| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:What happening with land between M4 and canals | |
| Posted by: | Raymond Havelock | |
| Date/Time: | 09/01/19 00:34:00 |
| The M4 elevated section is in an almost critical state and civil engineers are almost at the clutching at straws state to maintain it. The concrete pillars are crumbling and the steel rebar corroding. Masses has been done to arrest the situation but it is not buying anywhere near the life extension planned. Now the Steel section from BM rd to Osterley is also suffering again. Problem now is overclose development negates any chance of cost effective rebuilding and adding a hard shoulder or double decking. Love it or loathe it is is the key trunk road and vital to the economy and livelihoods of almost all of us one way or another. Whatever fuel propels a vehicle, now or in the future is not going to change road use for many generations in a country with a mushrooming SE populous and policies to continue encouraging and densifying. Tunnels are running through 30km mountains, under seas and through entire cities. Technology has made them safer and safer, discreet ventilation and filtering systems reduce pollutants to minuscule levels. Far lower than ever can be achieved in the open. Time is running out and bold and innovative plans and decisions need to be made. It is really too late already. If the M4 becomes unsafe then the damage to this whole district and beyond will make Brexit look like a trivial episode of Eastenders. TfL are becoming critically paralysed by political interference overruling pragmatism filling the management with stooges with unsound expertise. This complete lack of forward thinking and planning from the wrong kind of homes to suit political quotas to the complete lack of grasp of transportation in a metropolis of such commercial magnitude shows how backs have been turned on those who did have vision in the past and how backward and inept we are becoming. 70 years and the North Circular Road is still incomplete and the South Circular still a mesh of small roads. Yet the vision and predictions of use were made by the LCC in 1947 and the solutions proposed would have made things very different. 70 years and we cannot even manage to complete half of the job. A Tunnel from Hammersmith out to Heston would bring change as seismic as the airport has to western London, but in a far more beneficial way, reducing noise pollution and opening up a lot of land space for better use. Costly? Yes. But for the benefits the return is beyond fiscal. |