Skycycle: Are they on crack?

spasypaddy

amazing. imagine if we could have sections shut off so we can do a 10mile tt on it. YES PLEASE!

goonz

On a serious note how would one get onto it in the first place?

I suppose some form of ramp. Judging by the height the ramp would have to be pretty steep and long. Most of us have trouble getting up simple hills, this could prove pretty troublesome for some and force them into their cars rather than the other way around...

cyclingprop

goonz wrote:

Most of us have trouble getting up simple hills.

LOL.

Well, I say LOL... but what is a simple hill? Do you include bridges? T'aint going to be that hard.

Kieran_Burns

Well - it'll be the biggest hill in London. :P

greg66_tri_v2.0

£1m per km. Like that's going to fly.

rick_chasey

Greg66 Tri v2.0 wrote:

£1m per km. Like that's going to fly.

According to this blog the cycle superhighway was comparable.


http://cyclelondoncity.blogspot.co.uk/2 ... -cost.html

And here comes the clincher. How much have these things cost? Kulveer Ranger proudly says the routes have cost between £10-20 million each. The four routes are, respectively, 2.7, 5.1, 5.7 and 7.2 miles long. At a rough average of 5 miles each then, London's cycle super highways cost between £2 - 4 million per mile

rick_chasey

Similarly a cycle 'track' in Copenhagen is about £900,000 per km.

http://subsite.kk.dk/sitecore/content/S ... stics.aspx

greg66_tri_v2.0

The CS and Copenhagen figures are, if accurate, scandalous.

And they underline pretty starkly that £1m /km of newly built pie in the sky tubing is simple fantasy.

Which may not be so surprising, as re-reading the BBC article, it seems to suggest that that first section - from East London to Liverpool Street - would cost £200million, and that that would be the first part of a 219km network.

So, what? 10km into Liverpool Street for £200 million? £20 million/km? With the usual caveat that pretty much every infrastructure project is hopelessly underbudgeted?

Somehow, I doubt this will get close to a drawing board.

rick_chasey

I think that's just how expensive infrastructure is in cities.

If you want comparison France's high speed rail line cost roughly £60m per km.

Glasgow spent £500m on 5 miles of motorway.


And in London: The most expensive road per mile is the Limehouse Link. The 1.1 mile (1.8 km) tunnel in London's Docklands opened in 1993 at a cost £293m. Adjusted for one measure of inflation that would be £445m or £230,000 per yard (£250,000 per metre). It was designed and built in seven years and at the time was the second biggest engineering project in Europe after the Channel Tunnel.
It was almost insane," says Sir Peter Hall, Bartlett professor of planning at University College London. "But Margaret Thatcher would stop at nothing to get the Isle of Dogs developed."


http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13924687

Kerguelen

'Glasgow spent £500m on 5 miles of motorway.'

Citation needed.

Unless, of course, you would like to abandon that line of argument and just admit that you're lying.

meanredspider

Kerguelen wrote:

'Glasgow spent £500m on 5 miles of motorway.'

Citation needed.

Unless, of course, you would like to abandon that line of argument and just admit that you're lying.

First Google hit


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13924687 (which is referenced in Rick's post)

Of course the BBC could be lying...

... Or an apology might be in order...

cookeeemonster

meanredspider wrote:

Kerguelen wrote:

'Glasgow spent £500m on 5 miles of motorway.'

Citation needed.

Unless, of course, you would like to abandon that line of argument and just admit that you're lying.

First Google hit


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13924687 (which is referenced in Rick's post)

Of course the BBC could be lying...

... Or an apology might be in order...

Rick needs to apologise..it was £692 million for 5 miles...not £500 million :P

rick_chasey

Yeah.

People quickly baulk at figures for public expenditure on their own and think it's immediately expensive, without really comparing it to other similar projects.

Obviously a tunnel above the ground just for cyclists will be expensive. For sure. But then, you always have to pay a premium in London because of lack of space. Hence looking at the rather unusual idea of putting a bike lane above everything else.

