The Channel Bridge

build it and THEY will come...

This must seem to be a brilliant idea to Boris. What could cap this from him?

To think some people think he would be a good PM.

Monorail!

he,ll probably connect it to boris island airport in the thames,has he finished that yet

This is such an epic joke ! Does Boris know we already have planes, a ferry, and trains..... and what about the massively expensive failure of the London Garden Bridge ?!!! He is such a bloody **** ! This b@llocks is so dumb. I have a better idea, why not just drain the Channel ?

after the swamp of course I hope

that's boris all over takes up every ounce of oxygen in the country discussing breaking away from a place where he now wants to spend billions upon billions  to join us up to a continent, ,in a way he never advocated when we were partners for the last 50 years, why doesn't he advocate bridges,tunnels to join us up with Ireland,isle of man,white.jersey etc
like his mate gove they just love the limelight ,if you put gove in charge of pelican crossings they,d be in the news ,front page of the papers everyday

This would be a really good one if it was April 1st. Typical Boris, likes to get his name in the news.

Just shows how rubbish most of our politicians are when somebody like Boris actually holds one of the main positions in our government.

The English Channel is the busiest shipping area in the world.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong ?

Glad you lot weren't around in Brunel's time.

Somebody suggests building something to boost trade and the economy, and you just can't stop yourselves: "Ridiculous proposal - there might be problems." "Can't do it - there might be an accident." "Who needs a bridge across the Avon anyway?"

Good on you, Boris. We're Europeans, and that's got sod all to do with subscribing to a smug bureaucracy in Brussels.

get it up sharpish before it has to slalom between a 1000 wind turbines

screaming so why has no one decided to do it before ,or when the tunnel was built, all the gear,skills,engineering were in place to do another rd,rail tunnel if required,and a bridge was surely investigated before the tunnel was built and decided against

I doubt whether a bridge was seriously investigated before. It's only this century that all those bridges of similar or much, much greater length have been successfully completed in the Far East:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_bridges

The tunnel idea has been around far longer. Even the 1880 project got half way there, before the British government pulled the plug (as it were) owing to invasion fears. So the current version is really only the completion of a project first given the go-ahead when the engineering know-how for a bridge wasn't in place.

Must admit I thought a tunnel was much more barmy and now we wouldn't be without it.

The Garden Bridge WAS daft. How many bridges over the Thames do we need??

Let's go for it (tall shipping, high winds permitting).

Carillion would be my choice.

Yes. The garden bridge was daft. As you say, it wasn't exactly filling a gap in the market. This is different. Nobody would ever look at a 20-mile stretch of water now and consider digging underneath it (hence those 100-mile bridges in China).

The way companies like Carillion are suddenly unable to raise the finance, I wonder whether we've started a debt deflation - the worst sort, where nobody is willing to lend any longer at virtually zero per cent, and all those badly run companies which have survived on cheap lending are going to be found out. I can see governments all over the world being forced to print money on an epic scale for projects like a Channel bridge, just to keep the economy moving and the population in work.

Of course, the end result of that, a decade on, is 15% inflation and 10% interest rates, but at least houses will be half the price they are now.

Go for it, Boris!

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Hope Teresa the appeaser doesn't get to hear about this. She'll probably offer to pay for it

Will there be an Express Lane for Child Refugees ?

never burn your bridges

Would trump Donalds wall.

don cant get it up

It's like all big projects (with the possible exception of Barbara's folly, the Humber bridge), they look too expensive to build but once you have them you can't do without.
We have no back up should something serious happen to the channel tunnel.

^^ apart from ferries and aircraft.

We are an island and don't want to be connected in any way with Europe , it only encourages them to stick their neb in !

I suppose it will cost us millions into the future just to ensure that France is able to police its borders

It really is quite incredible , millions of pounds given to France when all they have to do is lock up illegal immigrants
They can't even do that can they,  no ? No physical part of England should be connected to France

I can see problems, French set off over here driving on the right. We set off over there driving on the left...............

It's nice not to be part of Europe , separated by the sea

Good point, cooperman.

The obvious answer is to build two bridges.

I was thinking services at the halfway point

A Bridge Too Far?

The English Channel is the busiest shipping area in the world.

Easily solved, divert all the shipping that now goes through the channel to go around the other side of Britain.

I don't know if that would suit the Russians when they want to sail through, they might just blow it out of the water to save going around.

^Neither sentence to be taken seriously.

LOL at SBTW and Cooperman.

cooperman
20 Jan 18 07:55
Joined: 27 Apr 07 | Topic/replies: 8,727 | Blogger: cooperman's blog
^^ apart from ferries and aircraft.

Good to know we have all that spare capacity sitting around doing nothing if it could cope with the volume of freight going through the tunnel.

https://www.getlinkgroup.com/uk/group/operations/traffic-figures/

If you build it, commerce increases to take advantage of the new opportunities.

To say it's unnecessary, because we currently get by with a tunnel, shipping and air freight, is like saying computers are unnecessary because we have pencils and logarithm tables; and the internet's just a pointlessf luxury, when we already have books and newspapers and a postal service.

But provide the hardware, and people come up with all sorts of new ways to exploit it. As Foinavon said, before you know it, going back to the way things were becomes unthinkable.

I would recommend doing a so called cost-benefit analysis (economists do them) before you start construction I.e. do the benefits to your country outweigh the costs? I suspect it would be very unprofitable, but I haven't done any calculations Benefits would obviously have been greater if you didn't already have a tunnel, and wouldn't need customs and immigration checks.

Yes, that's a good point Mr. Anderson. We have to suppose that such a project would take 20 years in the planning and construction so we have to project what the trade situation might be that far into the future. Will the current infrastructure have chronic under-capacity by then? A 20 mile bridge also has drawbacks in that it can not be used for road transport in really bad weather, such as high winds. Logically the model would be the Oresund bridge which has combined rail and motorway decks, or perhaps rail only.
It would be pointless to build the bridge only to make the tunnel uneconomic so the transit volume has to be there first.

I have travelled over the Öresund bridge many times There's a railway deck beneath the motorway deck on the bridge-part of the connection. The bridge is 8 km long, but then there's also 4 km artificial island, and 4 km tunnel under the sea at the Danish shore (where the car- and railtunnels are beside each other). And yes, the bridge has been profitable Took 5 years to build it.

I,m sure the French farmers,lorry drivers would love such an easy target to barricade on their quarterly strikes,on the upside the French would spend that much spend that much time picketing the bridge isis and al queda would have to wait in the queue

What about the ships?