Sorry, China lovers, this is still just a six lane highway and it sucks.
China is a land of contrasts with urban planning. They have excellent HSR and transit in a lot of places, but they are not immune to absolutely terrible sprawl and highways in other places. Guangzhou is probably one of the worst places with actual sprawl.
It sucks because it is a 6 lane highway but also it is kinda cute if you HAVE to have a 6 lane highway.
For sure. But having a modicum of habitat available if you must do something like this is at least somewhat helpful
Car bad. Car even worse when done by a country that should know better. China saw the failures of urban highways in the United States, said, "Yup, we want that", and proceeded to demolish neighborhoods around the country to build car sewers.
I don't understand what that's supposed to accomplish, the below-grade road takes up as much real estate as a regular road. They could at least stick some trains or something above it.
It facilitates pedestrian traffic across the highway. It also looks a million times better. Probably quieter, too.
facilitates pedestrian traffic across the highway
What, they're supposed to crawl across those 1 foot wide dirt paths with no guard rail, suspended above a highway, to get to an area without any sidewalks or storefronts?
If they at least put it under the other highway, it wouldn't make it any harder to cross.
This is just a more tasteful version of Houston's highway right next to other highways.
they’re supposed to crawl across those 1 foot wide dirt paths with no guard rail, suspended above a highway, to get to an area without any sidewalks or storefronts?
now I kinda want to see this as a game show
China is a pretty big country. That means it's very likely that there will be cool stuff, and also stupid stuff.
Yeah, but I'm not convinced that this is stupid. "Car bad, train good," I can hear already. China builds plenty of trains; they can have a little buried highway as a treat.
Perhaps the highway really has to be there and there was no better way to plan this out, in which case it definitely looks kind of neat and reduces noise pollution. However it is kind of silly that it is inaccessible to pedestrians, if you're gonna do all that work at least make it so that someone can pass from one side to the other...
Yeah after looking at it more closely, it clearly isn't really designed for that, or if it is they haven't installed any guardrails yet. That's a baffling decision to me.
Oh my god, I was not expecting the inside of that station to be that pretty...
That’s a good question. Not sure of the purpose, but trains would be much cooler. But, for a multi-level roadway, that’s pretty cool and not something you’d see in a shithole country like the US
I wonder if it continues further in a tunnel and that the ceiling is open in order to create air flow while still allowing some green space. Pretty hard to tell from the gif.
Covered roadways are great. "Nature overpasses" in rural areas help save wildlife.
The only thing about this one is it doesn't seem possible to pass through as a pedestrian, but it's a short vid so maybe there's designated areas.
Edit: after rewatching it def isn't possible to pass for pedestrians but it just looks like a short strip. Still pretty cool.
They've proposed doing something similar with I-35 in Austin but I'm sure they'll just find a way to do what they did to I-10 in Houston and make it fifty lanes wide.
looks nice :penguin-dance: i wonder how well that gets rid of road noise
wtf I thought those were mini tennis court or something lol
