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Tunnel vision

Tuesday, 26th February 2008

Do have a read of Kit Malthouse's excellent Times piece today on tunnels:

...Other cities have of course been burrowing for years. In Canada, they face not a space problem but an issue with the weather: when it's minus 25C, how do you keep people shopping? By digging of course.

Underneath downtown Toronto lies the PATH, an underground city stretching for 16 miles. With four million square feet of space, it is equivalent in size to 1.5 Empire State Buildings, employs 5,000 people in 1,200 shops and connects more than 50 surface buildings with five underground stations. Montreal has the same, only bigger. Paris, of course, has the Forum des Halles, a huge underground shopping mall, with a park on the roof. Delhi, Moscow, Tokyo and many others all take the same approach.
...The entire Hyde Park Corner interchange could be dropped below ground, and the three great parks of Central London could be united. You could walk from Parliament Sinquare to Queensway, about three miles, without crossing a road. Park Lane would be freed up for redevelopment, and a grand new public square could be created at Marble Arch.
...According to the AA, driving in a tunnel is twice as safe as on the surface and there are no pedestrians or cyclists to get in your way. Emissions can be collected and new techniques can “scrub” them from the air, allowing all of us to breath a little easier.

I've been boring on (ha, ha!) about tunnels for years. I'm writing this from Brussels, where it's almost impossible to go from A to B without driving through tunnel at some point. Just think of how much we could transform London for the better for just a fraction of the money being thrown at the Olympics. It makes one despair.

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C Powell

February 26th, 2008 12:58pm

Well, if we're going to lose all these roads round the parks and cyclists can't use the underground roads, where are the cyclists going to go? Or are we going to see a change to the stupid ban on cycling in parks?

Scipio

February 26th, 2008 3:51pm

Actually as a frequent visitor to London (14 times and counting) I consider London to be my second home. I personally prefer that the great parks of Central London (Hyde, Green, St. James's, and Kensington Gardens - all be separate.

Joshua

February 26th, 2008 8:59pm

Londoners could make a start by building a small underground space for their current mayor. The dimensions? Oh, I'm sure you can guess them.

dearieme

February 26th, 2008 11:04pm

Hurray, the Princess Diana Memorial Tunnel.

Joshua

February 27th, 2008 12:40am

"the Princess Diana Memorial Tunnel" -- There's a very good joke in there (sorry, an unintentional pun), but I'm far too polite to spell it out.

Nick

February 27th, 2008 9:39am

The cost of tunnelling (or even re-opening and extending existing tunnels) under London makes the Olympics look like small beer.

Max Kaye

February 29th, 2008 10:00am

The Princess Diana and Red Ken Memorial Tunnel?

Herbert Thornton

March 1st, 2008 10:00pm

This gives a whole new meaning to Tunnel Vision, eh?

I'm not trying to disparage it - tunnels for shopping malls and pedestrians make foot travel easier & and the Canadian examples of it are very pleasant to use.

But it doesn't always have to be achieved via tunnels - a similar effect - especially shelter from the weather - can also be achieved to some extent by overhead walkways between buildings. In Hong Kong, for example, where people are glad to get away from the heat and humidity in summer, I discovered that I could walk a considerable part of the way between my place of work and the Star Ferry by using a route that took me through overhead walkways and Department stores and shopping malls - largely in air-conditioned comfort.