Interchanges

This week brings us to Chicago:

This is the northern terminus of the Stevenson Expressway, I-55, at US 41 (Lake Shore Drive) a bit south of downtown Chicago.

Most of the ends of interstates I’ve encountered in the US tend to be rather anticlimactic.  However, at least I-55’s north end benefits from the distinction of ending on the shore of Lake Michigan, at a road that is remarkable in its own right (Lake Shore Drive).

Oh, and that would be Chicago’s McCormick Center at the left-hand side of the image, in case you were wondering.

This wee brings us to Thailand

(View in Google Maps)

This is the new (opened in 2006) Dipangkorn Rasmijoti Bridge, a.k.a the Mega Bridge.  It carries the Industrial Ring Road across the Chao Phraya River, and connects Bangkok with the Samut Prakan Province.

It’s Beijing’s week to get a highway feature highlighted.  So, in honor of the Summer Olympics….

(View in Google Maps)

The Fourth Ring Road is a frequently congested loop about 8 kilometers outside the core of the city of Beijing.  This particular location is where the expressway passes just south of the new National Stadium, the “birds nest” that will be the venue for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Games.

This week brings us to the outskirts of Paris, where we see what happens when the French need to build an interchange between two partially underground autoroutes:

This is the interchange between the Autoroute 14 (running northwest-southeast in the map above) and the Autoroute 86, the Paris Super-Périphérique (second beltway, running southwest-northeast in the map above).

The interchange is unusual in that both autoroutes are partially underground at this point — the A14 in the Tunnel de la Défense, which travels under the La Défense skyscraper district northwest of the City of Paris proper, and the A86 which heads underground to avoid additional disruption to the commune of Nanterre.

This week brings us to Germany, home of the Autobahns.   In the industrial Rhine-Ruhr megalopolis, we can find the answer to the question — how exactly do you design an interchange between two freeways meeting at a shallow angle, with a river and a railroad complicating matters:

This is the Kreuz Kaiserberg, the interchange between the A3 and the A40.

The A3 is the primary north-south freeway through the Rhine-Ruhr metropolis, while the A40 (the Ruhrschnellweg, locally also known as a parking lot) exists theoretically to carry traffic east-west through the region.  In the picture above, you can also see the Ruhr River angling from the north to the east edge of the map, as well as several tracks of the Deutsche Bundesbahn.

I’ve come to the conclusion that America doesn’t have enough roundabouts or traffic circles.  They’re beautiful structures and, the way we drive in the States, they provide a practical field test of Darwin’s theories.

Consider, for example, this highway feature in Tehran:

(View in Google Maps)

This is the Hagh-Shenaas Square, a roundabout-based interchange for the recently constructed Navab Highway in Tehran.

It’s a beautiful structure.  Robert Moses would be pleased.

We’ll stay in South America for another week, and move a bit to the south, to Buenos Aires:

(View in Google Maps)

When I first spotted this in Google Maps, I was struck by the similarity (at first glance anyway) to Chicago’s Circle interchange.

The north-south road portrayed above is the 9 de Julio Avenue, a broad multi-carriageway surface parkway in the urban center of Buenos Aires.   The east-west freeway is the Autopista 25 de Mayo, which performs a similar function in an east-west orientation, but as a controlled-access facility and with less landscaping.

Sadly, roadgeek-oriented information about Rio is somewhat lacking.   So, unfortunately, I probably don’t appreciate the significance of this week’s highway feature.  But hey, it looked interesting, and that’s good enough for me. 

(View in Google Maps)

This week brings us to an interesting interchange in Tianjin, China:

This is the interchange of the Jingtang Expressway (京津塘高速公路), the Jinji Expressway (津蓟高速公路), and Tianjin’s Outer Ring Road (Waihuanxian)

The Jingtang Expressway (the upper northwest-southeast highway above) is a 4-lane tollway connecting Beijing with Tianjin.  It was built in 1993, and is reported to be seriously plagued by high traffic loads arising from the growth of long-haul trucking and personal auto ownership in the past 15 years.

The Jinji Expressway (running southwest-northeast in the map above) connects the urban center of Tianjin with Ji County of Tianjin province.

And, of course, the Waihuanxian (the more impressive-looking northwest-southeast highway in the map above) is the outer ring road.  Although it looks like a freeway in the above clip, in reality it is just a major road, not-fully controlled access.

After having spent the last few weeks visiting large urban areas with underdeveloped road systems, we now head to Russia, to visit the mighty (infamous?) original beltway of Moscow, the MKAD (the Moscow Automobile Ring Road).

An interesting looking interchange can be found on the southern edge of the city:

The MKAD is a 109km beltway.  Originally built in 1961 as a four-lane express road circling the administrative border of Moscow, it has in recent years been upgraded to a 10-lane urban beltway and is compared to the Capital Beltway (I-495) around Washington DC or the M25 around London.