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Thames_deckway_by_River_Cycleway_Consortium_dezeen.jpgWould you use a floating bicycle toll road along the Thames?
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?
Laura Laker is a freelance journalist with more than a decade’s experience covering cycling, walking and wheeling (and other means of transport). Beginning her career with road.cc, Laura has also written for national and specialist titles of all stripes. One part of the popular Streets Ahead podcast, she sometimes appears as a talking head on TV and radio, and in real life at conferences and festivals. She is also the author of Potholes and Pavements: a Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network.
Latest Comments
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What a bunch of ases
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41 comments
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.
just noticed that it's a cyclng and pedestrian path, which takes it into another realm of stupidity altogether.
http://youtu.be/ZDOI0cq6GZM
image.jpeg
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.
Absolute Nonsence.
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.
[[[[[[ 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!
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
YarraPontoonsSiltBycyclenetwork.JPG
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?
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?
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.
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!
Will there be a Strava segment down it? I'd pay for a cheap timetrial course.
Wait for the first cyclist to hit, injure or kill a swan! Cue headline competition.
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?
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.
good plan. Lets go
I've an idea...
IMG_0117.JPG
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.
This a joke right?
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.
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.
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.
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.
No.
Worth another read.
http://www.copenhagenize.com/2015/02/the-village-idiot-of-urban-innovati...
£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.
I really hope their crowdfunding die, horribly, on it's arse.
is it April Fool's Day 6 months early?
5?
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