Underground roads are crazy expensive. You need something to hold up the earth and anything else above it. There's issues with water leaking in. Piping will have to go around it. If it breaks down somehow it will take longer to repair. It's only really an option if the detour would be a lot longer or within urban areas for the extra space it frees up.

[–] dragonflyteaparty 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Or if you know, having greener spaces and roads underground are actually better for climate change. I'm not sure if this would help in that matter or not, but I think it's a possibility. Not everything is about our made up concept of money.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

What’s better for climate change is less cars on the road, not underground roads. If we are going to be digging these expensive tunnels in every city they should be for subway systems. That would be a substantially better use of the funds and would be a good step towards reducing the emissions of a city. This is all assuming that we stop subsidizing car ownership so heavily of course.

The entire process of building and repairing roads is pretty carbon intensive due to the amount of concrete involved.

[–] AA5B 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes, replacing surface roads with greenery is good for climate change, or more locally for reducing the heat island effect.

They likely also redesigned the roads to reduce stop and go traffic, with all the extra pollution that creates.