To consolidate, disseminate, and gather information concerning the 710 expansion into our San Rafael neighborhood and into our surrounding neighborhoods. If you have an item that you would like posted on this blog, please e-mail the item to Peggy Drouet at pdrouet@earthlink.net
Sunday, January 11, 2015
They're Going To Bury A Stretch Of German Autobahn And Cover It In Parks
Hamburg's plan to hide its highway underground and cover it with green space will reconnect a divided city.
When the A7 highway was first built in Hamburg, Germany, it sliced the city in half.
When the A7 highway was first built in Hamburg, Germany, it
sliced the city in half. Now a few divided neighborhoods are starting to
be stitched back together, as the city begins construction on three new
parks that will fully cover parts of the autobahn.
The highway is the longest in Germany and one of the busiest. As
traffic keeps getting worse, the city realized that it had to find a way
to keep the noise in the area low enough to meet national laws for
noise pollution. Since simple walls wouldn't be enough, they decided to
turn sections of the road into covered tunnels. The design can reduce
noise in surrounding neighborhoods to almost nothing.
Each new cover will stretch over a small length of highway and create
a new park, with open meadows, woods, bike paths, community gardens,
and tree-lined squares. In total, the roofs will cover over two miles
and create over 60 acres of new green space.
"Imagine that there now is a big, loud gap in the city, about 70 to
100 meters wide, with cars, dirt, noise, day in day out, 24/7/365," says
Reinhard Schier from Hamburg's Ministry of Urban Development and Environment.
"After that building is finished there will be parks, gardens,
quietness, bird songs, fresh air. And the parts of the city in the west
and the east of the autobahn will be reunited again."
The project will also mean that the city has room for a quickly
growing population, since people will suddenly be willing to live next
to the highway, according to Schier. "We can build more than 2000 new
homes," he says.
As the government builds the covers, it will also widen the highway
to try to ease traffic. Some of the new parks will stretch over eight
lanes, making the tunnels the largest of their kind in Europe.
Of course, the project raises another question: Is it better to turn a
highway into a tunnel or get rid of it completely? As other cities
start to repair neighborhoods torn apart by urban highways, some are
taking those highways out and building better public transportation.
Citizens of Hamburg aren't likely to stop driving anytime soon.
Still, the new parks will make it easier to choose to walk or bike
across town—and will eventually link up with the city's "green network," a plan to cover as much as 40% of the urban area in parks connected by trails.
Construction is beginning this year on the first two autobahn covers, and the project will be completed in 2022.