please empty your brain below
dg writes: There are no stairs down to the river, only to the riverside path. The existing staircase will be replaced, but will no longer hang out over the water.
There has been work going on in the river between the Blackfriars bridges for some time - I had assumed it was part of the Thameslink work, but that was completed some time ago and the work in the river is still going on.
Reference is made to the section of Cycle Superhighway and Thames Path along "Bazalgette Walk", a street name which Googling fails to turn up in any context except this project. Does anyone know where exactly this is? (As a regular user of the Superhighway it would be useful to know........) Naming any part of a cycle route "Walk" is a hostage to fortune - I was stopped recently by a PCSO for cycling on Sutton Walk, which is clearly signposted as a shared use cycle route between Waterloo station and the South Bank - the street name being one of his many increasingly desperate arguments that it was a "footway" (actually a term legally defined as an area reserved for pedestrians alongside a carriageway).
I have actually used Blackfriars Pier. During a Tube strike some years ago they were running a free service from there to the Waterloo Pier. With all the casting off, turning round, boarding one at a time etc, it wasn't much faster than walking (this was before Boris Bikes) but I used it for the novelty of a direct public transport service between those points - something that has been missing since they diverted the 76 bus in 1992 to go the long way round.
The Victorians did things properly, realising that a civilised society needs readily available public loos everywhere.
Sadly, the bean counters we're lumbered with today only see them as inconveniences and have closed virtually the whole lot.
But where do they expect people to go when they need to go?
Sadly, though, this is probably an unfortunate side-effect of the general flattening of wage levels. Toilet cleaners have to be paid the minimum wage, and that makes it hard to fund them out of rates, much of which are paid by other people on or near the same minimum wage.
1. I still have no idea where Bazalgette Walk is
2. At low tide you get a very clear view of the Fleet outfall from the top of the ramp to the new pier.
3. Contrary to Gerry's fears, there are new public toilets on the Embankment right opposite the new pier (presumably replacing the ones opposite the old pier, which have been closed)
dg writes: Not quite. The new steps and lift are on the eastern flank of Blackfriars Bridge, so you'll still have to walk under the railway bridge.
i.e. currently the only link between EW and NS superhighways will be diverted for four years - not sure how as the only other ramp up to Blackfriars bridge currently has two busy lanes of traffic - perhaps that will be shut to traffic instead!
1. The phasing of the lights at the top of the ramp on the south slip is very badly arranged for cyclists, who have to stop two or even three times to negotiate the junction
2 you can't get to the south slip from Temple Avenue or Carmelite Street
3 the south slip is steeper.
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