Plan to put turn disused Tube lines into cycle paths under London - but could it work? (+ video)

MailRail isn't really a goer either as although the tunnels are in pretty good condition the majority of the sorting offices at ground level have been sold off and consequently access would be extremely difficult to arrange. The tunnels are small, but perfectly adequate to walk along, they'd have to be one way though...

Apart from its putting the wrong group of people underground, its got a couple of other issues IMHO:
Whilst reusing disused Underground tunnels is a nice esquisse, once thought through it just doesn't stand up under scrutiny:
The turnout from Green Park to the new Jubilee Line Extension tunnels is some way beyond the station, so you'd need to build a new street level access building - the Jubilee Line is about 15m deep there (ish) - the land is pricey. Thinking about I think the split is somewhere between Green Park (the park itself) and Parliament Square.
The disused Jubilee Line tunnels don't go to Aldwych (the Fleet Line nearly did, but then they didn't extend that beyond CharingX) - you'll need to build new tunnels, it could be in SCL, but I'd suggest that there'd need to be at least 1 intermediate construction shaft between CharingX and Aldwych.
There's no step-free route from street to platforms at Aldwych, so you'd need to allow also for a new lift shaft from the foot of the existing (disused) lifts to the platforms.
The tunnels don't reach Holborn station (so the same thing as at Green Park...)
To do this you'd need a Transport Work Act Order, which takes about a year....
I reckon you're heading beyond £250-300m+ (excluding property costs) for this scheme.

Great tourist attraction, walking route in the winter, helpful for short-haul cyclists

CO2=320 for a bike? Where does that come from? Last time I checked bikes didn't create any carbon dioxide. Did we include the taxi driver's breath (and farts) in this equation too?

There are hundreds of disused railway lines throughout the UK that were closed by Beeching in the 1960s. They could be converted into cycle tracks that would form a nationwide network for Britain's cyclists.

They would get cyclists from town to town while keeping them safe by being off of main roads. However, would the government be prepared to put up the money?

Fresh air, wind in your hair at one with the elements... Oh.
More how can we get these darn weirdos on two wheels off our roads plan. Dicks.

It's obvious neither the designers nor the outfit that doled out the prize have given the least amount of thought to the potential costs of such a hare-brained scheme (which is probably even dafter than the nutty Skycycle and Thames Deckway ideas).

The cost of refurbishing a single abandoned tube station would dwarf that of *all* of the current cycle superhighway projects that have just been given the go ahead by TfL, never mind the cost of installing elevators and creating infrastructure for cycling on.

It would be so expensive that they would have to charge users, and no one on a bike in their right mind would pay to have their journey so disrupted.

The designers also include the science fiction fantasy of 'kinetic paving at stations, which would use footfall to generate energy'.

At present it's a very inefficient technology (an average person might walk 150 million steps in a lifetime - in theory only enough to power the average family home for three weeks) which would also be so expensive that the outlay would never be recouped in several lifetimes. And ignores the fact that extremely inefficient fossil fuel-guzzling motoring continues unabated at surface level.

As well as side-stepping the primary needs of most people who want to cycle, the scheme ignores, as did the sorry Skycycle, the need to urgently address the externalities of motoring, including pollution, congestion, death and injury and environmental damage.

If there were an underground tunnel that was set up for me to cycle at 20mph+ ... from near the start of my journey, to near where I want to get to ... with no traffic lights or large motor vehicle traffic (or any other obstructions*) to get in my way and slow me down ... then I would use it in a heartbeat.

* I tend NOT to find even pretty sizeable numbers of other cyclists an obstruction - there's generally a reasonable way past/through them (and perhaps there could be an expectation of travel on the left unless you need to overtake)

Thanks for the links Gizmo. It would seem to me that the tunnels are probably just that little too short to justify getting down the them from street level.

In principle, the idea of using these tunnels would be great, but the route they offer have to be worth the effort to get down into them.

They need to show a map of eligible tunnels to see if this is a goer or not.

The design agency's PR agency has done a good job in getting this much coverage, well done!

This is a complete non-starter, it's faster to walk these stretches above ground with the bike, than it would be to take the elevator down to even start riding it...

'The Village Idiot of Urban Innovation'

http://www.copenhagenize.com/2015/02/the-village-idiot-of-urban-innovati...

Or just Architecture/Design companies getting lots of free publicity for minimal effort?

I'll post the same thing I've been posting under every story covering this. Because the design agency are basically wrong. There are no suitable tunnels for this.

The Jubilee lines from Green Park to Charing Cross are often in use a turn-back when there's disruption east of Green Park. Even if they were disconnected, the available tunnels wouldn't, of course, actually reach Green park. You'd need brand new shafts down to reach the tunnels.

Aldwych to Holborn is maybe a little more promising, but that's only about 500m, and you're still going to want a separate access route to the one used by the tube at Holborn, so that's another massive shaft.

At Goodge Street and Stockwell you've got the deep level air raid shelters, which are 370m long. The entrances are not at the ends of them (on the standard designs, they're at approx. 1/4 and 3/4 plus an additional access from the station platforms), so you've not got 370m of usable tunnel- the distance between accesses is closer to 200m.

Sounds like a truly daft idea for all the comments given about access, distance & practicality.

They'd be better used as a place to put city planners who travel everywhere in the back of taxis with their noses buried in 50 shades of (tarmac) grey.

I think the best way to transport people underground is on a long tube shaped carriage, possibly on rails with defined stop points along the tunnel's length.

I used to walk through Greenwich foot tunnel every day, which I think is what they've used in that video to show how it would look.

God it was dull.

Look, we already have plenty of space for cycling on the surface. We just need to reallocate it.

I'm getting pretty sick of these vastly expensive 'innovative' ideas that pretend to be for cycling, which seem to be less about making cycling safe and convenient, and more about protecting every square metre of roadspace allocated to motor traffic.

This isn't an engineering problem, it's a political one.

It's a great idea - warm, dry, etc - but there simply aren't enough tunnels to make it worthwhile.

And they'd undoubtedly have a speed limit and be shared-space with pedestrians anyway (see the Greenwich Foot Tunnel.)

Yeah, not sure that'll fly. How far beneath the surface are underground lines? That's a descent (that's got to be done whilst you eyes are adjusting), and and ascent. Whilst not solving the age-old problem of cycle paths that are too fragmented and don't go anywhere useful (although maybe they do go somewhere useful, idk).

Conceptually, and possibly predictably, I'd far rather motor traffic shoved underground. Shoving pedestrians underground into dark tunnels is stupid. The surface is for people to walk on - cycling can be there too, but only because you have to be a real idiot to seriously bother pedestrians.