I think the author was a bit too confident in their farming out of research to Claude. For instance, the claim that "at least 9 Chinese bridges have been built that would span the English Channel" is obviously false.
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Railway viaducts (built mostly over land):
- Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge
- Tianjin Grand Bridge
- Cangde Grand Bridge
- Weinan Weihe Grand Bridge
- Beijing Grand Bridge
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Not actually long enough to span the channel (excluding access roads etc.):
- Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (main bridge is 30km)
- Jiaozhou Bay Bridge (all three legs combined total 26 km over water)
- Runyang Yangtze River Bridge (total length of two-bridge complex is 7.2 km)
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Could actually span the channel (setting aside differences in water depth and whatnot):
- Hangzhou Bay Bridge
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Not to say all of these projects are not extremely impressive, or that the article doesn't have a point. But making claims like this undermines the author's credibility, at least in my eyes.
I guess one of the new careers being expanded is rigorous fact checker.
A couple interesting things I've come across over the years:
1. Western politics seems tragically reactionary and concerned with short-term issues. "Boring" stuff like infrastructure maintenance gets set aside. Deferred maintenance results in a superlinear increased expense: deferring $1 of maintenance today will cost you >$1 in the future (in real terms, accounting for inflation).
2. Some nations massively spend on some infrastructure with results little better than others.
This was an interesting, very long, read! They say of those 25,000 daily trips, most shifted to cycling, walking and public transport, and some moved to other bridges. And then another 9,000 or so were replaced by alternatives that were just better... people tried new transport modes and often found they were better. They do say the closure has created genuine hardship for specific groups.
I don't really buy it. I live in the area, and what happened is that traffic increased dramatically everywhere but Barnes, which is where Hammersmith bridge is. People in Barnes generally love it, as you can read in the author's tone.
London in general has a terrible problem of car commuters who travel 1-2 hours across the city every day. They're going to take whatever route necessary to do it.
With the 250M price tag I really keep thinking how we in the west just accepted such a massive cost for infrastructure development, especially considering the cost of living has gone down and the Victorians typically built this things by hand.
Most people who say these things frequently do want all the other functionality one buys with that money, though. As an example, in times with lower safety standards, many projects proceeded without incident. The point of modern safety standards is to guarantee to a greater likelihood that a project will proceed without incident. Would you be willing to give that up?
Another concern is the loss of a historically listed structure. Most people today prioritize historical structures over any modern structure. Would you be willing to demolish the bridge? You certainly can't rebuild an identical one because we don't have that many expert workers of wrought iron.
It will have been built to older standards. You'll have to convince a lot of people that the weight standards of then, the fire standards of then, and the disaster management standards of then should be exempted from modern controls and in order for them to be exempted you need to create a framework for exemption if it doesn't already exist. Coordination costs a lot of time and money. Even deciding that you don't need coordination for this project requires coordination because without a framework for exempting coordination you can't do it without allowing for always exempting coordination.
You will have seen this in any other realm. The more people have an opinion on something the harder it is to get done. The union of all requirements creates a project that is the intersection of all possibilities enabled, which combined with the classic aphorism about every additional percent taking as much effort as everything before, means that things cost more now.
We can build better and faster when we don't have to listen to anyone. This happens in emergencies. Take a look at the US MacArthur Maze tank truck fire and rebuild.
A few people I know had moved to houses on one side of the bridge for easy access to schools and jobs on the other side, and were hit hard by the closure.
Their commute times skyrocketed to go to the next Thames crossing.
Putney and Chiswick bridges aren’t all that far, I regularly walk around.
Not disagreeing with the author's conclusion, but the price comparison to the original struck me as a bit odd.
Ceteris paribus, building the exact same bridge will result in the exact same failure. Some of the additional cost is precisely to avoid the present scenario repeating itself in the future.
How big that addition represents and how effective it is up for debate, but asking for a better bridge at inflation adjusted price is not a. apples to apples comparison.
If spending the 1887 price (adjusted only for inflation) got us an identical-to-1887 bridge, which lasted through another 125 years of mostly-neglected maintenance - very few people would refer to that as a failure.
Would we get the lighter 1887 loads and the cooler weather mentioned in the article too?
Article Summary: Why we can't have nice infrastructure any more. :(
I expected that to be the conclusion, but it's not. They could spend £250m on the bridge, but they're not. And it appears to be the right answer since it wouldn't provide anywhere near £250m worth of utility. They'd spend £250m to make things worse -- right now it's an awesome cyclist/pedestrian bridge, and after spending £250m it'd be much worse for that.
That's the takeaway I had as well. Spending a quarter of a billion pounds to get more cars into a traffic choked downtown is a bad investment. Spending that money on improving public transit options would improve the quality of life far more.
London car traffic is broken like there's no other city in the world.
While many sell this as an asset, most people pay the consequences in their daily lives. Going to an event? you will be late. A flight from Gatwick? missed. A job interview? book the whole morning.
Trying to cross the city by Uber? that will be 40 euros.
In general if you're trying to drive through a major city you're probably doing it wrong. Cities are far too densely populated for inefficient motor vehicles to be the primary means of transportation. You need to be using the tube or a bus instead.
I drive through Barcelona in 10 minutes and it's a 5 million super dense city, no dramas.
But London has been taken over by the ecologist dictators who enjoy your pain ("bleeding heals") and that's why London is a city with no future.
And I say Barcelona but I could say Warsaw, Paris, Kiev, and so on.
London had very few roads already and the current major took care to close them one by one.
Barcelona has 1.6 million vs Londons 8+ million. Also Barcelonas street layout was mostly designed in one go, whereas London’s street plan just kind of congealed over the centuries.
Also Barcelona has terrible air pollution.
That's why London should be opening more roads instead of closing the very few they have, while Barcelona can afford having more pedestrian segments.
Instead London decided to put bus lanes and bike lanes and wider sidewalks
Very ecological but fatal for the city, which has the worst commute speeds anywhere in Europe.
That's a competitive economy? Nope!!
Nonsense. Traffic speed is not proportional to a competitive economy.
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> Trying to cross the city by Uber? that will be 40 euros.
Argh, we’ve got people from alternate universes posting here now.
More seriously, going to Gatwick… do you not just get the train?
Euros? What kind of AI slop are you talking about?
You go to Gatwick airport you take a train, which is very good (although pricey), same for most of the main airports around London.
You should definitely avoid crossing London by Uber, as there are plenty of excellent public transport options.
Like most UK rail, it’s anywhere between somewhat expensive and _outrageously_ expensive, depending on exactly when you buy the ticket and how. Looks like it cost me 9.50 last time I was there, which is not _horrific_ for an airport, but the barely-faster Gatwick Express would have been far more.