“London’s bridges really are falling down,”, said The New York Times as the state of the capital’s river crossings made headlines across the Atlantic.
At the moment, the “global city” has “three vital bridges that drivers can’t use”, said the BBC, and reopening them might not be a simple task.
‘National embarrassment’
Engineers conducting a safety assessment of Hammersmith Bridge in 2019 noticed micro-fractures in the cast iron pedestals holding the bridge together. The west London crossing has been closed to traffic ever since, although it has reopened for pedestrians and cyclists. The ongoing issues have made it not just a local issue but “something of a national embarrassment”, said The Times.
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Albert Bridge, “another vital west London crossing”, will be shut to vehicles until the beginning of next year because of structural damage. Three more London bridges have also been placed on the “critical” list: Westminster, Lambeth and Vauxhall Bridges. Although these three aren’t at “immediate risk of closure, the news brings into sharper focus the state of the capital’s river crossings”.
Broadmead Road Bridge, a main route in Redbridge, northeast London, has also been shut for several years. A London Assembly report in 2021 warned that the state of London’s bridges put the capital’s “reputation and status as a global city” at risk. The problem has become so bad that it’s become the “target of international jibes”, said The Times.
Underfunding and ‘managed decline’
Many of the city’s most important crossings, like Hammersmith Bridge and Westminster Bridge, were built more than 100 years ago. They were never designed for today’s levels of traffic – both in terms of volume and weight.
Several non-trunk road bridges were transferred to London borough councils after the abolition of the Greater London Council in 1986 and many of these local authorities are now struggling to afford maintenance and repair.
This underfunding has caused problems. In 2023, the “State of the City Report” found that London’s bridges were in a “state of managed decline” and £238 million a year should be spent on maintenance to preserve their condition at the time. From 2010–21, just £100 million was spent.
Better news ahead
Hammersmith Bridge is a “disgrace for London” and would cost £250 million to fix, said London’s The Standard. “Nobody is willing to take responsibility” and it’s “become something of a political football”. The cost of the repairs is supposed to be split three ways between the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, the Department for Transport and Transport for London, but there are “arguments over who pays what” and “even if they will pay at all”.
But “there may be better news ahead”, said The Times. Simon Lightwood, the roads minister, has said Hammersmith Bridge is a “good candidate” for investment from the structures fund, money reserved for infrastructure projects. A requirement for the council to pay a third of the cost of the new bridge may be scrapped, so the fund may cover the whole cost of repairs.
Meanwhile, TfL has recently improved the road surfaces on Vauxhall and Lambeth Bridges – to protect their “below deck structural elements”. But experts say that as London’s infrastructure “ages and struggles to cope with more and heavier traffic”, it’s “inevitable” that other bridges “will need to be shut in the future”, said the BBC.