![]() Gridlocked traffic is not only a huge time suck – the average American driver wastes around 54 hours each year sitting in traffic – but it has an environmental toll, increasing fuel consumption, carbon emissions, and air and noise pollution. It is projected that there will be two billion cars on the road by 2040, with total traffic levels increasing by more than 50%. There are more than 64 million km (40 million miles) of roads globally and large increases are predicted, especially in developing countries, as the world's population grows and incomes rise, meaning more people can afford cars. As they sprawl longer and wider in the hopes of speeding up clotted traffic, congestion ticks upwards and cars continue to pollute the air and spew greenhouse gases. To some, these thick asphalt ribbons criss-crossing countries, paving over green space and cleaving apart communities and ecosystems no longer seem fit for purpose. "There's almost something magical about it."Īlong with trains, powerlines, pipes, cables and sewers, there’s another piece of infrastructure some have long wished to bury – roads. "Human beings tend to like those things to be operating in the background." It gives the illusion of seamlessness, he says. ![]() There’s a huge appeal to putting infrastructure underground, says Bradley Garrett, a cultural geographer at University College Dublin and author of Subterranean London. Now the ground beneath Londoners’ feet hums with an extensive network of Tube lines ferrying people about the city speedily, efficiently – and out of sight. ![]() But as the technology improved, and trains switched from steam-powered to electric, the lines went deeper. Initially, what would become the London Underground consisted of tracks dug slightly below the surface and then covered over. Its birth can be traced back two decades before to the building of the world’s first under-river tunnel below the Thames, which swiftly became both popular with pedestrians and a huge tourist attraction. ![]() In 1863, in an effort to reduce street traffic, London opened the world’s first underground line, the Metropolitan Railway. ![]()
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