Remember seeing this floating bicycle toll road along the Thames last year? Thought it was consigned to the ‘seemed like a good idea at the time’ pile? Well, you were wrong. Someone still thinks it’s a good idea and, yes, they’re crowd funding it.
Plans for the Thames Deckway appear the same as they were last October, when the projected cost was a whopping £600m for a 12km route from Battersea to Canary Wharf. Now its inventors want it to stretch from Battersea to Greenwich instead, a distance of around 17km (11 miles).
If built the floating pontoon on the Thames’ south bank will, for a section, run parallel with the East-West cycle superhighway, which is currently being built on the river’s north side, whose entire 18 mile length is expected to cost just £47m. The original proposal was to charge £1.50 for a single Deckway journey.
– Poll shows massive support for new London Cycle Superhighways
Anna Hill, a co-inventor of the project, said the Thames is a resource that is currently being under used, and the Deckway, which would also generate energy through solar cells, could be ready as early as 2019.
“With the success of this campaign we’re ready to go. We’re now so close to making this happen; we have the engineers, we have the designs and we have a plan,” she said.
Counting down… join us for our crowdfunding campaign on 5th November! 🙂 pic.twitter.com/SOxYnKt8Za
— Thames Deckway (@Thames_Deckway) October 28, 2015
Inventors hope the Indiegogo campaign, which opens on 5 November, will raise £250,000 to develop a master plan, develop engineering further, and try to find out how many cyclists will use it.
Peter Murray, Chairman of New London Architecture, said: “The Thames Deckway is inspirational because the Thames has been London’s lifeline throughout history. If you look at images of 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th Century the river was buzzing with activity…today it’s pretty dead by comparison, really, so why don’t we use it for cycling?”
What do you think? Would you use a cycle toll road along the river? Is it worth £600m?
41 thoughts on “Would you use a floating bicycle toll road along the Thames?”
So if its as shown, running
So if its as shown, running along the south bank and it goes to canary wharf on the north side.
How do boats get by? Is there a ramp for cyclists to jump Evel Knievil style?
If so i’ll pay £1.50 for a go otherwise it’s not a journey i’d ever make.
Looks funky. I’ld used it –
Looks funky. I’ld used it – nice way to see the city. However not sure the point of running in parallel with the cicle superhighway (unless said superhighway proves very popular and more capacity is needed)
It was a stupidly impractical
It was a stupidly impractical idea when it was first suggested and that hasn’t changed. It’d have to have raised ramp sections to allow for boats to dock underneath at various points along the route and it’d need a carefully designed surface so as not to become treacherous in the wet and even worse, in cold weather. Bear in mind that being along the riverit’d suffer heavy moisture and heavy frosting/ice, even when the rest of the city would be free from such hazards. It’d also have to have psecially designed rails to prevent cyclists losing control from pitching into the riiver.Sorry, but whatever person dreamed this up hasn’t thought about it logically. It’s as impractical as using the disused underground lines as cycle lanes.
In terms of cost, there are far cheaper and simpler ways of adding capacity to London’s cycling facilities.
OldRidgeback wrote:
In terms of cost, there are far cheaper and simpler ways of adding capacity to London’s cycling facilities.— OldRidgeback
yeah, but they might inconvenience motorists and wouldn’t be profit making toll road type things…
OldRidgeback wrote:
While I completely agree that it isn’t a practical, cost effective or sensible suggestion, these three criticisms don’t hold water:
1) “carefully designed surface as as not to be treacherous in wet weather” – not very hard: there are plenty of boardwalks, bridges and so on which have similar levels of friction to any other road surface – the designers refer to an ‘anti-skid’ surface for the deck.
2) “heavy frosting/icing” – central London hardly has any frost, let alone icing, but in any case, if it was sitting in the water, the chance of sub-zero temperatures would be small. If it was a bridge quite a way above the water, this might be more of a problem.
3) “psecially designed rails to prevent cyclists losing control” – I’d have thought that the designers of a floating deck way might have thought of providing reasonable rails!
Clearly the best long term solution is to better restrict traffic in London, but there are places where sections of deckway (publically funded and openly accessible) might be a useful way of providing a better route for cyclists, while also opening up the river frontage, particularly in the east, where so much of it is blocked by (private) converted wharves and warehouses, and the alternative roads parallel to the river are narrow and circuitous.
croissantlune wrote:
Good anti skid surfaces are indeed available but cost rather more than conventional surfaces due to the higher quality of materials needed. Wear rates are also higher as a rule, so regular maintenance would be required to ensure they stayed within accepted safety standards.
Bridges typically suffer far more frost or ice than normal stretches of road and it would seem likely that similar issues would afflict any structure built on the river.
Guard rails along the side of such a structure would have to be constructed to a minimum height requirement so as to ensure safety and as this would be a dedicated cycleway, would also have to feature some sort of impact absorbing properties (perhaps with plastic coverings over the steel guard rail).
Exit and entry ramps would have to be placed at regular intervals along the route and these would need to have some sort of barrier to allow use by only those paying the necessary toll fee. As the river is tidal, those on/off ramps would have to be sufficiently long enough to ensure that they would not be too steep to use at high or low tide while also being designed so as not to impede river traffic.
