"Bruce" wrote:

"Mizter T" wrote:
[snip]
The 'we won't pay for it' - 'we'll provide upfront funding' - 'well, maybe
we'll end up paying for a bit of it' shift is kinda amusing - Boris might
eventually come to the realisation that fancy wordplay alone cannot make
things happen for free.

The same thing happened to all the various Olympic construction
packages. Many of these were supposed to be financed wholly or partly
by private enterprise - notably the athlete's village and the media
centre. But the private sector wasn't remotely interested.

I demur from that characterisation of events - the private sector were
interested until the credit crunch kicked in (and at the most inopportune
moment in terms of the timing).


So it is with the cable car.

snip

It's perhaps slightly peculiar that there's all those mentions of
vehicular
river crossing options appended to the press release, when the cable car
obviously isn't going to cater for that demand, but I suppose that might
be
in anticipation of questions being asked as to why the cable car is
(supposedly) going ahead whilst the thorny issue of other new river
crossings remains up in the air.

The cable car is going ahead because it is a quick fix that might just
be ready in time ... might.

Hmm, I wouldn't say it's a quick fix because it doesn't really address any
of the issues


Contrast that with the proposed East London River Crossing - a road
bridge to replace the Woolwich Ferry. ELRC has been on the cards
since the 1970s, but still hasn't been started, largely because the
road network to the south of ELRC doesn't have the capacity to take
the expected traffic.