prv
Well-Known Member
Especially since the Council apparently supplied the chainwheels to the builder of the new boat, implying that the chains themselves are the same even if their end positions and tensions have been altered a bit.
Pete
Floating Bridge out again!!!
- Thread starter Giblets
- Start date
Especially since the Council apparently supplied the chainwheels to the builder of the new boat, implying that the chains themselves are the same even if their end positions and tensions have been altered a bit.
Pete
Seajet
...
Windermere does seem a bit tricky, but not impossible - after all they got quite big ships onto African lakes.
My immediate thought as soon as this fiasco started to unravel was ' wonder if they could flog it to Dartmouth or Falmouth ?
I think they have made other significant changes not just the chains which would mean the old one couldn't go straight back, but I'm guessing the old ferry could be given a lick of paint and returned to service a lot sooner than they can alter the IOW to suit this one.
[70521]
Well-Known Member
I think the trams are brilliant. Actually all the public transport in Edinburgh is brilliant.
awol
Well-Known Member
Could not agree more but the contracting for the tramway was dreadful with the cost and schedule overrun all down to the cooncil.
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
Indeed.
Summary for southroners: The trams were a LD plan of the second Labour/LD adminstration in Holyrood. They were replaced by a minority SNP administration with a manifesto commitment to abandon the trams and other plans for the money, then about £300m. The other parties combined to put trams back on track (haha), in the case of the LDs and the Greens because they believed in them and in the case of Labour and the Tories to bust a hole in the SNP budget.
The project was run by Trams in Edinburgh (TiE), a subsidiary of the City of Edinburgh Council. However the SNP group in the SNP/LD coalition running the council took an almighty huff because of the Holyrood vote and refused to attend any meetings about the project, which therefore went ahead with no political supervision.
Costs went through the roof, work ground to a halt when utilities diversion took longer than planned, lawsuits started flying around, the council put their fingers in their ears and TiE executives paid themselves millions in bonuses, even during the two years for which all work stopped.
Eventually heads were banged together and work restarted, but we ended up with half the planned system for two and half times the planned cost. The Edinburgh tram system has 14km of track and cost around £800m. For a comparison, the first stage of the Nottingham tram system is also 14km long and cost £200m when it opened in 2004.
There are active plans to extend the line down Leith Walk to Newhaven. If the council can manage not to screw it up - and that's a big if - then it makes a lot of sense. All the utilities diversion is done and Ocean Terminal, the Scottish Executive and Leith itself should all generate healthy amounts of traffic.
Meanwhile the only good thing to be said about the trams project (as opposed to the trams) is that it meant everybody forgot that the Scottish Parliament project came in three years late and twenty times over budget ...
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dom
Well-Known Member
Gosh, what a grim but excellent summary of what happened.
So that's why Princes Street was dug up for so long .....looks great now though.
Topcat47
Well-Known Member
Back to the thread:- it was working this weekend (the floating bridge). Having ridden the Embra trams, I thought they were great, but then I didn't have to live through the construction.
Thistle
Well-Known Member
Buses are timetabled to get from the city centre to the airport faster than the trams.
How much would a Cowes tunnel cost?
Seajet
...
So is it one glorious connection all the way through from Edinburgh to Cowes, ' the Cockup Line ' ? I can see that being great for tourism, and far more use than HS2; even if none of the bits work it would be great for hikers to start in Scotland then end up in kayaks to reach East Cowes.
Ccopywright handsoff I spotted it first.com.
Greenheart
Well-Known Member
I expect the tunnel-boring machine alone would cost as much as the floating bridge already has done.
I was looking at the location...it looks to me as if the deep water channel there is about 40m wide...
...compared with a tunnel (including the entry/exit roadworks required on both sides), how much more bother would it be, to build (in the shallow water either side of the channel) a pair of horizontal swing-bridges like Newcastle has, which meet in the middle?
It could be open and shut at intervals, which everyone needing either to cross the river or sail up/down the river, would get to know.
The dull video below just shows the principle. I'm thinking there'd be two swinging sections, one each side of the deep channel...
...meeting in the middle without needing a central pivot-point blocking the deep channel, so no single span would need to be more than half the size of the Newcastle bridge. Every part required could arrive by sea and construction wouldn't obstruct river traffic.
Seajet
...
It has always required a bit of judgement when approaching the chain ferry from either direction - the byelaw ' no spinnakers south of the ferry going either way ' always seemed sensible to me for a start - I've been going past - and using - the Cowes floating bridgeFB5 since a boy, so that's at least two generations of yotties.
Re bridges or tunnels you can put in your diaries somewhere between ' ain't gonna happen ' and ' never '.
Let's face it the new ferry is over-ambitious, too big, and that's that.
A near replica of FB5 is the cheapest solution out of the hole the council has dug themselves into.
They may be able to sell FB6 to somewhere like Dartmouth or Falmouth.
The only thing here, and I know any councillor would rather nuke the planet from orbit first, is someone has to admit to a mistake.
