h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

15. People who know how to design anything simply, efficiently, unfussily, and in a way that the people who use them will find suitable and convenient.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-31943360
Is there a law or regulation that bans straight bridges across the Thames now? That first one is utterly stupid. The route it takes is beyond pointless. Why walk 20 yards when you can walk 100 seems to be the rationale for it. Or perhaps we're doing this just because we can.

I don't get it.

That does look quite silly, but it may be a matter of perspective (or lack of perspective in the artwork).

I suspect those curvy bits have quite a bit of elevation change to get the bridge span above the height of seagoing vessels. Those loops are switchbacks to keep the bridge grade below that required for wheelchair access. Looking carefully, I see stair steps cutting across the loops.

The seagoing vessel explanation doesn't apply here because this is upstream of most of the major London bridges (I think it'll be to the west of Vauxhall Bridge), and none of those allow anything with much height under them.

The wheelchair ramp is a good point. I'm not intimate with the lay of the land where this bridge is to be built so I'll reserve judgement on that, but it seems like there ought to be a way of achieving that without an extensive detour.

I noticed the stairs in that top picture, but those are not something I'd be too inclined (geddit? ) to use these days. My knees don't care for flights of stairs any more.

Most people are inherently lazy. If a landscaper or a designer puts a decorative, but unnecessary, corner in a path, or simply makes an angled corner rather than a curved one because it's cheaper to lay the concrete that way, people will cut the corner and walk across the grass. There are instances of that all around this apartment complex, and every other one like it. Very few people (and we're talking about busy Londoners in this instance) are going to be pleased about having to spend a minute getting from A to B when they could do the same journey in a matter of seconds, and I don't think too many will be happy about the option of climbing stairs either.

There do seem to be some restrictions regarding the height across the river. I found the competition website.

~~~~~~~
"The conundrum of creating a bridge that can be readily used by cyclists and pedestrians alike, that also provides adequate headroom for river traffic, is at the heart of the challenge and because the engineering and construction challenges inherent in the brief will require innovation and exceptional talent, the Jury Panel will be aided by a Technical Panel, which will assess the functionality and buildability aspects of each design."

....

"Comply with the Disability Discrimination Act; ensuring it is accessible to all."
~~~~~~~
http://www.nepbridgecompetition.co.uk/the-brief.html

It could be worse...

http://i.imgur.com/4HjMsNW.jpg Circle bridge at Yoshi Springs resort near Kyoto, Japan.

Then there was this proposed bridge in Singapore.

http://yawningbread.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/pic_201007_21.jpg

"We need a bridge everyone can use, that's no lower than the bridges either side of it and which isn't impossible to build".

They need a transporter beam.

Or a

I like it. Over here we often have a long ramp up to pedestrian bridges, but usually there is a flight of stairs too for those who don't want to take the long way round. This looks merely as though it's being inclusive and giving access to as many people as possible.

Comply with the Disability Discrimination Act; ensuring it is accessible to all.
be interesting to see one that covers...gephyrophobia...Gephydrophobia or Gephysrophobia sufferers

I have a cousin with that.

She once, in a full blown panic attack, backed her car down this bridge during rush hour traffic. This picture doesn't show the high levels of industrial traffic, including 18 wheelers, that cross this bridge constantly.

http://texasfilmscout.com/duofilms/New%20Saturday/Sam%20Houston%20Tollway%20Ship%20Channel%20bridge/slides/L1150230.html

16. Any kind of regulation regarding toilets in bars and music venues in Texas.

During the years I've lived here, and drank here, I've been surprised at the level of, ahem, facilities in bars. I can reel off the names of a dozen or more bars, pubs and venues, some former, some still extant, which have khazis that are, if not exactly disgusting (although one or two have been), hardly fit for the purpose.

There's one I go to regularly, for instance, and one I don't any more (it closed down because the owner of the land sold it to make way for yet another high-rise in Austin ), both of which are/were busy pubs, and yet they only have/had one toilet each. I don't mean one gents, I mean *one toilet*. One room about the size of your average domestic smallest room, with one urinal and one throne, and a lock on the door (which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't).

For a pub. A place that sells beer. And gets crowded. This is not an unusual thing to find in pubs and bars around here.

Last night was a new low, though. I went to a place which someone I used to order beer from when he worked for a distributor has recently opened. It's on Sixth Street, the drinking/music/entertainment centre of Austin, so it's likely to get busy, although it's a bit more up-market than a lot of the other places, and it's at the far end, away from most of the rowdiness and bedlam.

I needed to splash my boots so I went to find the gents. I pushed open the door and there was the same kind of setup as described above, except this time there's no throne, just two urinals. I don't know what you're supposed to do if you need a Tom .

Any road up. There's a bloke at the other urinal, and he's finishing up as I go in. He washes his hands and leaves, and it's at this point I realise there's no partition hiding the urinals from anyone looking in, as you find in most public toilets of any kind, because the toerag left the door wide open, meaning everyone in that part of the bar can see straight into the gents! And there's no closer on the door

Who the thinks that kind of arrangement is okay? Cos I sure as hell don't.

was there a ladies at all?

Of course.

Actually, that's a good point. This gents had no disabled facilities, and they're very big on that here. There was no third, disabled, bog though, just a gents and a ladies, unless I missed the bit on the ladies sign that said "/Disabled".

New Orleans has similar facilities in most of their bars and pubs.

Oh. And I remember in 1989 I went to an Austin bar that was originally a mechanic shop. When it was time to see a man about a horse, I found the sign indicating the gents, opened the door and found myself outside.

I was beginning to contemplate watering the wall when I finally noticed the outside entrance to the original bathroom from when it was a garage.

There were pubs back home, I can think of two straight off, that still had outside lavvies in the 70s, and possibly into the 80s. One was in the town where I lived, but the other was out in the countryside, a few miles drive from most habitation, and on a cold, frosty January night, when the wind was coming from the east (in other words, from Siberia), taking a leak was no fun.

Even the poshest pub in the middle of town it was obvious that they had just stuck a plastic roof over the alleyway to the outside bogs.

17. Pulled pork.

No such thing. It's nothing more than pork that's been cooked so long it falls off the bone, and then messed around with. If your kid did that you'd tell them to stop playing with their food and get on with their dinner.