One relevant factoid is that going underground is far cheaper in Amsterdam than in many other places. A great part of the city does not have tarmac roads, but rather tiled roads of bricks resting on sand. The surface is easy to drive on and extremely well-maintained.
So when you go out at night it's common to see work crews building new infrastructure by lifting up the bricks and piling them to one side, digging up the sand and working on pipes and conduits, followed by replacement of the sand and the bricks. By 7am or so they have gone, the street looks exactly the same as it did the day before, and the next night they return and do it all over again farther up the street. They make relatively little noise, traffic is largely undisturbed, and the construction crews operate with military-like discipline.
Not a very portable solution, but one that infrastructure planners might do well to consider for long-term development. Very practical people, the Dutch.
That is correct. I'm from the Netherlands but I now live in Australia. Here in Sydney they seem to find it best practice to construct the pavement out of concrete. Every time work needs to be done on pipes they bring out "the heavy machinery" and you get two days of drilling and dust. When they're done, they patch up the hole with tarmac!
Sometimes however, you do see pavements that are made out tiled bricks which seemingly could be lifted up. But don't be fooled. These bricks are cemented in as well as is of course demonstrated by the patches of .... tarmac.
So when you go out at night it's common to see work crews building new infrastructure by lifting up the bricks and piling them to one side, digging up the sand and working on pipes and conduits, followed by replacement of the sand and the bricks. By 7am or so they have gone, the street looks exactly the same as it did the day before, and the next night they return and do it all over again farther up the street. They make relatively little noise, traffic is largely undisturbed, and the construction crews operate with military-like discipline.
Not a very portable solution, but one that infrastructure planners might do well to consider for long-term development. Very practical people, the Dutch.