airports, you'll find they all have designs intended to maximize the amount of gates. Not BER. BER is square because that's elegant. It's a catastrophe, an error so obvious it can be seen from space! Of course there are more subtle ones, but that one's enough. If incompetence was illegal... The architect is shit, the politicians that ran the project are shit... It's so bad, so bad.
You really should not ask Hamburg for some pointers on building such projects. ( The new concert hall, the Elbphilharmonie, was estimated to cost about 250 M euros entirely financed by donations. The current estimate is, that the city will have to pay something like 500 M Euros.)
And on the topic of the Deckel, they only have to build the roof since the highway already runs in a trench.
> Originally planned to open in 2010, Berlin Brandenburg Airport has encountered a series of delays due to poor construction planning, management, execution and corruption.[2][3][4] As of January 2014, planners had not set a new opening date, but say it will not be before 2015.[5] Since the unfinished construction and corrective work is estimated to take 18 months, an opening prior to late 2016 is unlikely.[6] Remarks made in August 2014, by airport CEO Hartmut Mehdorn point toward 2017 or 2018.[7] Mehdorn announced no opening date as expected 14 October 2014, so a special commission established by the Brandenburg Parliament will retain oversight of the project.[8][9][10]Current estimates suggest that the airport will open in 2018 or 2019, at the latest.[11][12][13][14][15]
I've started to wonder if some of the land shortage in San Francisco could be mitigated by either burying some roads or probably more realistically, just constructing buildings over the roads. I'd love to see a series of 1-unit deep apartments running down the middle of California or Gough. Hell, build a few skyscrapers over 80 in SOMA.
And importantly, it would be cheaper. There are always ideas about getting high density along Geary, Third, etc. combined with BRT (bus rapid transit) or light rail. It just never takes off --like razing JapanTown and renovating it.
I don't know, the embarcadero freeway is proof that these sorts of projects can happen.
There is a growing class of young affluent tech workers in SF. We'll have to see how they organize and use their gathering political power over the next decades.
I've always wondered if something like this was possible. chicago is a prime candidate; lake shore drive produces an insane amount of noise and ruins an incredible stretch of beach.
Better to eliminate the highway and replace it with a boulevard, with good protected sidewalks and bike lanes and transit facilities, maybe a bus lane or rail. That highway is neither inevitable nor immortal. See for instance http://gizmodo.com/6-freeway-demolitions-that-changed-their-...
Here's one way to get from an eighth-story office to the nearest Post Office: Jump out the window, then walk to the nearest Post Office.
If you were going to do that, you'd want a hell of a cushion to land on, right?
My point is, destroying Lake Shore Drive is a huge freaking leap, and unless the people who live and work in Chicago have something to land on the moment they need it, the immediate dislocation will cost more than Chicagoans can pay.
These kinds of massive multi-phase synchronized plans are something nobody is really good at yet, with NASA and the ESA probably coming closest. I don't really want to bet Chicago on one of them coming together just right.
Artist/architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser had some similar ideas about burying highways and using parkland to absorb some of their emissions, both chemical and auditory - his "invisible, inaudible Green Motorway":
In Linz (Austria) there is a similar highway with a park above it (more than one kilometer long). Built in 2005, water leaks into the tunnel and there are high costs to fix it (including removing the park to fix the problems).
Seattle area has another, much more similar highway concealment project that's already built - the I90 on the Mercer Island is partially underground, with the "roof" being used for things like parks. Unfortunately, not the whole length of it is buried, so there is still plenty of highway noise throughout the island.
Mercer Island made me think all auto roads should be built like this, and surface should be entirely reserved for pedestrians, bikes and the like.
I think lids do three things: they cut down on noise, they reclaim some open space, and they piece back together the neighborhoods that get cut in half by big freeway projects. The Mercer Island lids may not do much for noise, but they do the last two of those things nicely. I think that last item, putting broken neighborhoods back together again, is really important and it can be accomplished pretty well even by fragmentary lids.