Then they and the residents of the IOW - those left after their businesses were shattered by this chromium plated cockup - might be able to get back to 20th Century levels of service - and that's not the old dig about The Island being in a time warp, I love the place - but I always felt it was full of untapped talented people since the 60's, without having basic services knocked out .
One of my favourite true stories is in WWII the Polish destroyer ' Blystowicka ' - Lightning - had barely outrun the Nazi over-run of her native Poland, and was back to her makers Whites of Cowes for a refit.
it is normal to offload ammo etc during refit, but the experienced skipper had seen a German recce' aircraft go past earlier in the day and sensed something was up, so refused to offload ammo.
He was of course right, that night Cowes was hammered by the Luftwaffe - the heavy armament of Blystowicka was the only serious defence of Cowes and put up the sort of fire one would expect from people whose own country had been overrun.
Nevertheless 90 Cowes people died that night.
My father, an RN volunteer aged 18 happened to be on training near Bembridge saw the bombing, and was on reserve firefighting duty expecting to go but for some reaso they were kept back.
He described the scene " there were salvo's of rockets going up from the mainland, guns on the forts blazing away, aircraft on fire in the Solent, you'd think nothing could get through - but they did ".
The young volunteer in the room next to dad was overwhelmed and took his own life with his rifle - dad was taken to the sick room in case he suffered shock on finding his pal.
------------------
What I'm trying to say here is The Island has a noble past in so many ways - hovercaft and flying boats being other supreme examples - the people deserve at least a F Ferry that works before their small businesses are strangled - admit to a mistake and fix it PDQ !
The Polish destroyer Blystowicka is today a museum ship; her crew were given the freedom of Cowes but I don't know if any make visits now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORP_Błyskawica
Re bridges or tunnels you can put in your diaries somewhere between ' ain't gonna happen ' and ' never '.
Let's face it the new ferry is over-ambitious, too big, and that's that.
A near replica of FB5 is the cheapest solution out of the hole the council has dug themselves into.
They may be able to sell FB6 to somewhere like Dartmouth or Falmouth.
The only thing here, and I know any councillor would rather nuke the planet from orbit first, is someone has to admit to a mistake.
Then they and the residents of the IOW - those left after their businesses were shattered by this chromium plated cockup - might be able to get back to 20th Century levels of service - and that's not the old dig about The Island being in a time warp, I love the place - but I always felt it was full of untapped talented people since the 60's, without having basic services knocked out .
One of my favourite true stories is in WWII the Polish destroyer ' Blystowicka ' - Lightning - had barely outrun the Nazi over-run of her native Poland, and was back to her makers Whites of Cowes for a refit.
it is normal to offload ammo etc during refit, but the experienced skipper had seen a German recce' aircraft go past earlier in the day and sensed something was up, so refused to offload ammo.
He was of course right, that night Cowes was hammered by the Luftwaffe - the heavy armament of Blystowicka was the only serious defence of Cowes and put up the sort of fire one would expect from people whose own country had been overrun.
Nevertheless 90 Cowes people died that night.
My father, an RN volunteer aged 18 happened to be on training near Bembridge saw the bombing, and was on reserve firefighting duty expecting to go but for some reaso they were kept back.
He described the scene " there were salvo's of rockets going up from the mainland, guns on the forts blazing away, aircraft on fire in the Solent, you'd think nothing could get through - but they did ".
The young volunteer in the room next to dad was overwhelmed and took his own life with his rifle - dad was taken to the sick room in case he suffered shock on finding his pal.
------------------
What I'm trying to say here is The Island has a noble past in so many ways - hovercaft and flying boats being other supreme examples - the people deserve at least a F Ferry that works before their small businesses are strangled - admit to a mistake and fix it PDQ !
The Polish destroyer Blystowicka is today a museum ship; her crew were given the freedom of Cowes but I don't know if any make visits now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORP_Błyskawica
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
On the other hand, the trams made it in their scheduled time even at peaks, when the buses are held up in traffic. It still feels quite odd to be able to leave Princes Street at 5pm and be in the airport 30 minutes later - you have to allow at least an hour for the bus then.
Lightwave395
Well-Known Member
Politician or IOW Councillor admit to a mistake ? In your dreams...
Just don the teflon overcoat and form another committee to investigate what went wrong (or rather how best to cover their backsides)
Just don the teflon overcoat and form another committee to investigate what went wrong (or rather how best to cover their backsides)
Lightwave395
Well-Known Member
Topcat47
Well-Known Member
IAs a yachtie, I'd rather have the "floating bridge". Can you imagine the chaos if the rope broke?
dom
Well-Known Member
Question is wld you sail beneath it if that Muppet Council had anything to do with it? :ambivalence:
chrishscorp
Well-Known Member
If i used that flying gondola across the Medina in fog, I would be more worried about ending up on the upper car deck of a local boat
Hadenough
Well-Known Member
Nah. What's needed is to knock down that old yacht club just down the road on the west side. Use the site to build a twin span bridge utilising the new breakwater and coming ashore at that ratty area a near the existing queue for the ferry slip. Loadsa problems solved in one :encouragement:
Lightwave395
Well-Known Member
Probably not...!
{151760}
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The old one was still moored in Gosport last Thursday.
