Comments on: Thames Gateway – The Bridge That Wouldn’t Die

By: Where_art_thou_ken

Where_art_thou_ken — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:42:16 +0000

peezedtee

I understand what you’re trying to say (not more roadbuilding please) – but if the options are:
1) Limited river crossings creating standing traffic at locations such as Blackwall and Rotherhithe .
2) An additional crossing to relieve some of this congestion

Then I think the enviromental consideration has to be made to option 1.
I agree that roadbuilding tends to encourage extra traffic – but in this case we already have the traffic levels for the additional crossing (hence the daily carnage at the two tunnels)

The waste comes from dithering from Boris about whether to do it or not – I suspect this was dropped originally because it was a ‘Ken idea’ – but it’s actually a sensible one, so it’s been re-invented under a ‘Boris banner’.

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 13:35:07 +0000

I’m not sure it *is* that bad a scheme, looking at it, but I like bridges. CBT and Green opposition is noted, but it would have had some pretty hardcore PT options, plus tolls which would at least have provided the option of restricting car traffic (Bexley’s complaints, which have a certain ring to them, were that it would attract long-distance traffic away from the clogged Dartford crossing without building the links to carry them, to which the answer is ‘penalise long-distance traffic, then’). Personally I’d like to see a north-south DLR tunnel in the area, but I’m increasing drawn to the idea of DLR-style orbital solutions (the current DLR is surprisingly orbital in aspect, which isn’t often understood, least of all by Boris).

Anyway, whatever your view of the TGB, it’s better than prioritising the Silvertown link idea, which is loopy and appears to be in there to get round the problems of promising greater Blackwall capacity to motoring voters in Bromley. If anything that has even bigger issues with providing suitable link capacity than TGB does.

Interestingly, Modern Railways this month points out that the Southeastern High Speed service into London from Kent is explicitly pitched as an alternative to driving via A2/Blackwall, since Southeastern put a billboard at the entrance to the tunnel, which led to about 5% of the takeup of the initial service. That’s how you do modal shift, Boris.

By: peezedtee

peezedtee — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 06:00:31 +0000

Actually the Thames Gateway scheme is and was a bad idea. Just because B. Johnson cancelled it doesn’t make it a good thing. The Campaign for Better Transport (formerly Transport 2000) worked hard to defeat this massive road-building proposal which would have generated a lot of extra private motor traffic. What the area needs is a sustainable development plan involving better public transport. See http://tinyurl.com/ykzb3kf

By: Saif

Saif — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:22:34 +0000

BJ in” campaigning against Ken, blocking it and then, after doing some ****ing research, finds that Ken had it right” shocker.

I am actually getting more and more frustrated by this now. The fares, and the way it was structured have just made me think “This isn’t even funny anymore”.