Mayor ‘pauses’ work on Canary Wharf cycling bridge due to costs

Bill H wrote:

The Silvertown crossing will be be funded by tolls, so the money should be repaid eventually. But how many folk will want to save money by using the existing free to use tunnels?

With that in mind, and remembering that the mayor supposedly wants to discourage motorised traffic, would it be outrageous to suggest repurposing the Rotherhithe tunnel for cyclists and pedestrians only?

Not a bad idea considering most traffic can't fit in it.

AlsoSomniloquism wrote:

Bill H wrote:

The Silvertown crossing will be be funded by tolls, so the money should be repaid eventually. But how many folk will want to save money by using the existing free to use tunnels?

With that in mind, and remembering that the mayor supposedly wants to discourage motorised traffic, would it be outrageous to suggest repurposing the Rotherhithe tunnel for cyclists and pedestrians only?

Not a bad idea considering most traffic can't fit in it.

That is a really good idea. I hate using the Rotherhithe Tunnel. It's narrow and dangerous in a car or on a motorbike. Changing it to use by cyclists only would be a suitable solution, and the motor traffic issue would be largely addressed by the construction of the new Silvertown Tunnel. Motorists within London meanwhile could switch to using the other existing crossings.

brooksby wrote:

I love how in government you can just write off xx tens of millions of pounds, because that's better than spending yy further millions...

Also known as sunk cost.

I think most of us try not to 'throw good money after bad'.

hawkinspeter wrote:

Don't worry, Boris will fix it as soon as he becomes PM.

Incidentally, does anyone else feel like we're trapped in a very poorly written work of fiction?

Yes, but I can't decide if its been written by Kafka or Jeffrey Archer... 

(I think the American chapters have been written by James Patterson and his minions/ghost writers)

captain_slog wrote:

How in heaven's name can it cost half a billion pounds to build a cycle bridge? Or is most of that the lawyers' fees to fight the legal challenges from the NIMBYs?

Actually I'm coming round to the idea of a ferry. It could be roll-on/roll-off with navigable arches along the hull and, ooh, about as long as the Thames is wide. How about that?

It took £53 Million not to build the London garden bridge.

Zjtm231 wrote:

Again and again and again Khan's actions speak louder than words.

He couldn't give a flying fig about cycling - all who care about cycling in London should remember that when they vote at the next mayoral elections....

Watch out, you'll have a certain tosser clutching his pearls telling you to fuck off to the daily mail and making accusiations of your comments being racist and islamophobic.

Zjtm231 wrote:

Again and again and again Khan's actions speak louder than words. 

He couldn't give a flying fig about cycling - all who care about cycling in London should remember that when they vote at the next mayoral elections....

^^ This. I was quietly optimistic about Sadiq Khan at first but he's one of those dithery, do-nothing mayors. Always around to pop his face into a news bulletin or tweet some positive stuff about whatever happens to be flavour of the day but never actually doing anything. I mean, he seems a decent person, a nice enough guy but he's not exactly leading from the front here.

There were a couple of Cycle Superhighway schemes literally ready to go when he took over as Mayor and he quietly "paused" them for more consultations (read: excuses to cancel them). He's poked around with a couple of "flagship" schemes (Old Street roundabout for example) but done very little of actual worth towards the normal everyday getting around.

Sadly that's the same with a lot of politicians though. They're all super keen for the big fancy stuff (Garden Bridges, cable cars, huge tunnels) but when it comes to the common or garden cycle lane or pothole repair, they couldn't care less.

crazy-legs wrote:

Zjtm231 wrote:

Again and again and again Khan's actions speak louder than words. 

He couldn't give a flying fig about cycling - all who care about cycling in London should remember that when they vote at the next mayoral elections....

^^ This. I was quietly optimistic about Sadiq Khan at first but he's one of those dithery, do-nothing mayors. Always around to pop his face into a news bulletin or tweet some positive stuff about whatever happens to be flavour of the day but never actually doing anything. I mean, he seems a decent person, a nice enough guy but he's not exactly leading from the front here.

There were a couple of Cycle Superhighway schemes literally ready to go when he took over as Mayor and he quietly "paused" them for more consultations (read: excuses to cancel them). He's poked around with a couple of "flagship" schemes (Old Street roundabout for example) but done very little of actual worth towards the normal everyday getting around.

Sadly that's the same with a lot of politicians though. They're all super keen for the big fancy stuff (Garden Bridges, cable cars, huge tunnels) but when it comes to the common or garden cycle lane or pothole repair, they couldn't care less.