A key design issue would be to provide the cycleway with sufficient protection so as not to be at risk from impact with any river traffic and not to pose a safety danger to users in the event of such an impact. Some fairly large vessels do use the River Thames and given the heavy currents at some stretches, controlling those vessels can be tricky so it is almost inevitable that any structure would be hit at some point. Existing bridges across the Thames do suffer from ‘bridge bashing’.
The design would have to allow vessels to dock at various points along the bank, requiring raised sections but without having steep gradients for users cycling along the route so as to optimise safety. The artist’s impression envisages a floating structure but any raised section would have to be supported.
When you start looking at the practicalities of this concept, there are a lot of better, cheaper and more efficient wayds to boost capacity for cyclists in London.
OldRidgeback wrote:
Wow, I bet they haven’t thought of any of that shit……………………..
PaulBox wrote:
If the team putting forward this proposal is led by architects as I suspect, then I bet they haven’t thought of it.
There must be easier ways of
There must be easier ways of attaching a cycle path to the existing quaysides or embankments. I’m sure it won’t generate enough electricty to provide a reasonable return on £600m.
Fuck me, theyre not trying to
Fuck me, theyre not trying to hype this load of old bollocks again?
Just another crowfunded scam.
Just another crowfunded scam. We already have bicycle paths along the river
is it April Fool’s Day 6
is it April Fool’s Day 6 months early?
Paul_C wrote:
5?
I really hope their
I really hope their crowdfunding die, horribly, on it’s arse.
£600million would provide for
£600million would provide for building a significant % of the original proposed Cycle Superhighway network to the stadards of the E-W, N-S and new CS5.
Worth another read.
Worth another read.
http://www.copenhagenize.com/2015/02/the-village-idiot-of-urban-innovation.html
No.
No.
Not being a London based
Not being a London based cyclist, I’m not really in a position of knowledge, however the idea of using ‘free space’ on the thames seems great (if it’s possible).
The price however is ludicrous! The cost certainly wouldn’t be in engineering or manufacturing costs.
The scheme is as close to happening as we are to achieving world peace.
May as well build a floating bus type of device which could transport people and cargo up and down the river… oh hang on. How about a fixed line transportation device, under the earth which could hold thousands of people and run every five mins back and fourth… oh hang on.
This a joke right?
This a joke right?
So we’ve had Norman Foster
So we’ve had Norman Foster with his stupid Sky Cycle concept, putting bikes above streets, then a design company, Gensler, came up with another stupid idea to put bikes in tube tunnels then we have this idiot putting bikes on the river.
What is it about architects and design firms that means they come up with completely mad ideas about where to put bikes when we already have these things called roads.
However of course putting bikes on roads needs all that boring highway engineering stuff to do with junction design, kerbing, drainage, traffic lights and no architect or design company would lower themselves to all that boring, useful stuff when they can grab headlines with yet another idiotic idea.
The irony being that the idiotic ideas that have or may get built, like the cable car and garden bridge, don’t actually allow for bicycles.
redhanded wrote:
The overall concept deservedly took a lot of flack, but I still think building cycle tracks above and alongside railways deserves a lot more consideration. That’s not “build a network”, as the Foster project was, but look at places where urban routes can be linked up by running parrallel to and crossing railway cuttings.
Railway cuttings are often huge, but their use is barely considered because planners just throw up their hands in the face of legal problems.
bikebot wrote:
Most railway cuttings in London are very much discontinuous. They often have short tunnels, and more importantly they tend to have stations over them, often on streets lined with businesses .
The illustrative example for Foster’s folly seemed to involve Stratford to Liverpool Street. Now, that is free, for most of the way, of aerial obstacles. Because the railway itself is elevated- as, indeed, are quite a few of the railways approaching the centre of London.
Al__S wrote:
Most railway cuttings in London are very much discontinuous. They often have short tunnels, and more importantly they tend to have stations over them, often on streets lined with businesses .
The illustrative example for Foster’s folly seemed to involve Stratford to Liverpool Street. Now, that is free, for most of the way, of aerial obstacles. Because the railway itself is elevated- as, indeed, are quite a few of the railways approaching the centre of London.— bikebot
Absolutely, that’s why the idea of it being a network is daft.
But on the other hand, going back to the LCN routes you can find many places in London which could be better linked up and made more direct with access to short sections of railway land. At the moment the railways do the exact opposite, they get in the way and causes some quite convoluted diversions.
I’ve an idea…
I’ve an idea…
good plan. Lets go
good plan. Lets go
These kind of rubbish ideas
These kind of rubbish ideas just don’t seem to want to die.
This idea would have too many conflicts with bridges, river traffic, listed buildings etc. Then add to that the likelyhood it wouldn’t cover its costs with the £1.50 charge conpeting with the free roads alongside (included the east-west superhighway for a large part).
This fundraising will get no-where, then it will be relauched again in a few months.
I think it’s great / mental
I think it’s great / mental in equal measure.
