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Well, there's a reason they named it the Docklands Light Railway! (Large stretches of the original network built in the 1980s ran on elevated track, supported

Well, there's a reason they named it the Docklands Light Railway! (Large stretches of the original network built in the 1980s ran on elevated track, supported on pylons over ground that's a mixture of chalk and clay and tends to waterlog. Heavy rail can be built over and under that part of the Thames, but it has its own special challenges and the DLR was built as the cheapest way of getting commuters in and out of the Canary Wharf office towers, from Tower Gateway and the actual London Underground network to the west. Then from the 1990s onwards mission creep set in ...)

dredmorbius 4y ago
Ha! Absoltuely correct and I'm honoured to be Strossed. Thanks for the, er, bedrock explanation as well.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
its like the lifeline of east london, and it connected large aread of land that used to be borderline slums. Now there are highriae apartments and the fact that they have access to piblic trandport has increased their valuation by billions.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Providing improved transport and transit is amongst the best way of increasing property values. A stellar example is Denver, Colorado, which grew in size tenfold in a decade after a branch line connected it to the Transcontinental Railroad in 1870, becoming the dominant Rocky Mountain region city, a title which might otherwise have gone to Chyenne, Wyoming. It's also something of a two-edged sword: the property value boost makes further transit rights of way far more expensive to acquire. I've noticed in particular that much rail development happens either as greenfield projects within countries as they're first industrialising (UK and US in the 19th century, China in the late 20th), or following a devastating war or other economic setback --- Japan's shinkansen and to a somewhat lesser degree France's TGV are both legacies of WWII. In the US, aside from political opposition from other parts of the transportation sector, it's wealthy landowners who are the most significant obstacle to new development.

dredmorbius 4y ago

Ha! Absoltuely correct and I'm honoured to be Strossed. Thanks for the, er, bedrock explanation as well.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

its like the lifeline of east london, and it connected large aread of land that used to be borderline slums. Now there are highriae apartments and the fact that they have access to piblic trandport has increased their valuation by billions.

dredmorbius 4y ago
Providing improved transport and transit is amongst the best way of increasing property values. A stellar example is Denver, Colorado, which grew in size tenfold in a decade after a branch line connected it to the Transcontinental Railroad in 1870, becoming the dominant Rocky Mountain region city, a title which might otherwise have gone to Chyenne, Wyoming. It's also something of a two-edged sword: the property value boost makes further transit rights of way far more expensive to acquire. I've noticed in particular that much rail development happens either as greenfield projects within countries as they're first industrialising (UK and US in the 19th century, China in the late 20th), or following a devastating war or other economic setback --- Japan's shinkansen and to a somewhat lesser degree France's TGV are both legacies of WWII. In the US, aside from political opposition from other parts of the transportation sector, it's wealthy landowners who are the most significant obstacle to new development.