Comment by DaiPlusPlus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DaiPlusPlus | Hacker News Reader

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Or upwards. London has a very low population density because of building height restrictions (now considered archaic, I understand). London has very few tall buildings and Canary Wharf is is closer to downtown Bellevue, WA than it is to Manhatten in terms of scale.

Brits are somewhat opposed to "tower blocks" because they were a poorly-planned top-down social engineering experiment in the postwar years to deal with rehousing the residents of slums and other deprived areas. Modern "high-end living" flats in much taller, aesthetically pleasing, and most importantly: safer, structures are being built, but not at a sufficient pace.

A reasons there hasn't been a total crash yet is because lovely, lower-density houses (think: 3 and 4 story spacious townhouses, not working-class 2-up/2-down terrace houses) are bought up for millions then internally gutted and remodelled into individual, modestly-sized flats to rent - sometimes barely larger than the size of a living room.

Do you think the transport system can handle increased density of upward building? It's not really coping with current levels, and in no way pleasant.

Not in the long-teen, no. There needs to be an expansion of the tube system to improve capacity.

An alternative solution worth investigating would be to ease rush-hour by incentivising, or even restricting, companies from starting at 9am.

I think it's already happening — the bad commutes are incentive enough.

I've been at startup-like tech companies in Shoreditch where it's acceptable to swan into work any time before 11. Another anecdata is the large bank I worked at where it was expected that you would work from home 1-2 days per week.

>Do you think the transport system can handle increased density of upward building?

Depends if the rate of take up of cycling increases IMO. The year on year increases have been pretty consistent and don't seem to be slowing down. Sadiq putting on 'hold' (read cancelled) any new cycling infrastructure is likely to put an end to that though.

Don't forget we've got Crossrail coming later this year as well. That should take some strain off the central line in the mornings at least. Quicker Crossrail 2 get's off the ground the better though as the Northern line is a living hell in the morning. Getting on at Clapham (anywhere) and going north just is a 5 to 15 minute wait.

Crossrail is a massive, very expensive, 15 year project and it will 'take some strain off the central line in the morning'. Crossrail2 may help relieve the northern and Victoria too, but that's with normal growth rates.

The soil beneath London isn't a infinite resource either, Crossrail 1 was threaded in between other underground services, with a margin of about 30cm in one case I believe.

Mayors seem to have pet transport projects, Ken had buses, Boris had bikes, What's Sadiq's?

>What's Sadiq's?

Worryingly he doesn't have one.

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