Friday Reads – 19 November 2021

On By In Friday Reads, Infrastructure, Overground, Pedestrians

• TfL submits plan for new Overground station at New Bermondsey (FromMurkyDepths)

• Disastrous flooding cuts Vancouver off from railways, roads (RailwayAge)

• Before Interstates, America got around on Interurbans (CityLab)

• How capturing land value improvements can revolutionise infrastructure (CapX)

• Mapping abandoned US railroads: The interactive crowdsourced atlas (AtlasObscura)

• 50 benefits of more walkable streets (FastCompany)

• World’s longest covered pedestrian bridge (Metrolinx)

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8 comments

  1. Oh, Toronto. We built a bridge so pedestrians have the longest walk ever to get to their train, but, hey, it’s covered. Never change, Metrolinx.

    I will admit it is a great engineering feat to cross the 16 lanes of 401, but it does seem a bit backasswards.

  2. How can you tell you’ve built your train station in the wrong place: “here’s your award for longest enclosed bridge”

  3. Re:pedestrian bridge. Doubtless moving the heavy rail station closer to people would have cost a lot more than the bridge.

    And if it improves overall walking connectivity for the town then maybe an OK comprise overall.

    Where they may have cheaped out is providing covered walkway but not escalators/travelolaters to speed up pedestrian traffic and encourage use. And may be too heavy to add later

  4. I’ve walked from Pickering GO station to Pickering Mall, pre-ped bridge. It was about a kilometre and required crossing at the road bridge. Particularly unpleasant and windswept, with noise and pollution not only from the 16 lanes of highway traffic, but also the vehicles racing over the bridge to and fro in suburbia. With now 4tph GO train service, this bridge should be well used, as the Mall is a major amenity for the municipality and area.

  5. We’re not much better here in London with one station named after a shopping centre that’s far enough away that it’s worth catching a bus between the two, and another soon to open a similar distance on the other side. As presumably is the case in Toronto it’s still better than no station at all.

  6. See also the c 300m covered bridge from Exhibition Centre station in Glasgow to the exhibition centre after which it was named.

  8. @GregT Brent underground renamed BrentX after the shops, and the new Thameslink station with a walkwaaaay ‘connection’.

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