I do wonder whether his ordinary working-class (and migrant) background - something that made me positively-disposed to Khan when he first stood (my mum was very familiar with the council estate he grew up on and was of the view that if he grew up there he can't be out-of-touch with ordinary Londoners circumstances) - is, paradoxically, the reason for the risk-averse timidity that seems to be the weak point of his mayorship.  Someone from that background maybe has a tendency to feel insecure and opt for 'safety first' - as well as perhaps taking a kind of pride in personal status advancement that, just maybe, can slightly displace the point of the exercise when it comes to politics?

  It seems almost the exact opposite problem to Boris Johnson, who had, and has, such a vast surfeit of born-to-rule confidence and sense-of-entitlement that he just solipsistically pushes on with his vanity projects (though rarely seeing any of them through to successful completion) regardless of how bad an idea they turn out to be (as well as the garden bridge fiasco, and his dubious new bus design, let's not forget that watercannon he wasted a fortune on).

  Maybe the cycle infrastructure was the 'stopped clock, twice-a-day' moment with BJ?  The one time his vanity project coincided with something useful?  The rest of the time his embrace of big projects just led to waste and failure, and his stint as Foreign Secretary wasn't any better.

We just can't get a happy medium when it comes to the Mayor.

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

crazy-legs wrote:

Zjtm231 wrote:

Again and again and again Khan's actions speak louder than words. 

He couldn't give a flying fig about cycling - all who care about cycling in London should remember that when they vote at the next mayoral elections....

^^ This. I was quietly optimistic about Sadiq Khan at first but he's one of those dithery, do-nothing mayors. Always around to pop his face into a news bulletin or tweet some positive stuff about whatever happens to be flavour of the day but never actually doing anything. I mean, he seems a decent person, a nice enough guy but he's not exactly leading from the front here.

There were a couple of Cycle Superhighway schemes literally ready to go when he took over as Mayor and he quietly "paused" them for more consultations (read: excuses to cancel them). He's poked around with a couple of "flagship" schemes (Old Street roundabout for example) but done very little of actual worth towards the normal everyday getting around.

Sadly that's the same with a lot of politicians though. They're all super keen for the big fancy stuff (Garden Bridges, cable cars, huge tunnels) but when it comes to the common or garden cycle lane or pothole repair, they couldn't care less.

 

I do wonder whether his ordinary working-class (and migrant) background - something that made me positively-disposed to Khan when he first stood (my mum was very familiar with the council estate he grew up on and was of the view that if he grew up there he can't be out-of-touch with ordinary Londoners circumstances) - is, paradoxically, the reason for the risk-averse timidity that seems to be the weak point of his mayorship.  Someone from that background maybe has a tendency to feel insecure and opt for 'safety first' - as well as perhaps taking a kind of pride in personal status advancement that, just maybe, can slightly displace the point of the exercise when it comes to politics?

 

  It seems almost the exact opposite problem to Boris Johnson, who had, and has, such a vast surfeit of born-to-rule confidence and sense-of-entitlement that he just solipsistically pushes on with his vanity projects (though rarely seeing any of them through to successful completion) regardless of how bad an idea they turn out to be (as well as the garden bridge fiasco, and his dubious new bus design, let's not forget that watercannon he wasted a fortune on).

 

  Maybe the cycle infrastructure was the 'stopped clock, twice-a-day' moment with BJ?  The one time his vanity project coincided with something useful?  The rest of the time his embrace of big projects just led to waste and failure, and his stint as Foreign Secretary wasn't any better.

 

We just can't get a happy medium when it comes to the Mayor.

well, the bike schemes are not a big project by any standards, and they weren’t Boris’s project either, they were Ken’s. Boris has also claimed credit for the Olympics. He’s a vain, useless, narcissistic, incompetent twat and if anything good can come out of a horrible incident like the domestic that's being reported at the moment it would be to expose him (again!) for what he is, and remove him from the possibility of becoming Prime Minister. But I doubt the Tory Brexit membership scum care about women’s rights and domestic abuse any more than the Republicans in the USA do.

Sadiq Khan is right to query such a dramatic rise in costs and it would be remiss of him not to, especially in the light of the garden bridge fiasco. It’s Londoners’ money, ie my money, he’s spending. If a contractor quoted me a price for work then doubled it when he'd been awarded the contract, I’d bloody well  want an explanation.

