Hammersmith & Fulham Council and the Mayor of London have spent the week talking about the future of Hammersmith Bridge. The result? It will take years for the bridge to be repaired and take the weight of vehicles again, they say. So for now, pedestrians and cyclists have the invaluable river crossing to themselves.
On Tuesday night (June 18), the council’s Leader – Cllr Stephen Cowan – spoke to residents at a town hall public meeting (pictured below) pledging to ‘restore the bridge to its Victorian splendour’. The small audience heard about the unique problems in the iconic structure and the difficulty in repairing it.
The safety checks revealed that over decades the bridge’s bearings had seized up due to corrosion. This has caused the bridge’s natural and necessary flexibility to become compromised.
The bridge was closed to motor vehicles in April after engineers discovered hairline micro-fractures had started to appear in the iron casings around the pedestals of the bridge.
You can read more about the bridge here.
On Wednesday night, the Hammersmith leader spoke at a residents’ meeting hosted by Richmond Council and repeated the pledge to restore the bridge. He also described how they were working with TfL to create a plan for the repairs and solve the funding problem.
Unlike the public meeting in Hammersmith, the Richmond trip was a hot ticket. The council had such interest that they held back-to-back meetings to accommodate interested residents. Many asked why a new bridge couldn’t be built on the site.
Notably, Cllr Cowan promised to launch a ‘buggy’ service that would help older residents or those with mobility problems cross the bridge.
And on Thursday, the Mayor of London – Sadiq Khan – told City Hall members that a plan and funding package for the bridge repairs would not be ready until August.
Cue more groans from drivers.
Yet strangely, the limited data seems to suggest that motorists are getting out of their cars. Yes, some drivers are just choosing Putney Bridge or Chiswick Bridge instead. But others are – in technical terms – ‘evaporating’. Which means they’re just not making their journeys by car.
Given London’s severe air pollution problem is this such a bad thing?
Nevertheless, it’s good to hear both the Mayor and the council finally getting serious about the project. London needs more crossings to accommodate all modes of transport – from cyclists to TfL’s new (very heavy) electric bus fleet.