There are ways to keep from cleaving neighborhoods with freeways or roads. Big cities in Japan have tons of rail lines and expressways winding through downtowns without really disconnecting neighborhoods. They use lots of overhead walkways and tunnels and also buildings stand right next to the expressways they become intricate with the fabric of the cities --not so much an afterthought-like an add on. So it may depend on a few things --for one people being okay with having a freeway outside the window and also being okay with walkways above ground level connecting buildings and destinations. Now usually the railways and roadways are elevated and not at grade
I'm curious how Seattle was supposed to replace an elevated freeway that is falling aprt with a park? I guess they could replace the parking lot that is currently under the freeway.
A bit like Teralta Park over I-15 in City Heights, San Diego. CalTrans was supposed to have 3 - 4 covers over the freeway, with parks, shopping and housing over it, but only one cover was completed.
http://sandiegofreepress.org/2013/08/i-15-in-city-heights-ho...
I hope this is a trend. Highways are ugly and smelly and noisy and dangerous. Parks are pretty, safe, and quiet. I wish that all urban highways could be underground, with parks and residences and bike/walking paths above ground.
Funny, this tunnel is in the 100-200 million euro range. Could have a positive social impact. Yet they make compromises and ruin it's value. Raising it 3,5m into the air to save some money? Can it really be called underground then?
The elbphilharmonie is at 800 million now. It will mostly make money for private hands (public private partnership) and will leave hamburg in dept for decades. Welcome to a CDU town.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 120 ms ] threadWhat a steal. The Big Dig buried less road and cost 20-30 times more.
I wonder why infrastructure costs are so out of control in the U.S. We should ask Germany or Japan to build California's high speed rail for us.
US infrastructure costs are far too expensive, the Big Dig was a catastrophe of a project, but it's not really fair to compare this project to Boston's.
The real cost will almost certainly be at least 10 times higher.
At least things actually get built though. It's very depressing to see the length of infrastructure projects (decades even in Europe), but maybe it's always been like this...
Same goes for the new music hall in Hamburg. Projected cost around 70mio, actual cost around 700mio.
And on the topic of the Deckel, they only have to build the roof since the highway already runs in a trench.
> Originally planned to open in 2010, Berlin Brandenburg Airport has encountered a series of delays due to poor construction planning, management, execution and corruption.[2][3][4] As of January 2014, planners had not set a new opening date, but say it will not be before 2015.[5] Since the unfinished construction and corrective work is estimated to take 18 months, an opening prior to late 2016 is unlikely.[6] Remarks made in August 2014, by airport CEO Hartmut Mehdorn point toward 2017 or 2018.[7] Mehdorn announced no opening date as expected 14 October 2014, so a special commission established by the Brandenburg Parliament will retain oversight of the project.[8][9][10]Current estimates suggest that the airport will open in 2018 or 2019, at the latest.[11][12][13][14][15]
It'll never happen, but one can dream.
There is a growing class of young affluent tech workers in SF. We'll have to see how they organize and use their gathering political power over the next decades.
If you were going to do that, you'd want a hell of a cushion to land on, right?
My point is, destroying Lake Shore Drive is a huge freaking leap, and unless the people who live and work in Chicago have something to land on the moment they need it, the immediate dislocation will cost more than Chicagoans can pay.
These kinds of massive multi-phase synchronized plans are something nobody is really good at yet, with NASA and the ESA probably coming closest. I don't really want to bet Chicago on one of them coming together just right.
* http://www.pithandvigor.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/under... (linked as part of this blog post: http://www.pithandvigor.com/diy-projects/materials/friedensr...)
* http://www.hundertwasser.com/arch/view-25slashXIII
* http://www.hundertwasser.com/arch/view-25slashXII
* http://www.hundertwasser.com/arch/view-25slashV
http://derstandard.at/1310511908137/Undicht-seit-Eroeffnung-... (German)
Mercer Island made me think all auto roads should be built like this, and surface should be entirely reserved for pedestrians, bikes and the like.
http://www.nuernberg.de/internet/soer/frankenschnellwegplaen...
The plans are currently lying at court because of some opponents.
https://www.google.de/maps/dir/52.4606291,13.4151826/52.4630...
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/149186.jpg
The elbphilharmonie is at 800 million now. It will mostly make money for private hands (public private partnership) and will leave hamburg in dept for decades. Welcome to a CDU town.