David Jones wrote:
Dave Arquati wrote:
kytelly wrote:
About 5 years ago there was some proposal to put park lane into a
tunnel and "re-connect" Hyde park to Mayfair. Obviuously this would
be very expensive which I'm sure is why it never proceeded but does
anyone have any other information about it?

Can't say I've heard of it. It does sound rather expensively
pointless - there can't be enough pedestrian traffic between Hyde
Park and Mayfair to warrant such a scheme. I imagine that most
pedestrians on that side of the Park are heading for Marble Arch or
Hyde Park Corner, and for everyone else there are subways which,
albeit not ideal, don't seem to cater for too many people anyway.

You miss the point that the main benefit was supposed to be the
increased area of parkland available. More specifically, to return to
Hyde Park the huge area of park stolen for the benefit of few
motorists. The existing grassed areas between the roadways are not
much used because (i) they are not that pleasant being near the
thundering traffic; (ii) the access to them is not particularly
obvious from within the Park.

I still don't think that such benefits would ever be worth the extreme
costs we're talking about. Hyde Park is huge; the amount of parkland
gained by removing most of Park Lane would be a very small fraction to
add to it. Part of Park Lane would have to be retained in any case - for
servicing and probably for buses (unless we're talking about a tunnel
that can fit double deckers!).

Think of it as paying £X billion (the cost of a an eight-lane tunnel in
central London tall enough for double decker buses) for an area of
parkland smaller than Brompton Cemetery.

--
Dave Arquati
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London