Sunday 1 January 2012

Cow Lane Bridge

Great timelapse video here.

I've been campaigning about this area; dangerous narrow road with no footpath, for over 5 years. There are two bridges, the video shows one has been widened (as part of changes to Reading Station), will have to check whats happened to the other one.

5 comments:

GIDEON MACK said...

brilliant.

Adrian Windisch said...

It is staggering. What would normally take months done in a few hours.

howard thomas said...

Its only by chance that nobody has been killed on this road. Vehicles have hit the bridge at the point where people used to wait for a gap. RBC would never have done anything about it and we are fortunate that Network Rail are doing the job as part of the big rail scheme.
Worth noting though Adrian that the Caversham Road bridge was done in a similar time frame last year, due no doubt to the need to open the rail tracks as soon as possible.
This is the normal way, but still very , very good.

Christine said...

The other bridge will be replaced in 2014, according to all the press releases/news articles/website blurbs.

The concept of building the replacement bridge near the site over some months and then installing it in one concentrated burst is inded, as Howard suggests, due to the need to take possession of the railway for as little time as possible. That is also why such major engineering works are timed to minimise disruption to the rail-using travelling public.

RBC would have loved to widen Cow Lane by replacing the bridges long long ago and for many years. But the necessary millions of pounds have never been forthcoming in government grant. But RBC could and has lobbied Governments, Network Rail, and all else involved for the very significant upgrade of capacity at Reading station - which includes upgrading the Cow Lane bridges. One fascinating fact about Reading station was not that it was necessarily short of platforms - but it was short of line space either side so's there could be a big enough safety gap between trains. Quite a lot of the upgrade is addressing just that.

Adrian Windisch said...

Christine, it would have been possible for cars and pedestrians to pass through both bridges safely without spending millions.

Just a traffic light controlling the second bridge would have done it.