Bridge over the Irish Sea

[Sebastian Cobb]

It's typical Boris bollocks.  The latest Tory wheeze to try and stymie those terrible separatists in Scotland is to come up with infrastructure projects and label them 'funded by a Westminster' in the manner that projects used to be labelled 'funded by the EU'.  He cares and understands so little about the needs of NI and Scotland that he's latched onto this old nonsense.  He just thinks in terms of the big, flashy grandiose projects that his narcissism and egotism draws him towards.

Plus Facebook full of bridge bullshit while the deportations roll.

[ajsmith2]

[Clatty McCutcheon]

Plus Facebook full of bridge bullshit while the deportations roll.

Boris is a doer.  He thinks big. You just don't understand.

[The Culture Bunker]

Uh-huh - Whitehaven and Barrow are both cut off from the M6 and the route of HS2 by the Lake District National Park, so no motorways or new railway lines could get to them without tunnelling under the park.

Apologies to everyone for going off on tangents, but I do wonder if this is as an impossible hurdle, as there's been a campaign to rebuild the Penrith-Keswick railway almost since it was ripped up in the mid 1970s.

That said, it would have to be a tunnel as on land there's simply too much difficult geography to negotiate if you were going to build a motorway/high speed railway. The stretch of the A66 alongside Lake Bassenthwaite, for instance, is already build on old railway trackbed and there's no space for owt else.

With thought, you couldn't end the bridge at Whitehaven anyways: the town is cramped into a valley between cliffs to the North and South. I suppose somewhere around the Siddick area of Workington would be better - you could run a railway line onto the coast track up to Carlisle, which then avoids the hilariously slow/single line section between Whitehaven and Harrington.

Growing up in Whitehaven, I'm painfully aware of the problems being so distant/unconnected to the rest of the world brings. Same reason they dumped Calder Hall/Sellafield there: if it all went tits up, no fucker would notice or care.

[Glebe]

Your bridge is antagonistic and its makin' me very ahngry.

[SteK]

Apologies to everyone for going off on tangents, but I do wonder if this is as an impossible hurdle, as there's been a campaign to rebuild the Penrith-Keswick railway almost since it was ripped up in the mid 1970s.

That said, it would have to be a tunnel as on land there's simply too much difficult geography to negotiate if you were going to build a motorway/high speed railway. The stretch of the A66 alongside Lake Bassenthwaite, for instance, is already build on old railway trackbed and there's no space for owt else.

With thought, you couldn't end the bridge at Whitehaven anyways: the town is cramped into a valley between cliffs to the North and South. I suppose somewhere around the Siddick area of Workington would be better - you could run a railway line onto the coast track up to Carlisle, which then avoids the hilariously slow/single line section between Whitehaven and Harrington.

Growing up in Whitehaven, I'm painfully aware of the problems being so distant/unconnected to the rest of the world brings. Same reason they dumped Calder Hall/Sellafield there: if it all went tits up, no fucker would notice or care.

Worked at Sellafield for BNFL and one the chaps brought the Whitehaven News in or whatever it was called. This was late 90's and the headline was 'Whitehaven Man On Internet' and the next big story was 'Cow Escapes From Field'.

To be fair I did see a story (not a headline) in the Manchester Evening News once - 'Chip-pan Fire In Salford'

[Thursday]

It's a shame it's basically impossible though, because it would be useful when we get a united Ireland and Scottish independence.

[The Culture Bunker]

Worked at Sellafield for BNFL and one the chaps brought the Whitehaven News in or whatever it was called. This was late 90's and the headline was 'Whitehaven Man On Internet' and the next big story was 'Cow Escapes From Field'.

To be fair I did see a story (not a headline) in the Manchester Evening News once - 'Chip-pan Fire In Salford'

I did a few work placements on the WH during my youth. Sounds like you picked up a copy on a big news week there.

[SteK]

It's a shame it's basically impossible though, because it would be useful when we get a united Ireland and Scottish independence.

And 65 quid to see the Doc, road tax 5 times higher than Road Tax, car insurance same, and worse, the price of plastic bags.....

[Gurke and Hare]

If it's going to happen at all [spoiler: it isn't] then it would only have any point, however slight, if it were a brand new high speed railway from Glasgow to Dublin. Otherwise it would take six hours at least to do it by train, and everyone would carry on flying.

[SteK]

If it's going to happen at all [spoiler: it isn't] then it would only have any point, however slight, if it were a brand new high speed railway from Glasgow to Dublin. Otherwise it would take six hours at least to do it by train, and everyone would carry on flying.

More chance of the Wee Three (Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal) joining the six-counties for for the United Nine, and the province on Ulster Shall Be One. An Alternative Ulster, take it and grab it's yours. Alter your native Ulster, ignore the bores and their laws. Alter your native land.

[Jittlebags]

I think a couple of big ramps one either side of the Irish Sea would do the job. Just rev up your engine, then do an Eddie Kidd special. Lorry Drivers - it could form part of your HGV license test.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Does seem that some Johnson supporters will support anything: https://twitter.com/599bt/status/1226877611730767872

[Paulie Walnuts]

independent Scotland

[Sebastian Cobb]

Presumably the biggest traffic between Ireland and the UK is freight? Would lorries even be able to cross the thing with the wind?

