Cycle campaigning

Well, I happen to know that it is being very seriously considered at TfL. The fact that it would take a long time to develop, and cost a bomb, doesn't mean that it isn't an actual infrastructure proposal. You're obviously right that it also indicates a political direction--try to avoid tackling the problem at source and apply avoidance tactics--, but it has to be taken extremely seriously right now. Otherwise, protesting when it's actually being built will be too late.

Don't get me wrong, Oliver; ridiculing this proposal right now is a jolly useful thing to do.

As for the seriousness of the proposal, there has long been a lot of blue-sky (or should that be brown-sky?) thinking in TfL, but much of it ends up in rhetorical landfill. Just as should this example.

I do agree, Francis, but this is the first time this sort of dangerous nonsense has been mooted since the Major government abandoned road-building, and far from ridiculing it I take it very seriously. OK, the Congestion Charge got a version of the Abercrombie A-ring in by stealth (without building the new roads and tunnels envisaged by Abercrombie), and the M11 Link Road was completed, but notwithstanding the constant symptomatic battles with TfL over 'motor traffic capacity', beyond this we've been comparatively blessed with peace in this direction.

Obviously, the history of London road-building is a long story of largely public rejection, but to see this sort of thing coming out again shows that they think their idea of hiding naughty roads in tunnels might not get quite such a hostile reaction as knocking down hundreds of houses and building stuff overground. I have no doubt that it's been focus-grouped etc.

Many people said not so long ago that Crossrail would never happen until Livingstone wrangled an agreement out of Gordon Brown.

Oliver - a comparison with Crossrail is useful, but only if one looks at the differences in scale, logistics and costs as well as the similarities between the two projects. Until TfL starts discussing the engineering and logistical detail of a subterranean ring road, there is little we can do other than ridicule the idea and expose the political issues for what they are.

As you’ve said in your LCC Issues forum discussion, the project will [would] have a long lead-in time, if it ever happens at all. The cost is also likely to be considerably greater than the currently quoted £30bn. In the end will be many multiples of the Crossrail bill.

I've seen the future and it doesn't work, Sydney has a lot of tunnels. Many are under-used and all involve massive land take and community severance at the access points. The London plan has 10 access points, something like this in Poplar east London

Imagine that at Highbury Corner, Old Kent Road, Camden, St.John's Wood, Shoreditch, Battersea park etc.

You know what? So shoot, me down, but I don't think removing through traffic from London and shoving it underground is such a bad idea. The trouble with London (and the UK in general) is that we never get anything done properly. The aborted ringways project from the 70s (abandoned for the right reasons because it would have been done on the cheap and involved elevated motorways and massive destruction) has unfortunately left us with stubs of dual carriageways that attract cars like flies to dog turds, creating massive gridlock around the entrances to them. It would be better if they had never been built at all, but we're stuck with them now. Just think about what the roads round Hackney are like near the Hackney Wick interchange, or the Hell that is Earl's Court, Shepherds Bush & surrounds as scores of cars try to cram from all directions onto the stubs of the A12, A4 and A40 respectively. It's a nightmare both for air pollution, cyclists, pedestrians, and general sanity.

If those dual carriageways had never been built, then traffic would be leaving London in a much more spread out manner rather than clustering around honeypots, but dammit they were built, so we've got to deal with them as best we can.

So I say let's just finish the job, connect them all up, and free up the surface streets for cyclists, pedestrians, and local traffic.

Yes I KNOW the M25 filled up in 10 seconds, "building more roads generates more traffic", we need to invest in walking and cycling and public transport, and all that blah blah. But at the risk of sounding like a middle manager, this silo mentality from cycle campaigners that 'new roads always = bad for cyclists' is not always (though granted often) correct. If these tunnels were accompanied by a redistribution of roadspace in the rest of London towards cyclists - which at the moment is often dismissed because of lack of 'space' - then that would be a Good Thing, no?

Interesting comment from Charlie about Sydney.

Turning to another city, it’s funny how Oslo is cited by subterranean road supporters as an example of how the London fantasy could become a working reality. In Oslo we are talking of a low density city with just 500k inhabitants, and even there we see major land take for tunnel access points. Norwegian planners are pathological when it comes to tunnels. When faced with a natural obstacle, their natural inclination is to tunnel through it, and bugger the social, environmental and financial costs involved.

In London it’s a complete non-starter.

Yes I KNOW the M25 filled up in 10 seconds, "building more roads generates more traffic", we need to invest in walking and cycling and public transport, and all that blah blah. But at the risk of sounding like a middle manager, this silo mentality from cycle campaigners that 'new roads always = bad for cyclists' is not always (though granted often) correct.

Show me worked out plans for new roads that address the detailed and specific criticisms from sustainable transport advocates, and I will rejoice to high heaven!

Here we go, bonkers road-building plans are back again. I've known about this for a while, but this is the first high-profile mention in the press that I've seen.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/mayor-sets-out-plan-for-22mile-ringroad-tunnel-under-london-9354896.html

All easily avoidable if a different spatial development strategy is adopted for London and proper modal shift is done. But no, let's just assume that the status quo will continue.

“We are at the very early stage in exploring the potential. Cities such as Paris, Oslo and Boston have undertaken these kinds of ambitious projects and have seen dramatic results.

I wouldn't put Boston's Big Dig forward as a good example. IIRC it became the most expensive civil engineering project in US history - **$1.2 Billion dollars per mile of highway. **

Massive cost and time overruns. Huge wastage. And, having seen experienced both the before and after, did nothing to bridge the communities the original I-95 separated in the first place.

If they want to hold that up as a good example then there will be plenty of ammunition to shoot it down with.

