Talk:London Ringways
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This section contains a number of errors (and I can't help thinking that large amounts of it are paraphrased from my website, cbrd.co.uk). For example, it claims much of Ringway 1 would have been elevated on concrete pylons like the Westway, when this is misleading. Large sections were sunken into trenches or in cut-and-cover tunnel to minimise their impact. The Ringway 1 map claims that the planned M11 was built as A12 - this is entirely incorrect, and the A12 between Hackney Wick and Redbridge opened in the 1990s is on an entirely different line to the planned M11.
There are various other errors too.
I have no objection to other resources on the internet covering the same topics as my website, but I am struggling to see what the articles here on Wikipedia are adding to the subject. --Chris Marshall, cbrd.co.uk 24/09/06
- Chris, as I have included a link to your site in a number of the articles I have written on the London Ringways Plans, I am of course aware of you excellent site and the wealth of fascinating information it contains on this subject and others.
- I have aways had an interest in the "what might have happened ifs" of life and the London Ringways are one of those things that seems to have crossed my path several times during my life. I grew up in Morden in south-west London near where the unbuilt M23, Ringway 2 and Ringway 3 would have been built; I studied Patrick Abercrombie's plans for redeveloping London at University; I lived in Dalston and Homerton for many years virtually in the path of Ringway 1 and regularly drove on the A102(M) and used the North London Line and I worked on a project near the Westway and drove on it and walked under the elevated roundabout at the western end many times. I now live in Kent and commute to work on the line through Brixton which would have been the route of the South Cross Route.
- Consequently, I often found myself thinking about how and where the Ringway routes would have gone and it was an edit of the Westway (London) article and the subsequent realisation that neither the main London article or the relevant neighbourhood articles had any information on what would have changed the face of the city enormously which started me on the series of articles which you now find on Wikipedia.
- Much of the information used here was already in my head and, whilst what has been written in the articles here has been checked, corrected and, in some cases, has been expanded using information on your site (as well as other sources such as The Motorway Archive, Pathetic Motorways, Westway.org, the Sabre old maps gallery, A to Z, Multimap, Windows Local Maps and Google Maps), I do not accept that these Ringway articles paraphrase your site or any other. For example, the detailed route descriptions given in the articles here were developed by comparing the old maps showing proposed routes against modern maps.
- The Ringway 1 map (and by further development, the Ringway 2 map) was based on the fuzzy scan of the Travers Morgan map on the Apex Corner site which I redrew to a larger scale and annotated to provide a context for what was built. The note on the map regarding the M11 being built as the A12 is, I accept, slightly misleading in hindsight. The alignment shown is that from the Travers Morgan map and the note was added as an afterthought to indicate that someting similar had been built later. I did clarify this on both the East Cross Route and the M11 motorway articles that the route was modified and similar to the original route. The comment that much of Ringway 1 would have been built as an elevated road like the Westway does not seem unreasonable given that much of the railway lines north and south of the river which this Ringway would have followed are themselves built on embankments and viaducts.
- Finally, If there are errors, you can let me know either directly on my talk page or indicate what needs to be changed on the discussion pages of individual articles or you could make the changes yourself.
- DavidCane 02:39, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your quick and considered reply. I think both our 'write-ups' of the subject came from the same thought - that this is a fascinating subject, key to London's development in the last few decades, that has received incredibly little exposure.
I should apologise if I went most of the way to accusing you of plagiarism - I accept that you have a range of other sources. There are various paragraphs in your articles that correlate to paragraphs on pages on my website and discuss similar themes in similar areas but I'm willing to believe this is the product of writing a history of the same topic with similar sources. (Great minds think alike, etc, or fools seldom differ if you prefer!)
As far as I'm concerned it's excellent that this topic is beginning to be publicised and discussed - something it deserves in my view - and it's not my intention to stifle alternative tellings of the story being made. My main concern is that your account appears very similar to my own, though I doubt that this is by design. I find myself wondering whether it greatly contributes to the information currently available. But all the same I can see that your articles are still a work in progress.
I hope you can see this concern in the way it is intended and not as a criticism of the work you've done - I appreciate only too well the sort of effort that is needed to compile reference information in your free time!
--Chris Marshall, cbrd.co.uk 25/09/06