Building America's Longest Underground Highways
As land becomes more scarce and traffic gets progressively worse, Southern California's transit planners begin to look seriously at underground highways.
"But Los Angeles is in its 18th year as the nation's most congested metropolis, freeways have little or no space for new lanes and traffic experts are running out of time-shaving options.
So civic leaders are joining engineers to consider burrowing the longest highway tunnels in America.
...Three massive projects are under study in Southern California, each dwarfing any of the nation's 337 underground roadways, including the 2.6-mile tunnel in Boston's infamous "Big Dig," the most costly public works project in U.S. history.
...Southern California, with its mountainous terrain, underground aquifers and seismic vulnerabilities, may prove the ultimate testing ground for subterranean highways."
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An Excellent Development
This idea was anticipated by George Hoffman ("Urban Underground Highways and Parking Facilities," RAND Corp Study, 1963). I've recently updated it in "Underground Automated Highways (UAH) for High Density Cities", 2005, which I welcome you to read and critique.
http://accelerating.org/articles/uahsframework.pdf
While mass transit in the highest density cores should be the foundation of intelligent city planning, another long term future for transportation in every leading high density city will be UAH. UAH systems should be priced to be more expensive than mass transit solutions, to amortize their higher development costs, but it is clear to me they will be preferred by all those who can afford the premium access fees, as they will provide faster transit and allow one to stay inside one's personal, customized, self-driving vehicle environment all the way from home to one's unique destination.
Like underground mass transit, UAH networks will also allow the reclaiming of precious surface streets and above ground parking structures for greenbelts and trail networks, another obvious mid-21st century political priority for our overly paved cities.
Finally, my very preliminary estimates indicate UAH will support an order of magnitude greater city densities while improving transit times and quality of life, a problem all the leading 21st centuries must successfully solve in coming decades.
Best,
John Smart
johnsmart{at}accelerating{dot}org
Pity the metro dosn't get this much thought!
I think there are places where burying freeways and highways is a great idea, and parts of LA are begging for it. But building more highways in LA is only bound to exxacerbate the regions problems whether they're above or below ground. It's a pity the LA metro is again being ignored! The Red Line desperately needs to be extended down Wilshire Bd to Santa Monica, and north to the burbank airport (among other things). LA is much denser than people think, and by creating a critical mass of transit infrastructre, developmental and behavioral changes will follow. If new tunnels must be dug, let them be for the Red Line! just my two cents...
++++++++++++++++++++++
Nicholas Aster
www.triplepundit.com
The Red Line is more important
I couldn't agree more. Its really exciting to talk about underground tunnels and all, but when you stop and clear away all the hype. Its still just more Freeways. What LA doesn't need is more Freeways. We need more Trains! Period. Wilshire to Santa Monica. How about Hollywood Highland down Sunset to San Vicente and then South to Culver City? This is outrageous. If Antelope Valley is developing so fast, perhaps we should curb development. What we don't need is more people living further away from the city and still commuting in town. If they all want to live out there, then they can work out there too.
Tom Andrews
www.ballparkmovie.com