Friday 27 July 2007

Thames Gateway Bridge in doubt

Yesterday the mayor released this statement:

Any delay to the Thames Gateway Bridge is a blow to east London and south east London in particular.[...]The re-opening of the public inquiry will delay bringing the benefits of the Thames Gateway Bridge to an area that sorely needs them.
Yes, they put out a press release starting with the word "any", and published it before the thing it relates to was even news.

The context is the decision by Hazel Blears to re-open the public enquiry, following the publication of the inspector's report. The inspector concluded the bridge would do more harm than good in Bexley and that TfL did inadequate traffic modelling in general. Blears also reports receiving a large amount of correspondence since the original enquiry closed, which she thinks needs to be considered publicly.

If you aren't familiar with it, the Thames Gateway Bridge is a proposed road bridge across the Thames just east of City Airport. It would feature six lanes including two for public transport, linking the proposed East London Transit and Greenwich Waterfront Transit schemes.

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