I don’t commute around that way, but if it worked for me, I’d pay £1.50 to be able to cycle 10+ miles in central London without having to worry about traffic, absolutely.
It’s mental because it just is, far too expensive, will never get off the ground etc. etc. But don’t people say that about a lot of the best ideas?
Wait for the first cyclist to
Wait for the first cyclist to hit, injure or kill a swan! Cue headline competition.
Will there be a Strava
Will there be a Strava segment down it? I’d pay for a cheap timetrial course.
Or we could completely drain
Or we could completely drain the Thames, re-route the water into selected London streets and use them for water taxis while making the now empty river bed into a 9 lane mega highway. Seems at least as practical as this!
Is this simply a scam?
Is this simply a scam?
They are after £250k to carry out a feasibility study from what I understand. Given that the idea will never get any further this seems like a cunning way to pay yourself or your mate’s constancy firm a pretty penny to carry out some completely unnecessary work. They haven’t even figured out how many people might use it but somehow have worked out what the toll costs should be already; it just doesn’t add up.
Is this simply a scam?
Is this simply a scam?
They are after £250k to carry out a feasibility study from what I understand. Given that the idea will never get any further this seems like a cunning way to pay yourself or your mate’s constancy firm a pretty penny to carry out some completely unnecessary work. They haven’t even figured out how many people might use it but somehow have worked out what the toll costs should be already; it just doesn’t add up.
Is this simply a scam?
Is this simply a scam?
They are after £250k to carry out a feasibility study from what I understand. Given that the idea will never get any further this seems like a cunning way to pay yourself or your mate’s constancy firm a pretty penny to carry out some completely unnecessary work. They haven’t even figured out how many people might use it but somehow have worked out what the toll costs should be already; it just doesn’t add up.
presumably the consultancy
presumably the consultancy fee will include flights to Melbourne to check out the Yarra Pontoons that lead into the city next to the (heavily congested) tolled citylink
Picture shows that silting underneath was an unforeseen (or underestimated problem) – also despite being in Aus’ rain and the odd icey morning are a problem.
Also built too narrow for safe peak use with some horrible pinch points on entry and exit ramps
Having said that it is a beautiful ride into the City only to dump you onto roads that are only slowly becoming cycle friendlier.
picture from https://www.bicyclenetwork.com.au/general/policy-and-campaigns/2649/
you have to scroll down the history to find the article
What is this crap. The
Absolute Nonsence.
CAAD8105 Tourer wrote:
[[[[[[ Spot on, squire. I feel sea-sick already….passing boats create bow-waves, don’t they? Six hundred million pounds seems an expensive way to get a few pesky cyclists out of the way of delivery lorries and skip-trucks. And never mind plastic helmets—get those water-wings on. Ye godz wot next!
What is this crap. The
What is this crap. The country cannot afford the up keep of main roads let alone this.
All of the other answers opposing this ludicrous idea are brilliant .
Let me add my own to the list.
Lets start with Rescue Escapes. Oh sorry can’t get to you right now hang on to the handrails and tell the next person who comes up behind you to do the same.!!!
How many months a year do we have sunshine? Not many people enjoy riding in sub zero temperatures. Might as well convert your ride to Ice Skates when this happens.
London can be bloody windy. What happens to water going over the path. Oh sorry torrential rain began at 11.47 today and the Thames is expected to rise significantly. Oh Shit Tsunami!!!
Once it falls into any disrepair it needs fixing and who is going to pay for that. What do I hear.
We regret that we will be required to raise the tariff….
Borris Johnson should oppose this for ethical / humanitarian reasons.
People are homeless/lifeless in London. I don’t see anyone crowdfunding £600,000,000 to help the Vulnerable
Say No to this project in its infancy
The country is bankrupt apparently.
I live in Greenwich. One of
I live in Greenwich. One of the great joys of living by the river is being able to look out over it and enjoy its changing moods from one day, one hour even, to the next, and to enjoy the tides and the beach. This historic and relatively unspoilt treasure has inestimable value to possibly millions of people, today and hopefully long into the future.
The river is more than just an economic or transport resource to be exploited for someone’s vanity.
This stupid scheme and numerous others like it that have come and gone in the 20+ years I’ve been living and cycling here have nothing whatsoever to do with cyclists or their needs.
If implemented this hideous monstrosity would destroy the river for the millions of people who treasure it, who would resent any cyclists dumb enough to use it, and resent them perhaps even more if they didn’t use it so that it was just a useless decaying eyesore. It would do nothing to improve a great city that is choked, literally and metaphorically, by motor vehicles.
Spend the money, but spend it on getting cars and lorries off the roads so that our cities became civilised and livable.
http://youtu.be/ZDOI0cq6GZM
http://youtu.be/ZDOI0cq6GZM
The campaign is now up at
The campaign is now up at Indiegogo, and lo and behold, its under ”flexible funding”, which means they keep whatever money is raised.
Their idea is bad, and they should feel bad.
zanf wrote:
just noticed that it’s a cyclng and pedestrian path, which takes it into another realm of stupidity altogether.