B3: Boris's Barmy Bridge

[Slick]

Aerifoil shaped I guess.
£££££££££££££££££££

Ahh, I think the new Queensferry Crossing had some fancy innovation to reduce closure to high sided vehicle. Don't think you could extrapolate that to the channel though.

 

[Slick]

Why not?

I assume the forces will be too great on the Channel. It's windy on the east coast but it's not the channel. I admittedly have made some assumptions.

 

[Slick]

No, I am talking about people driving vehicles through a tunnel.

I know a couple of posters have put forward suggestions for distance but I reckon it would be zero.

 

[Tim Hall]

Another point I picked up from the Radio 4 interview was the bloke saying by the time it was built, ships would be autonomous so bashing into it would be much less likely.

 

[Tim Hall]

I don't think the lovable chubby hedge dweller was actually countenancing a bridge. He was using it to illustrate that there are other ways to connect our island to France that should be considered.

Perhaps some kind if customs union or free trade organisation. I don't know if such a thing has been tried before.

 

[lazybloke]

Another point I picked up from the Radio 4 interview was the bloke saying by the time it was built, ships would be autonomous so bashing into it would be much less likely.

Unless hijacked and deliberately crashed into bridge supports

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Unless hijacked and deliberately crashed into bridge supports

My money is on the bridge. Unless the ship is full of explosives.

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

This kind of large public works project improving infrastructure will never catch on.

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

I'm interested as to what ways. other than bridge, ferry, tunnel and aeroplane.
And phone.
And swimming.

This man has an idea

 

[mjr]

Nope. To ensure free passage of shipping in a very busy waterway, it being the main sea route into/out of the Baltic. Aircraft fly over the bridge all the time. Lovely view.

I'm pretty sure it was to avoid fouling the airport approach paths. There are suspension spans in the bridge that were intended for shipping but, unsurprisingly, many ships do use the Drogden strait over the tunnel instead of aiming for the gaps under the spans. Malmö-Travemünde ferries are shown on maps as going under the bridge still, but I don't know whether they really do.

Full length rail tunnels would be safer.

I think we've already got those?

 

[mjr]

Another point I picked up from the Radio 4 interview was the bloke saying by the time it was built, ships would be autonomous so bashing into it would be much less likely.

I bet someone said the same about the original Severn Bridge...

(cc-by-SA by John Thorn on wikimedia commons)

 

[Cuchilo]

Another point I picked up from the Radio 4 interview was the bloke saying by the time it was built, ships would be autonomous so bashing into it would be much less likely.

I was listening to radio 2 on my way to york ( only station i could find while doing 70mph) There was talk of there being much larger bridges in china etc and that ships dont bump into stationary objects they bump into other ships .
The larger ships are much like planes , on auto pilot . The captain gets involved if he needs too .

 

[mjr]

Another thing that puzzles me about why this idea was being taken seriously by anyone is that the channel tunnel's not at capacity (anyone know how far off it is? I fail to understand from https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/channel-tunnel-capacity.140651/ ) and it seems like it's often the border controls on the road shuttle which are the bottleneck.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

Another thing that puzzles me about why this idea was being taken seriously by anyone is that the channel tunnel's not at capacity (anyone know how far off it is? I fail to understand from https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/channel-tunnel-capacity.140651/ ) and it seems like it's often the border controls on the road shuttle which are the bottleneck.

Last time I used it it was well oversubscribed and they didn't seem to know the capacity of the train, we had to reverse back up the ramp and get onto the next train as the one we'd been instructed to get on was full.

Anyway I saw an engineer writing that it was perfectly possible to engineer a bridge in that situation, doesn't mean it isn't a daft idea but it is possible.

 

[Drago]

Reading various news stories this week it would seem the tunnel has anywhere from a third to half capacity spare. However, running at full theoretical capacity is unachievable due to breakdowns, weather at each end, the need to alter schedules for maintenance, security incidents, industrial action etc. Taking such variables into consideration the actual, usuable capacity remaining would be about half that, so 17-25%. Not vast, but not likely to be gobbled up in the immediate future.

That's not to say that if the mystical bridge were built it wouldnt stimulate more traffic than already exists anyway.

This week the DUP are asking for a bridge or tunnel betwixt Norn Iron and Scotland now.