Stephen Rees's blog

Bridge detail 2007_0503, originally uploaded by Stephen Rees.

The construction of the new Olympic Speed Skating Oval meant that a section of River Road (between No 2 and Hollybridge) has been closed for a while. The new road diverts traffic around the back of the oval, so I went down there this morning to take a gander.

Well, first thing is that it is not finished. A new bridge has gone in over the slough next to Hollybridge. This is wide enough for four lanes of traffic and has very wide sidewalks. So they are designing for a lot of people to be coming out of here after events. I suspect that more than this road will have to change to accommodate the crowds.

The next thing I noticed was that the new road will obviously be four lanes wide one day. The rest of River Road is only two.

It becomes clear from looking at the City web page that the transportation decisions are still being made. There are, for example, a couple of options on how to deal with the interchange at Number Two Road, which may well explain the current unsatisfactory state of the western end, which is clearly intended to be temporary. Unsatisfactory too in the sense that this is the only document you get when you hit the “Transportation” link as though this were the only issue. Not that I doubt that they have not thought about how this is going to work, but as usual, there is not a great deal being made public at this stage.

And this is an illustration from the City Web site of what the road and Oval building will look like. There’s lots of pretty pictures for the river side of the development which will be a park and housing. The interface with the existing transportation network is much less exciting and harder to make pretty and appealing, so I understand why it isn’t there. But it should be.