For my money a New York 'high line' type public space which has on it a lane or two for cyclists alongside a nice public space would be a lovely addition and would (perhaps) be more efficient use of space than just building a bike lane in the sky.

But then London doesn't have an existing overground space to use and no doubt someone will think of a better use for said cash (but then someone always does).

tgotb

I can't comment on East London, but it's never going to work in SW London, further out than Clapham Junction, because of all the bridges over the railway lines. I'd rather ride all the way in to Central London with the traffic than negotiate the Wandsworth one-way system to get to Clapham Junction.

That said, I see nothing in the latest article to suggest the idea is being actively promoted by TFL or the GLA. Looks to me like it's being pushed solely by Norman Foster and Exterior Architecture, who don't have to solve the problem of where the money is coming from, but will benefit from the publicity, regardless of whether the idea is actually implemented.

rick_chasey

meanredspider wrote:

Kerguelen wrote:

'Glasgow spent £500m on 5 miles of motorway.'

Citation needed.

Unless, of course, you would like to abandon that line of argument and just admit that you're lying.

First Google hit


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13924687 (which is referenced in Rick's post)

Of course the BBC could be lying...

... Or an apology might be in order...

PBo

Kerguelen wrote:

'Glasgow spent £500m on 5 miles of motorway.'

Citation needed.

Unless, of course, you would like to abandon that line of argument and just admit that you're lying.

Jesus, who rattled your cage?

There was a bbc article quoted.

Why would he lie, or abandon his line of argument - which AFAICT was simply "building stuff is expensive"?

goonz

Blimey those figures are staggering. A yard of motorway for £17k? Isn't that just a glorified driveway?

Lord_V

Very glorified.

Just consider what goes into a motorway:

Each lane is approximately 3.5m wide, with a 2m hard shoulder (at least) and a 1m hard strip. That means that for each yard of motorway you are talking about approximately 13.5m2 of hard surface. That's one carriageway. The other side is the same, so that's 27m2

Pavement will be around 750mm to 1m thick. That's 20 odd cubic meters of asphalt and stone.

Then if the road is in a cut or fill you need to consider the earthworks and how to support them, sheet piles can be huge at least 10-15m long, they aren't wide either, so would be at least 2 of those per yard. Gabion walls aren't cheap either. (They are the big metal baskets filled with road).

A bog standard fill embankment:


Then you have signage, those road signs are not cheap and they are huge. Plus the steel posts and the foundations to bed them in.

Then electricity and com's cables, domestic use armoured cabling is expensive but it has nothing on a fibre optic cable.

Then you have to drain all that hard surface. The drainage will look tiny on the surface, but that's not the case under ground. The pipes will probably be around 500mm in diameter. Then you have the offline stuff like ponds that controlled the flow so the local area doesn't flood.

Balancing pond:


Manhole construction:



Then you have crash barriers which are usually steel or a thick concrete wall.

Then you have ancilaries like gantries, land purchase costs, temporary works, traffic management (cones and barriers.) Accommodation, compounds and the cost of labour and machine hire.

Other than that it's totally like a driveway.

goonz

Thanks for the detail. I guess we take for granted what goes into building infrastructure and at that sort of cost I can see why everything takes so long to get done!

Lord_V

With infrastructure what the user actually see's is a minute part of what actually goes into a project.

It's become popular to moan about cost of projects because they were an easy target during the recession. Motorways and major roads especially always seem expensive, but there is much more beneath the surface.

New construction in built up areas is a nightmare, as a country we bury most of our services like telephone, gas,electric etc. Moving a telecoms chamber can be up to 100k or more depending what runs through it. Often it's just too difficult or prohibitively expensive to move say a gas main or water pipe. A new run of water main can take up to a month to commission due to testing etc, similar for new gas mains.

Then you have the politics as well of working with Local authorities, in London with its myriad of councils and areas is often a horrific amount of bureaucracy for even the simplest of engineering tasks. This is especially true of new cycle routes and improvements.

Very often the gulf between what you want to do, what you can do and what you can afford to do is quite large.

The skycycle idea is a bit daft, and I can't see it being built. But it's hardly a horrible idea. I admit I like the 'out of the box' thinking of it though.

