Bridges in areas of natural beauty

breadmonkey

Hi folks,

Doing a project for college at the moment involving the conceptual design for a railway bridge through an area of "outstanding natural beauty".

The project is based on a part of the alignment for a new high speed rail line, HS2, in the UK. From reading around a bit, it's pretty clear that there is a lot of opposition to line from residents in this area.

The max extent of the bridge is 1.2km and it passes over a river valley. I was wondering if anyone could point me to similar projects i.e. longish span bridges in environmentally sensitive areas?

A few links if anyone is interested:

http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/rail/pi/highspeedrail/hs2ltd/

http://www.cpre.org.uk/campaigns/transport/rail/highspeed2

http://www.chilternsaonb.org/caring/highspeed2.html

http://www.hs2actionalliance.org/

QuimWedge

I seem to remember there being mixed feelings about the sky bridge when they first built that back in 1995. I don't think it was an area of natural beauty but I could be wrong. It differs in one major aspect: it directly benefits the local community

Obviously the local residents are unhappy as the rail link will not directly benefit them. Therefore I would look more closely at the motives the opposition have, do they really have the best interests of the environment at heart?

Then of course you need to consider what the actual benefits are: Do we really need to be able to travel from Birmingham to London 10 minutes faster? What economic value can be attributed to those extra ten minutes? Clearly these are questions of economics and not engineering.

For me I see a large scale investment in the country's infrastructure. Which is even harder to put a value on. I think we need to put a bigger emphasis on legacy when we are talking about large projects like this as it is only too easy to carried away with the numbers directly in front of us.

Sorry, getting a bit carried away...