An interesting observation by Ron to one of the shots in Shanghai Images 1:
The street below the elevated freeway looks clean, green, pleasant and devoid of traffic (carried on the freeway).
It’s true: the undersides of Shanghai’s freeways are their best parts.
The overhead ramps and pillars are pleasantly painted, grafitti clean, well lit and often intensively planted:
(We’ll show you where they grew the trees in an upcoming Images.)
The elevated freeways leading into the centre of Shanghai were built in the 1990s down some of the wider rights-of-way – Avenue Edward VII (now Lan’an) in particular – that the Europeans so grandly laid out. Now the ramps and flyovers make a different kind of sculptural statement.
I was in Shangahi in 2006 and I found that the freeways weren’t blights on the landscape.
As Gordon says, they were nicely painted, planted around and clean (as are the roadways below).
A number of the freeways that I viewed from underneath were actually bridge approaches and on-ramps (i.e. akin to Granville Bridge / Granville Island).
That could be a function of the value of land and the density of the city – i.e. people have to live and work near it by default.
Or it could be a function of the freeway being built in an existing built-up area (i.e. no NIMBYs or powerless NIMBYs in a Communist regime) rather than diverted through an industrial area where land is available and cheap, and then having to build up neighbourhood density around the freeway on “undesirable” lands.
Are the elevated expressways tolled?
And are they normally that high? It certainly allows more light in.
And are those trolley wires i see in the last pic?
Back in 2006 our tour bus did travel through toll booths – but that was between cities – not within the city.
The freeways did have very impressive real time LED displays on signs above the freeways showing the congestion status of the various freeways – with green, amber and red LEDs.
There were freeways that were high – but those may have been bridge approaches – there were others I recall that were lower down and on single pylons down a central median in one case (like the one in Kyoto that keeled over in the earthquake).
I do recall seeing trolleys – so those are likely trolley wires.
And on the bicycle front, I recall in Hangzhou, I think, or a city near there, fully separated bicycle lanes with their own traffic signals (separated by a planted median). I also recall seeing many traffic light countdown clocks, for both pedestrians and for the cars too (indicating time left for both red and green lights).