Crowdfunding: Floating Bicycle Toll Road Along The Thames

Do you still remember the floating bicycle toll road along the Thames? The inventors of the Thames Deckway are starting to do crowdfunding for the floating bicycle toll road project. They say that it is likely to cost more than £600m.

The current plans for the Thames Deckway seem the same as last month’s plans. The projected cost last October was £600m for a 12-kilometer route from Battersea to Canary Wharf. At the moment, the inventors want it to stretch from Battersea to Greenwich instead, a distance of around 17km (11 miles).

If built, the floating platform on the Thames’ south bank will, for a section, run parallel with the East-West cycle superhighway that is currently being built on the river’s north side. The entire 18-mile length is expected to cost just £47m. The original proposal was to charge £1.50 for a single Deckway journey.

A co-inventor of the project, Anna Hill, said: “With the success of this campaign we’re ready to go. We’re now so close to making this happen; we have the engineers, we have the designs and we have a plan”.

According to Anna, the Thames is a resource that is currently being under used, and the Deckway, which would also generate energy through solar cells, could be ready as early as 2019.

Inventors hope the Indiegogo campaign, which was launched last November 5th, will raise £250,000 to develop a master plan, to improve engineering, and to find out how many cyclists will use it.

The Chairman of New London Architecture, Peter Murray said: “The Thames Deckway is inspirational because the Thames has been London’s lifeline throughout history. If you look at images of 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th Century the river was buzzing with activity…today it’s pretty dead by comparison, really, so why don’t we use it for cycling?”

Would you use a cycle toll road along the river? Do you think it is worth £600m?

Would you be involved in financing and part of a crowdfunding project like this?