Agent57

Interesting stuff, Lord_V. I'd still rather see a shedload more money spent on cycling provision and other transport than on more motorways though.

roger_merriman

Lord_V wrote:

With infrastructure what the user actually see's is a minute part of what actually goes into a project.

It's become popular to moan about cost of projects because they were an easy target during the recession. Motorways and major roads especially always seem expensive, but there is much more beneath the surface.

New construction in built up areas is a nightmare, as a country we bury most of our services like telephone, gas,electric etc. Moving a telecoms chamber can be up to 100k or more depending what runs through it. Often it's just too difficult or prohibitively expensive to move say a gas main or water pipe. A new run of water main can take up to a month to commission due to testing etc, similar for new gas mains.

Then you have the politics as well of working with Local authorities, in London with its myriad of councils and areas is often a horrific amount of bureaucracy for even the simplest of engineering tasks. This is especially true of new cycle routes and improvements.

Very often the gulf between what you want to do, what you can do and what you can afford to do is quite large.

The skycycle idea is a bit daft, and I can't see it being built. But it's hardly a horrible idea. I admit I like the 'out of the box' thinking of it though.

Devil is in the detail, Stafford to Liverpool station is not quite 5 miles, down the CS2 admittedly though the infamous Bow interchange, if the SkyCycle is not convenient, people will not use it. don't get me wrong people will use slower but nicer routes, most if not all of my fellow commuters in Bushy Park would be faster on the roads around the edge of the park.

lack of space cited in central/mid London is frankly in all but few points just not true, you do get narrow roads in some of the old towns/villages in outer london, but even there buses can (just) get though etc.

Lord_V

Is it not?

For a combined footway/cycleway you need at least 3m, greater in central London due to the number of people, 3.5m is desirable though. A decent width footway for just pedestrians is 1.8m. Minimum width for an on carriageway cyclelane is approximately 1.25m (this varies though, and for safety 1.5m is much better).Minimum lane width to allow buses through is about 3.25m. This can't include the 1.25m above.

Chuck all that together and the width for the average two way street with on carriageway cyclelane in each direction is approximately 13m. That would be desirable minimum, and allows for no on street parking.

Depending on the services beneath the road or in the pavement, moving kerblines can be expensive and often not straight forward.

I agree though, the devil is always in the details. Not point providing something people won't use.

meanredspider

That Glasgow motorway saved me at least 5 minutes on my 2.5 hour journey to Yorkhill a hospital for Sick Children - in some was it was worth nearly £2/3billion...

meanredspider

PBo wrote:

Kerguelen wrote:

'Glasgow spent £500m on 5 miles of motorway.'

Citation needed.

Unless, of course, you would like to abandon that line of argument and just admit that you're lying.

Jesus, who rattled your cage?

There was a bbc article quoted.

Why would he lie, or abandon his line of argument - which AFAICT was simply "building stuff is expensive"?

It's all gone quiet over there

rjsterry

Lord_V wrote:

Minimum width for an on carriageway cyclelane is approximately 1.25m (this varies though, and for safety 1.5m is much better).

gabriel959

meanredspider wrote:

Kerguelen wrote:

'Glasgow spent £500m on 5 miles of motorway.'

Citation needed.

Unless, of course, you would like to abandon that line of argument and just admit that you're lying.

First Google hit


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13924687 (which is referenced in Rick's post)

Of course the BBC could be lying...

... Or an apology might be in order...

The thing I find more interesting about that article is the Jimmy Saville quote near the end. How things change in so little time, that quote, even if not related to his crimes, would not have been used in a million years if the article had been written today.

Kerguelen

meanredspider wrote:

... Or an apology might be in order...

No, not really.

rick_chasey

Kerguelen wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

... Or an apology might be in order...

No, not really.

Why not?

roger_merriman

Kerguelen wrote:

meanredspider wrote:

... Or an apology might be in order...

No, not really.

Covering your self with glory you are not. If you've gone for personal insult, ie Rick is lying, which is never a great start, practically if his post had the cite...