Construction
The route of the Westway was chosen to follow the easiest path from Western Avenue to Paddington by following the route of existing railway lines but passing an eight lane elevated motorway through densely populated Victorian North Kensington involved the clearance of a large number of buildings adjacent to the railway, particularly in the area west of Westbourne Park, where many roads were unceremoniously truncated or demolished to make way for the concrete structures.
At its opening the road was the largest continuous concrete structure in Britain and was constructed with many advanced features such as heating grids on slopes to control the formation of ice. It was planned and constructed in an era before environmental impacts were routinely considered, and it caused much controversy at the time for the effects it and the vehicles it carried had upon the local community and the environment. After completion a vast corridor of wasteland remained below the motorway. The North Kensington Amenity Trust (now Westway Development Trust), was founded in 1971 to reclaim and develop this land for local community use and since 2000 local charity Urban Eye has initiated a programme of cleaning, painting and lighting to brighten up and improve the safety of the areas under the Flyover structure.
Read more about this topic: Westway (London)
Famous quotes containing the word construction:
“There’s no art
To find the mind’s construction in the face.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“No real “vital” character in fiction is altogether a conscious construction of the author. On the contrary, it may be a sort of parasitic growth upon the author’s personality, developing by internal necessity as much as by external addition.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Striving toward a goal puts a more pleasing construction on our advance toward death.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)