ConcordeCX wrote:

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

crazy-legs wrote:

Zjtm231 wrote:

Again and again and again Khan's actions speak louder than words. 

He couldn't give a flying fig about cycling - all who care about cycling in London should remember that when they vote at the next mayoral elections....

^^ This. I was quietly optimistic about Sadiq Khan at first but he's one of those dithery, do-nothing mayors. Always around to pop his face into a news bulletin or tweet some positive stuff about whatever happens to be flavour of the day but never actually doing anything. I mean, he seems a decent person, a nice enough guy but he's not exactly leading from the front here.

There were a couple of Cycle Superhighway schemes literally ready to go when he took over as Mayor and he quietly "paused" them for more consultations (read: excuses to cancel them). He's poked around with a couple of "flagship" schemes (Old Street roundabout for example) but done very little of actual worth towards the normal everyday getting around.

Sadly that's the same with a lot of politicians though. They're all super keen for the big fancy stuff (Garden Bridges, cable cars, huge tunnels) but when it comes to the common or garden cycle lane or pothole repair, they couldn't care less.

 

I do wonder whether his ordinary working-class (and migrant) background - something that made me positively-disposed to Khan when he first stood (my mum was very familiar with the council estate he grew up on and was of the view that if he grew up there he can't be out-of-touch with ordinary Londoners circumstances) - is, paradoxically, the reason for the risk-averse timidity that seems to be the weak point of his mayorship.  Someone from that background maybe has a tendency to feel insecure and opt for 'safety first' - as well as perhaps taking a kind of pride in personal status advancement that, just maybe, can slightly displace the point of the exercise when it comes to politics?

 

  It seems almost the exact opposite problem to Boris Johnson, who had, and has, such a vast surfeit of born-to-rule confidence and sense-of-entitlement that he just solipsistically pushes on with his vanity projects (though rarely seeing any of them through to successful completion) regardless of how bad an idea they turn out to be (as well as the garden bridge fiasco, and his dubious new bus design, let's not forget that watercannon he wasted a fortune on).

 

  Maybe the cycle infrastructure was the 'stopped clock, twice-a-day' moment with BJ?  The one time his vanity project coincided with something useful?  The rest of the time his embrace of big projects just led to waste and failure, and his stint as Foreign Secretary wasn't any better.

 

We just can't get a happy medium when it comes to the Mayor.

well, the bike schemes are not a big project by any standards, and they weren’t Boris’s project either, they were Ken’s. Boris has also claimed credit for the Olympics. He’s a vain, useless, narcissistic, incompetent twat and if anything good can come out of a horrible incident like the domestic that's being reported at the moment it would be to expose him (again!) for what he is, and remove him from the possibility of becoming Prime Minister. But I doubt the Tory Brexit membership scum care about women’s rights and domestic abuse any more than the Republicans in the USA do.

Sadiq Khan is right to query such a dramatic rise in costs and it would be remiss of him not to, especially in the light of the garden bridge fiasco. It’s Londoners’ money, ie my money, he’s spending. If a contractor quoted me a price for work then doubled it when he'd been awarded the contract, I’d bloody well  want an explanation.

By 'the bike schemes' do you mean the hire-bikes (which I realise were Livingstone's project) or the last "cycle-superhighway" (stupid name, btw) efforts, which started to approach "not bad" at the end?  I gather that the latter owed a lot to grass-roots lobbying, but I wasn't aware they were anything to do with Livingstone.

For the cost of this bridge, true enough, though I'm not convinced Khan has put sufficient effort into finding a solution or getting the costs down (why does it cost so much?  Why do infrastructure projects cost such absurd amounts of money in our era?   However did the Victorians build a sewer system?).  Mostly though I'm unimpressed by that 'day to day' work, which has been mostly crap during Khan's time.  There have been multiple road-schemes that have missed the opportunity to do anything for cycling, and indeed have made things worse.

I still think he's been anything but dynamic, and I found it irritating when he kept diverting into playing internal Labour politics, as if he was more concerned with carefully positioning himself within the Party (as the 'sensible moderate' I guess) than with doing something for London.

What I _don't_ blame him for, is the alleged increase in knife crime.  I think that is down to factors beyond the Mayor's control, and it's dishonest of Tory ministers to try and shift the blame to him.  I'm actually not 100% convinced there even _is_ a crisis, as the murder rate figures (across all homicide methods) don't seem to show things getting dramatically worse than they were in previous decades.