[BlodwynPig]

Munitions

[bgmnts]

Can we all stop worrying about whether this bridge could actually be built or if any vehicle could actually cross it or what the point of this is when boats exist please? Lets just all support this multi-billion dollar project and if anything goes wrong its poor people who will pay the cost anyway so fuck it.

[buzby]

Presumably the biggest traffic between Ireland and the UK is freight? Would lorries even be able to cross the thing with the wind?

The last time something like this came up was the EuroBridge, one of the final 4 proposals in the process that resulted in the Channel Tunnel. Their answer to this was to enclose the deck in a tube, with the road split into 4 levels (a 2-lane and 3 lane level in each direction):



However, turning a bridge deck into a fully-enclosed tunnel brings the problems that you get with road tunnels, chiefly emergency services access in the event of an accident or breakdown (note there are no hard shoulders in their illustration) and evacuation in the event of a fire. Imagine the Mont Blanc tunnel fire, but 70m above the sea enclosed in a 22 mile long steel tube that's suspended from GRP cables.

It's longest suspended span was going to be 2.8 miles, which is still 900m longer than the longest suspended span to date (the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge in Japan, which opened in 1998)

[Sebastian Cobb]

Cheers Busby! Isn't a feature of a normal suspended bridge that wind is allowed to pass through it? So you're going to have to beef up your design to deal both the weight of an enclosed concrete tunnel and the fact wind won't pass through it?

[buzby]

Cheers Busby! Isn't a feature of a normal suspended bridge that wind is allowed to pass through it? So you're going to have to beef up your design to deal both the weight of an enclosed concrete tunnel and the fact wind won't pass through it?

The road deck sections were going to be cast from Estercrete, concrete reinforced with polyester fibres that was going to be a quarter of the weight of traditional reinforced concrete. The outer tube sections were going to be cast from Superferrolo, a lightweight concrete developed by Shell with stainless steel reinforcement that was supposedly resistant to the saline atomosphere and maintenance-free. Neither of these materials were developed sufficiently to find any practical use after the Eurobridge project failed (relying on the use of advanced, unproven technologies was partly why Eurobridge lost out in the selection process).

Bridge decks are designed with aerodynamics in mind, particularly for suspension bridges. Usually this involves fitting moulded GRP cladding onto the side snad undersides to smooth out airflow and try and make the deck 'lift neutral' (i.e. generating neither lift or downforce) in high winds. A cylinder is not exactly the most aerodynamic shape as wind speed increases:

[Blumf]

All this talk of piddly little bridges, Boris is so low energy, sad.

Needs to think bigger! Needs to think about damming up the whole fucking North Sea!!!

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/giant-dams-could-protect-millions-from-rising-north-sea

A Dutch government scientist has proposed building two mammoth dams to completely enclose the North Sea and protect an estimated 25 million Europeans from the consequences of rising sea levels as a result of global heating.

Sjoerd Groeskamp, an oceanographer at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, said a 475km dam between north Scotland and west Norway and another 160km one between west France and south-west England was "a possible solution".
...
The authors acknowledge that over time, their project would eventually turn much of the North Sea into a vast tide-free freshwater lake, radically changing its ecosystem.

Fuckin' get it DONE!!

[Ambient Sheep]

Wow!

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

lol yeah build a giant dam that'll work until waves come

[Darles Chickens]

Doesn't that effectively turn the entire UK and Ireland into a giant flood plain for waters from the north/west?

[Zetetic]

Only one way to find out.

[jamiefairlie]

Doesn't that effectively turn the entire UK and Ireland into a giant flood plain for waters from the north/west?

Plenty of mountains in the not-shit parts, it will be like the Highland clearances in reverse.

[dissolute ocelot]

Re sealing off the North Sea/recreating Doggerland, I can't imagine the Dutch and Germans would be keen on losing all their sea ports. Building a dyke across the lower Thames would be far cheaper. I can hardly see the British government committing to this kind of thing just to protect Lincolnshire, Hull, and Newcastle. If you're that worried about lowering the sea level, dig a big hole in the Sahara.

Still, this kind of thing is fun. What about Atlantropa, the plan to seal off the Mediterranean sea?

[dissolute ocelot]

Problem with the second option is that both Whitehaven and Barrow are complete pains in the arse to get to by road. State of the railway isn't much better, either. Still, my fellow coastal Cumbrians were fucking dumb enough to vote Tory en masse, so I can imagine the idea being flagged up as a (in reality never going to happen) concept to convince the locals that their post-industrial hellhole towns might have something coming their way beyond the usual shipments of hard drugs.

This is why we need a causeway across Morecambe Bay. If it was properly designed you could probably flip a switch and flood the lower-lying portion of Cumbria if it continues to be uppity.

[Gurke and Hare]

This utter fucking bullshit idea being rolled out again.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/14/rail-bosses-revive-plan-to-build-tunnel-from-scotland-to-northern-ireland

Is this just something someone has to propose in February now?

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

I hope they do it, I hope the entire thing caves in during its maiden journey and drowns everyone on board