The Gardiner in Toronto desperately needs to be pulled down (before people die) and replaced with tunnels.
The viaduct in Vancouver is being torn down but I don’t think they plan to build a tunnel. It’s the fastest way into downtown from East Van.
The difference between these inevitable projects and Dusseldorf is that property value in Canadian cities is so insane that developers will likely push for the construction of biggest types yet in these cities.
The cars are still there, in massive numbers. You just can’t see the tunnel they built between those two pictures. It’s right beneath the feet of the pedestrians.
At least they can´t kill cyclists and pedestrians this way and the emissions get somewhat contained. Of course this is only a compromise but on the way to car free cities it might be a useful intermediate step before we can actually get rid of carbrainitis.
Are we going to magically assume the traffic just vanished?
People and goods still need to be moved from one part of the city to another, as well as from other parts of the country and even internationally. Way too many of these “fuck cars” people naively think you can just wave a magic wand and make the transport of goods and people just disappear. Something would need to be done to solve that. Was an underground highway built? Alien teleportation? A fleet of magic carpets were made available that run on unicorn farts that allow people to get around?
Are we going to magically assume the traffic just vanished?
It’s an underground highway. Out of sight, out of mind. I imagine they probably also improved the overall road design, like Seattle, Denver, and Boston have done (or are doing) with their projects to bury highways below-grade.
Or maybe the number bus and tram lines increased, and the train systems expanded. “One person, one car” is a mentality we should all be saying “fuck that” to.
Which is basically what I said at the bottom of my post. But first off tunnels don’t work everywhere, are incredibly costly, and local roads would still be needed to let buildings downtown have access.
You can see in the top picture(1990) that there are very few cargo trucks. It looks like mostly consumer traffic. The most likely altenative is the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Düsseldorf_Stadtbahn massive public transport system they’ve built since 1988.
A lot of cities in Europe are actively discouraging people from taking the car to get to the city center. Either by requiring a permit to enter, making it very convoluted to get to your destination by implementing one-way streets and having a few big roads made to take on traffic, outright banning older cars with bad emission, or a combination of the above.
This is typically balanced with park & rides outside the city center, from where you can easily take public transport into the city.
Suppliers are still allowed in and are able to do so because less cars are driving there.
The city I live in has recently implemented such measures. Lots of people were complaining beforehand. But after a few years, there’s not less people making it inside the city, no massive congestion, better air quality,…
Edit: not saying this is necessarily the case here. From other comments, it does seem they moved traffic underground. But my reply is still valid to your comment.
Something would need to be done to solve that. Was an underground highway built? Alien teleportation? A fleet of magic carpets were made available that run on unicorn farts that allow people to get around?
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