To improve eco-friendly urban mobility, innovation has much scope

Floating an idea in the hope that it will find official favour is a perfectly legitimate action, especially if it has ecology-friendly overtones. Especially if, like the proposed seven-milelong deck on the south bank of the Thames River to carry a road for cycles only, it ticks all the right boxes except perhaps the one marked ‘cost’. A floating route that shaves half an hour from the daily commute of Londoners — that too, lit by solar, wind and tide energy — sounds almost too perfect to be true. Of course, since that city is already mulling a ‘crossrail for cycles’ on its east-west and north-south axes, this floating addition appears par for the course, particularly since these trendy fuel-less two-wheelers comprise a quarter of rush-hour traffic in London now. Seen in that light, even the £600 million that the city would have to fork out to build it may be deemed worthwhile.

This is just the sort of idea to appeal to Indian city authorities too, many of which even have the necessary rivers — though of varying viability. Still, that should not stand in the way of a good idea. The only foreseeable complication, of course, would be the annoying tendency of Indian traffic to force its way on to all available pathways, as Delhi’s experience with the bus rapid transport system has shown. But the idea can always be floated.…