Cities like London, Amsterdam and Rome bloom like vivid living organisms in a series of creative road network visualizations, each one as unique as a snowflake. The individual shapes of cities have just as much to do with these arteries multiplying into wispy branches as they do geography, topography and architecture, notes data scientist Craig Taylor, and when they’re rendered in color and animated, they take on an unexpected abstract beauty.

The animations represent how far you can drive out of various city centers within thirty minutes. Taylor chose the “top 40 places to live” as indicated by the Mercer Livability Index as his subjects. The time-drive analysis is based on “an optimistic view” of zero traffic. Taylor began with the U.K. before creating a visualization for the European Union and another for the top 10 world’s most livable cities of 2018.

“For the past six months I have been fascinated by the concept of making city networks look like living corals,” says Taylor. “The varying patterns of urban forms are inherently dictated by their road network; a complex, seemingly organic connection of links moving people across their city. Like branches of coral they have a pattern and a function, I chose to expose this pattern and manipulate it to become something far more conceptual. However, whilst being incredibly beautiful they are derived from various geo-spatial analysis of drive-times catchments making them somewhat informative as well.”

The project comes to life in two animated videos, and it’s also available as a high-resolution poster. Taylor goes into detail about how the visualizations were created at Towards Data Science.

The loneliness of mostly-abandoned Route 66 is all the more cutting for the towns that once thrived along its 2,448-mile length, many of which declined or dried up altogether when it was decommissioned in the 1970s and ‘80s. The famous route that brought migrants west during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and served as a symbol of the open road in later decades became irrelevant with the construction of new highways, and while some states have incorporated it into local roadways, many stretches were left to crumble. Now, the United States Bicycle Route 66 is set to revive it, following roughly the same course.

The first official sections of this new recreational route opened in June 2018, starting in St. Louis and running across Missouri before cutting through a narrow 13-mile slice of extreme southeastern Kansas. These segments are part of the U.S. Bike Route System, a developing national network of officially recognized bicycle routes around the country. If the other six states of the original Route 66 get on board, it could become one of the longest bike routes in the nation, connecting to other key bicycle touring routes like the Transamerica Trail (USBR 76) and the Mississippi River Trail.

That’s great news for cyclists, not to mention the towns most affected by the decline of Route 66, which could see new tourist activity. Plus, the new bike route will likely be joined by additional development and protections in the future, since the U.S. House of Representatives officially designated Route 66 a National Historic Trail in June, promising federal oversight and funds for preservation and promotion. Towns like Peach Springs and Seligman, Arizona, which flourished and then floundered as they were bypassed by new highways, could amp up their Route 66 nostalgia tourism for cyclists, too.

Not that bicyclists don’t already follow the path of Route 66; it was mapped by the Adventure Cycling Association in 2015, and adventurers made their way across it before that, too. But signs are hard to come by, and in some segments, riders have to cruise along the shoulder of I-40. The new segment of the official bike route is paved and marked, running alongside lots of tourist stops packed with memorabilia.

CityLab has more details on the new Route 66 bike route. To learn more about the history of the road, check out ‘Could new legislation lead to a Route 66 economic revival?’ on The Conversation.

Twice a day, when the tides go down, this causeway appears to connect the French mainland to the island of Noirmoutier, but cross quickly or the road will disappear, stranding you in the middle of the Bay of Bourgneuf. The Passage du Gois was built upon a strip of silt that just barely elevates it above the surface during low tide for a little over an hour at a time. Crossers often wait too long to get started, bet that they’ll be able to make it across, and lose.

Once it starts flooding, it happens quickly. That’s why there are elevated rescue towers located along the stretch – you might just have to swim over to one, climb up and wait it out. When the tide is low, abandoned, ruined cars can be seen littering the sand.

Each year, runners gather for the Foulées du Gois, a race across the causeway. The road also tends to be covered with seashells, making it a popular destination for both souvenir-seeking tourists and locals who look for edible shellfish.

Photos via Flickr Creative Commons: garder le cap, ludovic, pics by brian, oliver gobin, alain bachellier, marc bourbon, oliver hankeln, wikimedia commons

Germany is already home to the world’s best-known superhighway, the Autobahn, and now cyclists have 60 miles of breathtaking scenery reclaimed from disused railroad tracks all to themselves. Informally dubbed the ‘Bicycle Autobahn,’ the highway is currently under construction, with five kilometers freshly opened for public usage. Ultimately, it’ll connect 10 Western cities including Duisburg, Bochum and Hamm, as well as four universities.

Up to 10 percent of Germany’s commuting is already done via bike, but until now, there hasn’t been an easy way for cyclists to get from one city to the next. Many of Germany’s biggest cities have bike paths on the roads, but they tend to be narrow, and don’t generally connect into longer routes. When cyclists want to ride around without worrying about cars, they have to go to parks like Münster’s popular Promenade or Munich’s Englischer Garten (pictured above and below.)

Locally accessible to nearly two million people, this new protected roadway is closed to motor vehicles, making it a safe and pleasant ride for the entire stretch. Development group RVR, which funded the highway with assistance from the European Union and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, estimates that the bike highway could take 50,000 cars off the road every day. RVR is currently working on getting the federal government to fund the rest of the route, instead of leaving the project languishing in the underfunded hands of regional governments.

The city of Frankfurt is planning its own 18-mile bike roadway to Darmstadt, and Munich is extending its to a 9-mile stretch making the city easy to access from the northern suburbs. London has also declared its intention to convert its abandoned subway tunnels into a highway for cyclists and pedestrians.

Photos via: Darren Johnson, Marcio Cabral de Moura, Anne Guegan, ptwo

New roads could be quickly and easily slotted into place, piece by piece, with a new Lego-like modular plastic system that makes the building process feel more like playtime. Prototypes of the PlasticRoad concept will soon be tested in a collaboration with the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, potentially replacing asphalt and tar with a strong, corrosion-resistant recycled aggregate made of plastic waste removed from the oceans.

According to manufacturer VolkerWessels, these modular components can withstand temperatures between -40 and 176 degrees Fahrenheit and other harsh weather conditions, and are ideal for roads built upon structurally unsound ground like sand. It’s unclear whether they would shift around on surfaces like that over time, however, or how cars would handle on their surfaces when it’s rainy, snowy or icy.

They’re hollow, so cables and utility pipelines can be installed under the surface, protected from the elements and easy to maintain. Quick installation means far briefer periods of disrupted traffic during construction, and the prefabricated panels can simply be transported to the sight and lowered into place. If they pass the tests, the PlasticRoad project could see its first full-scale installation in Rotterdam within three years.

The concept is reminiscent of other asphalt alternatives that have been proposed over the years, like ‘smart highways’ covered with dynamic paint providing useful information to drivers (pictured above) and heated, LED-light-embedded solar roadways. The latter concept has been dismissed by many critics as unrealistic, considering the vast expense involved in manufacturing and maintaining them and the likelihood that they would draw power from the grid anytime it’s not sunny.