What do you think of a temporary river crossing running alongside Hammersmith Bridge while the major repairs are carried out?
Over the next week, public drop-in sessions are being staged, to gather feedback on Transport for London’s new plans for a temporary walking and cycling bridge.
The proposed part-time bridge is effectively a stretched version of the pre-fabricated Bailey structures which helped the Allies ford rivers in the Second World War.
Tanks a lot
Swiftly assembled by army engineers, they were strong enough for tanks to rumble over, and (said General Montgomery) ‘without them we should not have won the war’.
They were named after an unassuming Yorkshireman called Donald Bailey, a boffin, engineering graduate and magistrate, who came up with the idea in the late 1930s. During the war, 200 miles of pre-fab bridge were built… weighing a boggling 490,000 tons.
Engineers say a temporary bridge at Hammersmith for cars, buses and lorries would be logistically difficult and very expensive, but TfL is willing to fund a 7m-wide pedestrian and cyclist span, on two river piers, to guarantee step-free crossings while repairs to the old bridge are completed.
The carriageway would be 5.5m wide, split between bicycle lanes and walking lanes. On the Barnes side, it would start at the junction of Castlenau and Riverview Gardens, making landfall on the Hammersmith side by the reopened Riverside Studios in Queen Caroline Street.
Planning permission will be needed from both H&F and Richmond councils, and public feedback will be taken into account… but if all goes smoothly, it could be in place by late summer or early autumn.
What’s the aim?
What will the temporary bridge achieve? The overall aim, pure and simple, is to speed work on repairing the old structure by allowing the team to focus on the engineering, without the added pressure of thousands of people going back and forth.
The first hints of a possible temporary bridge being built for pedestrians and cyclists came last November, seven months after the bridge closed, and as with everything connected to Hammersmith Bridge, there are historical precedents.
When Tierney Clark’s original 1827 bridge was replaced by Joseph Bazalgette’s current design in the 1880s, a temporary bridge – resembling, some said, a seaside pier – was built alongside the old one.
In fact, providing an alternative was a legal requirement. Part of the 1824 legislation which led to the first suspension bridge stated that if a rebuild was necessary, another method of crossing the Thames had to be provided.
Ferry wary
A ferry was considered… until someone did the maths. A survey in the early 1880s revealed that in daylight hours on a typical week, 86,595 people and 11,090 vehicles crossed the bridge.
The largest available ferry boats held a dozen passengers each, so that idea was ditched.
A temporary bridge was approved in November 1882, running on clusters of timber piles alongside the old bridge. Castlenau was diverted to meet it on the Barnes side.
In April 1884, Vernon & Ewens were contracted to complete the project for £74,920, but the firm went bust. The scheme was transferred to Dixon, Appleby & Thorne for £82,177, and work began in July.
The temporary bridge was completed in six months, and in April 1885 traffic was diverted on to it. It stayed in place for two years and two months. When the present bridge opened in June 1887, the timber alternative was removed and the roads leading on and off the bridge realigned.
Drop-in sessions are on:
- Saturday 14 March, 11am-3pm, Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, W6 9BN
- Tuesday 17 March, 6-9pm, Castelnau Community Centre, Barnes, SW13 9AQ
- Thursday 19 March, 4-8pm, Riverside Studios
- Saturday 21 March, 1-5pm, St Michael & All Angels, Barnes, SW13 0NX
You can also view the plans online at www.tfl.gov.uk/travel-information/improvements-and-projects/hammersmith-bridge
You have until midnight on 22 March to send your views in. Email hammersmithbridge@tfl.gov.uk or write to Freepost, TfL Feedback (no stamp needed).
