London Thinks Big

London is the next comically expensive city that will receive my treatment

May 1963

The city of London was facing a crisis. The growing mass of vehicles into the City was bringing endless congestion and lots of accidents. It was decided that pedestrians and vehicles needed to be kept separate.

So, the City of London pedway network was born


With pedestrians raised above the traffic, they could go about in peace and safety without needing to duck any traffic. And without needing to accommodate pedestrians, traffic on the streets below could be sped up.

In 1966, London's famous Piccadilly Circus was redesigned, again providing Pedestrians with their own level as well as new high rises. This made the area far easier to walk through.


It was also determined that London needed more motorways. This came in the form of the ringways scheme. Community opposition forced the cancellation of Ringway 1 however.

In the 80s, 40 years of population decline in London reversed itself. As Britain's economy shifted from the manufacturing of the north to the financial services of the south, London started growing again. Home prices began to soar and in 1990, in the spirit of Thatcher era deregulation, the greenbelt, created in 1947 that created a boundary around London that could not be built upon, was abolished.

London started spreading out and new tube stations and motorways were built. The Northern Heights plan of the 1930s was revived, with the Northern Line being extended to Bushey Heath.


Suburban development continued spreading out. Homes were now cheap and getting bigger and bigger. Columnists went through the usual hang wringing about London turning into Houston.

After the ascension of much of Eastern Europe to the EU in 2004, London saw a surge of immigrants through the Schengen Area.

But all this sprawl at the edges did little for central London.

In the 21st Century, skyscrapers, those curiosities that Londoners had mostly observed on trips to New York, started dotting the skyline, especially in Canary Wharf, as a result of the booming need for office space.

It was also clear that London's airports were way outmoded. Heathrow was so close to built up areas that noise ordinances banned planes from landing early in the morning and it, along with Gatwick, was running at capacity. So, in 2005, construction began on a new airport in the Thames Estuary.

 

Man, the pedway system is the Minneapolis Skyway System on steroids.

 

It would've been 30 miles long had it been built out. Pedway networks are convenient for traffic and extremely safe for pedestrians, what's not to love?

 

Concrete! Harsh, soulless, brutalist concrete as far as the eye can see!
The endless roar of cars and trucks racing thru the road canyons mere feet below you, pumping out fumes to choke an entire generation.
Where are the green lungs of London when paved over for the heartless sake of commerce?
What happens to the classic old buildings of historic London, hidden by these overgrown stairways?
It'll be a haven for criminal gangs who will roam the sky-streets and rob all the grannies as they go shopping!

We're doomed I tell you, DOOMED!

 

B R U T A L I S M

 

London Thinks Big.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...-revealed-plans-never-left-drawing-board.html

 

London already has something that does the same thing as the monorail. It's even better though, because it's underground and not ugly. It carries 5 million passengers every single day.

It's called.... the Tube.

 

If I had put this in the Before 1900 section, lots of other crazy schemes would be available

Like this plan to straighten the Thames

Or this one drawn up after the Fire of 1666 to give London a grid system, a good century before America started building them.

 

and over capacity!

 

So run more trains. Don't add this eyesore.

 

They wouldn't be hidden to pedestrians. I don't think the people driving through London need to have pretty views.

 

They can not as the system is over capacity they are even running automated trains (due to unions still with a driver twiddling his thumbs) on closer separation!

 

Lengthen the platforms to add more cars to each train. That would still probably be cheaper than this monorail.

 

I'm not actually advocating the monorail just pointing out some of the schemes they have come up with over the years and the difficulties modern London is suffering!

 

Even that has its drawbacks and bottlenecks. A longer train will have longer dwell times at stations to let passengers on and off, which means that trains cannot be run as close together, which at a point un-does the advantage of higher capacity per train. More overcrowding leads to more delays, and lower perceived satisfaction with the system. More lines, parallel express bus routes, express regional rail for longer distances all help.

More motorways will work for a while, but pent-up demand is usually absorbed in short order. It is said that trying to solve traffic problems by widening roads or building more is like trying to lose weight by loosening your belt.

 

Ah yes induced demand. The theory that people get in their cars for the fun of it because they can. There is no other service where the fact that people use it is bad. You never hear "building more power plants is no solution to our rolling blackouts, people will just use more power"

 

People generally take the fastest, most reliable mode of transit. If there is more reason to drive, people will drive more, because having your own climate-controlled vehicle that you can store stuff in and drive anywhere a road is, is usually preferable to piling into a bus or train that you have to wait for and takes you as long or longer to get you to your destination.

You'll also need space for all the car infrastructure being introduced. You'll need a lot more parking garages and ramps for the lowered roadways. A lot of property will have to be expropriated to widen roads in already dense areas, and a lot of that, then and now, is valuable real estate. Hollowing it out would seriously impact the quality of life for the residents there.

 

I agree there's a limit to how much accomodation for cars is desirable. I don't want the Thames to be filled in to make space for a parking lot. But the fact that people take advantage of widened roads to go to work at a more convenient time or visit relatives more frequently is not a bad thing. The solution is road pricing, which London already has with the congestion charge. You could also build highways underground and charge tolls if need be.

 

Very much this. I like.