I live in Berlin and this expansion of the A100 highway is totally stupid…
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absolutely disgusted at how culture (whether its social life or nature) is at danger just because some folks want to drive their murderbots 666km/h through cities … especially since it’s definitely not helping our already burning planet.
hope the plans to build the highway fail and the activists (and thus all the clubs) prevail
I don’t understand the sense behind it either. The people who want it want it to raise the standard of living in the area. Sounds like total nonsense to me, because a lot of things have to be torn down for that.
It seems pretty pointless to put high speed roads through cities. Here in the US, the trend is to either make high-speed loops around cities or to have very high (or no) speed limits on highways that are literally out in the middle of nowhere. Highways here usually get built up and expanded to handle higher capacity, not speeds.
Does Germany have the idea of eminent domain where the government can just take the land and pay the owners a small pittance to make up for the loss of their property? That’s usually the worst things about these highway expansion situations in the US. The government can just take your land, essentially.
It will probably be the case that the politicians in power in berlin will take the land and pay compensation 
The joke in Berlin is that we have a very well-developed public transport network in the city. In theory, you don’t need a car in Berlin. In my opinion, we should concentrate on making it even better. Or even build bike lanes, because bike riding in Berlin is almost a suicide trip.
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I wish that the US would have a very well-developed public transportation network, where cars would be something to use from time to time (depending on where you were going) but weren’t a requirement to live.
The only city that I know of that is anywhere close to that in the US is New York City (even though it, too, has tons of traffic). When I went there almost 20 years ago, I met a fair amount of people that not only didn’t own a car, they had never had a driver’s license because they had lived in the city for their entire lives.
I remember thinking how anachronistic that was at the time, but these days I wish that it was more the rule than the exception.
The difference between the EU and the US is sometimes huge when it comes to public transport.
But even here in the EU there are of course corners where you definitely need a car. In the village where I grew up, the bus only ran twice a day, so without a car you were really screwed.
Here in Berlin I also have no car because it is not necessary. I reach my workplace in 10-15 minutes by commuter train. With a car I would need twice the travel time, lol.
That’s why I don’t understand the planned extension of the A100 in Berlin. In most cases, you can reach your destination faster by public transport than by car.
Also if some would like to tell always something else. But they also like to forget that they still have to search forever for a parking space or stand somewhere in a traffic jam.
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