The real question though is - will it connect with the new Thames Estuary Airport?

^^ looks like a football stadium stewards' convention. That's hardly 'normalising' cycling is it.
(notwithstanding the good intentions of the campaign)
The last Big Ride was on a very wet cold day in April 2012. Far too much rainwear was worn. This Saturday the forecast is warmer and sunny for the Space4Cycling Big Ride. Come along and be normal.

Hyde Park Corner is a great place for cycling since they built a tunnel underneath

you know what? So shoot, me down, but i don't think removing through traffic from london and shoving it underground is such a bad idea. The trouble with london (and the uk in general) is that we never get anything done properly.
ftfy

Build tunnels and they'll more likely to drive into London = more congestion.

Not only you get more congestion, the road will still be full of people reaching to the destination after exiting the tunnel.

Crossrail on the other hand does actually reduced traffic due to encouraging commuter to take train instead.

Charlie, that's a really good image to counter the argument that tunnels reduce congestion and make the street-scape less daunting!

How the M11 Link was supposed to reduce congestion and has utterly failed:

http://crapwalthamforest.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/how-traffic-free-high-road-leytonstone.html

good reading on this thread

Induced demand/congestion is the argument I would use against expanding/enhancing road capacity. You improve the infrastructure, more people drive and you shift the choke point but with the problem that you now have more cars/more congestion/more pollution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

Also concerned that grand plans get put forward, but as planners start facing cost overruns (kind of inevitable in London) you get a watered down solution which does even more damage than the original plan.

One of the 'good' examples used by TfL for promoting tunnels in London is the BIG DIG scheme in Boston. This was supposed to take 7 years but that turned out to be 16 at double the original cost.
Guess what? Induced demand brought more traffic and even longer delays than before.

No way! That's completely unexpected! :)

It is pretty tragic, of course, how the same nonsensical arguments are rehashed time and time again.

Oliver - a comparison with Crossrail is useful, but only if one looks at the differences in scale, logistics and costs as well as the similarities between the two projects. Until TfL starts discussing the engineering and logistical detail of a subterranean ring road, there is little we can do other than ridicule the idea and expose the political issues for what they are.

As you’ve said in your LCC Issues forum discussion, the project will [would] have a long lead-in time, if it ever happens at all. The cost is also likely to be considerably greater than the currently quoted £30bn. In the end will be many multiples of the Crossrail bill.

Another comparison with Crossrail is that it will most likely be enshrined in future plans by means of an Act of Parliament. This means that it will be almost impossible to remove from the future unless a different-thinking government swiftly repeals such an Act. This is unlikely, as the big parties in principle all subscribe to the 'growth, growth, growth' agenda.

Of course the cost will be great, but what will all those tunnellers do when Crossrail is finished? They've invested in all that equipment and will have to be kept busy.

Also, it's not a railway, but a motorway--and it is far more likely for investment to be directed towards motorway-building than railway construction.

Another factor that is making it not unlikely is the ridiculously vast development volume directed at tower blocks in Central London in the next few years.

Already the predict-and-provide argument at the Roads Task Force was that the new tall buildings in Central London could not be serviced effectively if motor traffic capacity along the Inner Ring Road was reduced in any way, i.e. the particular kind of motor traffic that needed to be facilitated was merely service traffic.

Obviously, another reason for wanting to build the underground motorway is also to make London even more of a playground for the 'rich', but if all the world's major developers demand that their heavy investment in Central London be easily reachable by car, then that's what will be done. Government is going through a mind-bogglingly unjust phase, after all, and so much public money has already been misappropriated that this would hardly be too surprising.

You also need to consider that this can be built in multiple stages. Some of them are more likely than others, and even one of them would be quite destructive. Note that in the article it explicitly singled out Earl's Court as a bottleneck. Well, there's quite a lot of space there to play around with the kind of tunnel entrances such a project would need.

So, I maintain that we shouldn't take this lightly and that we shouldn't attempt to ridicule the idea, but to oppose it effectively. This means building opposition in the population, which will be harder to do for tunnels than for surface roads, but not impossible, and ensuring that not only these plans, but the whole sorry tradition of London road-building plans, which this is attempting to revive, is finally consigned to the dustiest bin of history. It is not a sound strategy to manage 'growth' and the past repeating itself.

I know we don't really disagree, but it is very important to realise that this isn't just pie-in-the-sky, unfortunately. The Silvertown Tunnel is already treated as a done deal inside TfL, for instance, which just a few years ago nobody would have considered possible.

I see there's a 'die-in' at E&C this Wednesday, as I found out when a leaflet was thrust into my unwelcoming hand at the traffic lights on Friday. I feel very uneasy about a 'die-in'; I know it makes for a good photo-op (going on the evidence of the Addison Lee one), but I find it slightly in bad taste that a bunch of cyclists voluntarily assume the position of a stricken cyclist, whilst perfectly able to get up again and carry on like nothing happened, as opposed to genuine victims who never had that luxury.

Of course I support any action, but I won't be on the floor for this one.

Oh gods, not another one of Don's die-in?

But I find it slightly in bad taste that a bunch of cyclists voluntarily assume the position of a stricken cyclist.

It's in horrible taste, and does nothing to address the issues other than making sure we know how many have fallen victim to road collision.

http://i0.wp.com/stopthekilling.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Wall-of-Death-protest-Frederique-Bellec-01.jpg?resize=474%2C356

a load of silly, divisive, am-dram histrionics designed to make enemies of the very people who are best positioned to make any real difference. fuck off don.

I think thats quite eye opening. Do each of those crosses represent a cyclist who has been killed this year?

Dunno about this year, but yes, the cross is for each person who Don turn into a martyr.