This is the next installment of our weekly Friday Reads post – listing the links and articles we’ve been reading at LR Towers.
Be sure to also check out our Industry Links posts, updated every weekday, with the latest developments in technology, operations, frameworks, policy and best-practices.
If you’ve have something you feel we should read or include in a future list, don’t forget to email us at [email protected].
- London’s killer air pollution – Engineering & Technology
- London’s own High Line park? – Engineering & Technology
- Rude urban graffiti for civic improvement (well, it works!) – Beeb
- What’s Paris been up to? – CityLab
- Port of London plans for massive growth – Port Technology
- Aparkalypse now: The perilous politics of parking – Economist
- Parkaggeddon – Free parking causes jams & sprawl – Economist
- Environmental BART Station – Smart Rail Word
The London’s high line park would be about 500m, from Camden Road station to where the St Pancras lines go under the overground, right? I don’t see any more spare space, not even for a onward connection to the redevelopment area. There’s reasonably direct road between those two points. The NYC one is 2.3km, including going over Hudson Yards which doesn’t have many crossings, all major roads.
One of the great attractions of the high line in NYC is its peace and (relative) quiet. At times you could almost be somewhere else than NYC. I cannot imagine that a path running next to the North London Line will quite achieve that effect.
As well as the NYC high line, there’s also the Parisien version:
http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/06/17/a-walk-along-the-paris-inner-city-railway-abandoned-since-1934/
@Graham
That’s the Petite Ceinture, walking on which is officially trespassing, which I don’t know if the mods want to condone. The actual Paris equivalent is the Viaduc des Arts, which is the former viaduct route of the line from Vincennes to the old Gare de la Bastille, replaced by RER Line A with the station itself replaced by the modern opera house.
Similar scheme in Peckhame,from a year or so back…
http://peckhamcoalline.strikingly.com/
Phil,
Having walked part of it a few years ago, I can assure there is at least one significant part of it which is signposted and the public are encouraged to use it. Given the total length and the fact that my walk came to an abrupt end I have no doubt that a large part of it is off-limits.
On the Paris Petite Ceinture, an interesting read here:
https://www.petiteceinture.org/Current-status-of-the-Petite-Ceinture-circular-railway-of-Paris.html
Occasional excursion trains were run on parts of the route until 2003, as illustrated here:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3964776
The section around the east of the city remains largely intact and mothballed as a double track railway, although it is currently disconnected from other tracks at the north end near La Chapelle (adjacent to the approach tracks to Gare de l’Est where the new Gare Rosa Parks is situated). This section is joined to operational tracks at the south end however, at Bercy on the main line approaches to Gare de Lyon. To the west of Bercy, track remain over the nearby Seine bridge, which may still be be of some operational use as a spur for shunting parts of the large yard and depot complex there. Beyond the bridge for about 0.5km to the former bridge over the Gare d’ Austerlitz main line, the formation has been destroyed completely and built over. Reinstatement here would be complicated by new road crossings that intersect the level of the old railway alignment at grade. A little further to the west a single track resumes on the old alignment and it is in this section, skirting the south of the city, that many parts of the route have been opened up for pedestrian leisure activity, with new accesses created, and paths constructed alongside or atop the remaining single track. The track is connected to the RER Ligne C network just south of Gare Pont du Garigliano. After crossing the Seine again, formation beyond this previously followed an elevated viaduct route along the centre of Boulevard Exelmans which was removed completely in the 1960s. Much of the remainder of the former Petite Ceinture route around the west of the city was incorporated into a new branch of the the RER Ligne C that opened in 1988.
The Coulée verte René-Dumont {Promenade Plantée) in Paris is a long section of disused railway line beginning at Avenue Daumesnil, south east of Bastille, and ending at the branch junction with the Petite Ceinture. The Promenade starts with about a mile of viaduct, and the viaduct even has its own Google Street View.
Like the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, I suspect that the Promenade is something that is rarely seen by the average visitor, but both are well worth a visit on a sunny day. I’ve yet to walk the full length of the Promenade, only the viaduct section and as far as the end of the tunnel near Daumesnil metro.
http://europeantrips.org/promenade-plantee-the-first-elevated-park-in-the-world.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coul%C3%A9e_verte_Ren%C3%A9-Dumont
There’s a pretty good description of the putative Camden Line here: http://blog.oomap.co.uk/2015/12/the-camden-line/