Fixed Link
Currently the only ways to get to the island are by boat, ship and air. A fixed link by tunnels or bridges has been discussed; however, such a scheme is met with huge resistance by many Island residents and tourists to the Island. Arguments for a fixed link include improving the economy, and bringing in more jobs. The primary argument against such a link is that would destroy the culture of the Island.
However the idea was revisited again in March 2008, with the proposal of a new tramway linking Ryde to Gosport, linking existing rail networks on both sides. As well as the tramway, the plans would also include a new harbour at Ryde, stretching out to the length of the current pier, with berthing facilities for four car ferries, four passenger ferries, two container ships and replacement facilities for the existing Ryde Harbour.
Unlike previous fixed link proposals, this one was met with more support from island residents, as it would not involve large increased volumes of traffic on island roads.
Read more about this topic: Transport On The Isle Of Wight
Famous quotes containing the words fixed and/or link:
“The foot of the heavenly ladder, which we have got to mount in order to reach the higher regions, has to be fixed firmly in every-day life, so that everybody may be able to climb up it along with us. When people then find that they have got climbed up higher and higher into a marvelous, magical world, they will feel that that realm, too, belongs to their ordinary, every-day life, and is, merely, the wonderful and most glorious part thereof.”
—E.T.A.W. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Wilhelm)
“All successful men have agreed in one thing,—they were causationists. They believed that things went not by luck, but by law; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and last of things.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)