A new GARDEN bridge over the Thames.

This seems like a good idea.......or does it?
I personally love the idea, very expensive, ground breaking, originally from an idea from Joanna Lumley.


https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/rivercrossings/garden-bridge

 

Fantastic idea. Probably totally impractical and ridiculously expensive but, well, WOW!

 

I hope the Trust can raise the cash....

 

I really hope they do it, and I really hope other towns and cities get something similar. A bit of green space is so vitally important, and sadly lacking in some towns and cities.

It will be great if they do that as well as the cycleway in the sky.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-25549789

They could scrap the silly HS2 project and reallocate the money to the bridge and the cycleway.

 

Great Idea ! That would be lovely

 

Joanna Lumley, arrrggg.
I suppose they need to spend all that cash they extort out of people with the "congestion charge"in some way, its probably becoming an embarissment

 

I think its pointless. Huge cost to provide a structure that will accommodate trees on top of a bridge. The article says its a pedestrian bridge, and nowhere does it say anything about cyclists :(

I do like what they have done to the High Line in New York - an old disused elevated railway which has been converted into a walkway with plants and places to sit & chill etc.

I think SkyCycle - cycle ways above railways lines in London - is a brilliant idea. Hard to figure how to get dedicated cycle lanes into an existing city like London, and above the trains seems like a really neat idea. However, the first stage is £50M per mile - to build a 12' wide cycle track with no need to carry heavy vehicles? And they plan to build 136 miles in total (Yeah, that's around £7 billion)

I don't have an opinion on whether HS2 is a sensible route for a high speed train, but I think it is pitiful that we don't already have a high speed train infrastructure in this country. I remember when my old man first went on a business trip to Japan in the mid 60's telling me that the bullet train station platforms had a clock with a sweep second-hand, and as it came to the 12 O'clock position the doors closed! Back then, 50 years ago, Tokyo to Osaka on the Bullet Train was 3 hours 10 minutes and nowadays the newer rolling stock does the journey in 2 hours 30 minutes. That's a distance or 320 miles and is equivalent to London to Edinburgh. (4 hours 25 minutes, one or two trains per hour ) That route, nowadays, has 13 trains PER HOUR! and they travel as close as 3 minute intervals, and as the line has reached capacity double-decker carriages have been introduced. Wikipedia says that the trains carry 1,323 passengers. (The newer northern route bullet trains are even faster).

Again from Wikipedia: "In 2012 ... the Bullet Train's average delay from schedule per train was 36 seconds. This includes delays due to uncontrollable causes, such as natural disasters."
"In its 49 year history, carrying nearly 10 billion passengers, there have been no passenger fatalities due to derailments or collisions"
"The time savings alone from switching from a conventional to a high-speed network have been estimated at 400 million hours, an economic impact of ¥500 billion (GB£2.9 billion) per year"
"Travelling the Tokyo-Osaka line by Bullet Train produces only around 16% of the carbon dioxide of the equivalent journey by car,"