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Garden bridge - plot thickens

by OldRidgeback
Thu, Sep 17, 2015 09:03
6

So it seems that TfL has not been entirely honest with regard to the garden bridge project in London.

http://www.mayorwatch.co.uk/questions-raised-after-tfl-report-reveals-st...

If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.

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crikey | 8 years ago
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...and that Joanna Lumley's eyes are a bit too close together for my liking.

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Batchy | 8 years ago
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60,000,000 quid of tax payers money has already been pledged by Boris and George Osborne. Funny how they can be so profligate with our money. There again in these times of austerity helping out your private sector establishment mates is more important than feeding the poor as it will all trickle back won't it ? ? ?

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surly_by_name | 8 years ago
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I live in London, although I imagine that lots of readers don't, so if that's your criteria for relevance I can't help wonder if you've made my point for me.

You can make any government expenditure relevant to cycling if you claim that it could have been spent on improving cycling facilities.

Personal perspective: I commute to work by bike from west London to east London on a daily basis. I don't really feel that £175m spent on cycling facilities (can we agree that pedestrian facilities are too irrelevant to discuss on a website for cycling enthusiasts?) would be money well spent. In fact, I don't want any more of what passes for contemporary "cycling facilities". Cycle lanes are a really bad idea; I don't have to ride in them but motorists think I do (in fact they believe they are absolved of all responsibility toward me if I do not make use of cycle lanes). Cycle lanes are invariably narrow, poorly signed, often poorly directed and usually full of people I'd like to pass (even ignoring the almost inevitable parked car and pedestrian step out). I would support banning HGVs from within the M25 between 7.00 am and 9.00 pm. To the extent that its mine, I'd prefer the £175m was spent on education of children in Tower Hamlets, not a bridge or cycling facilities.

I can understand a very mild level of irritation at the thought that cycling may have been used as a justification for the planning approval when the applicants never really believed that the bridge would be used in this way but I can't believe that use for cycling was what swung it in the end.

If you want to complain about government white elephants/tax breaks for corporates/etc, I would suggest you'll get more traction on the Guardian's website. Which doesn't mean you can't post here, the internet is (mostly) free, but I don't imagine your post will have much impact on the what I imagine to be the typical Road.cc reader.

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brooksby replied to surly_by_name | 8 years ago
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surly_by_name wrote:

You can make any government expenditure relevant to cycling if you claim that it could have been spent on improving cycling facilities.

But there's the problem - far too many public bodies announce spending on cycling infrastructure when what they mean is that there's a little blue sign been put up on the pavement next to the new motorway.

Quote:

I can understand a very mild level of irritation at the thought that cycling may have been used as a justification for the planning approval when the applicants never really believed that the bridge would be used in this way but I can't believe that use for cycling was what swung it in the end.

Except that that was the original reasoning given for the planning permission and for carrying the project forward - a new non-traffic bridge and an "iconic"-type aerial park. I'd bet that greenwashing the project helped a very great deal.

Quote:

If you want to complain about government white elephants/tax breaks for corporates/etc, I would suggest you'll get more traction on the Guardian's website. Which doesn't mean you can't post here, the internet is (mostly) free, but I don't imagine your post will have much impact on the what I imagine to be the typical Road.cc reader.

I think (hope) that you've underestimated the "typical road.cc reader" there. Not everyone who reads this site is a purely recreational cyclist who is uninterested or otherwise disengaged from the political and/or advocacy side of our pursuit.

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OldRidgeback | 8 years ago
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Surly - actually it's quite a lot to do with cycling. Originally when it was conceived the garden bridge was mooted as a green, shared use link for pedestrians and cyclists. This proposal was one of the reasons it was accepted, rather than being kicked out as a ridiculous idea. Somewhere along the line, the idea of having cyclists on the bridge was thrown out, followed a short while later by the general public en masse. Now the bridge will have limited access only, despite the fact that it'll cost £175 million at least to build and £3.5 million/year of public money, just to maintain. It looks like all of the financing to build it will be with public money, despite the fact that it no longer meets the terms that it passed first approval for (pedestrian and cycling provision).

And now we find on top of it all that TfL has managed to shred the all the , documentation, including how the tender process to award the design/engineering contract was awarded to a not particularly experienced firm with regard to bridge construction.

Maybe if you don't live in London it's not an issue. But for those of us who do, I'd say blowing £175 million to build a vanity bridge that will be expensive to maintain and doesn't meet its original concept, for whatever reason we don't know because TfL destroyed the paperwork, well I reckon that's a scandal. Now that £175 million spent on proper cycling/pedestrian facilities in London would go rather a long way to improving safety and increasing capacity for 'green' transportation, especially when London has such a high pollution level and needs to do more to tempt people away from using motor vehicles.

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surly_by_name | 8 years ago
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I am sure this is interesting, but how is it relevant to cycling, other than very obliquely?

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