Several road bridges are currently subject to traffic restrictions or bans on motor vehicles altogether while others could soon need to go same way, reports Kumail Jaffer, Local Democracy Reporter
Heavier vehicles and climate change could lead to the continued deterioration of London’s bridges, City Hall has been warned.
The London Assembly’s transport committee was told on Tuesday (3rd) the majority of the capital’s River Thames crossings are now considered to be in a bad condition.
Hammersmith Bridge, for example, has been closed to all motor traffic since 2019 on safety grounds, with Hammersmith and Fulham Council estimating that £300million is needed to fully restore the 139-year-old bridge. A staggering £128m alone is required to keep it in its current condition, where only pedestrians and cyclists can cross it.
Several other Thames road bridges are also currently subject to traffic restrictions, ranging from speed limits and weight restrictions to closure to vehicles entirely.
Satbir Gill, chair of the London Technical Advisors Group, a local government advisory body, told assembly members that out of the 30 bridges that provided data, only six are in good or fair condition, while 16 are “poor or very poor”. The remaining eight did not provide data.
As well as issues around funding and historic underinvestment in maintenance, the transport committee was told that heavier motor vehicles and more extreme heat and cold threatened their existence in future.
“It’s widely accepted that weather and climate change related events will become more frequent as time goes on,” Gill explained.
“When these structures were designed, those heat-related impacts were not considered. And what we are doing is, in our future status reports, we will be asking the boroughs and TfL to provide information on any heat-related monitoring they are doing or impacts they are visualising.”
In Hammersmith, officials will need to “look at making sure the bearings can cope with the additionality of that extra stretch that the heat brings,” according to Mark Averill, interim assistant director of highways in the borough.
“You then have to cycle that against the extra shrink that it gets if we get the really cold winters.”
Andrew Burton, director of highway and regulatory services at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea – which manages Albert and Chelsea bridges – said that officials were “monitoring heat more regularly” on the Albert Bridge, especially in summer.
Burton also warned of another increasing danger to structural integrity – heavier cars.
He noted that a decade ago, the average vehicle weighed 1.5 tonnes, compared to today’s two-tonne average. City Hall is currently in the process of forming a strategy for SUVs in the capital, including a possibly levy on larger cars.
“The damage to the bridge is a square of the square of the weight, in essence,” he explained.
“We know that more and more cars using the bridge is accelerating its rate of deterioration. That’s why we are replacing the deck at the moment, because the deck was becoming worn out much quicker than forecast.
“We brought it forward by five years, because we could see that the deck was being worn out much, much quicker. And we put that down to the weight of the cars.”
Albert Bridge has been closed to vehicle traffic since February, with repairs set to be completed next year. In the meantime, however, motorists are driving their two-tonne vehicles over Chelsea Bridge, which Burton says will now need an interim assessment to see how much it has deteriorated in recent months.
Meanwhile Vauxhall Bridge has been closed since 2023, with work to reopen it due to be completed next year.
Simon Latham, managing director at the City Bridge Foundation, which manages five Thames bridges, said the current state of disrepair was primarily down to the materials used during the Victoria-era construction.
“A lot of the bridges that cross the Thames are very old structures, and were built during a period of very ambitious Victorian engineering, and use materials like cast iron, which require ongoing maintenance,” he told the transport committee.
“And so I think we’re in the position of being able to think very proactively about what the repair and maintenance requirements are. Our philosophy is very much – a stitch in time saves nine. It’s about making early intervention and ensuring that we’re making sufficient allocation of funds towards the bridges on an annual basis to ensure that we can maintain them without having to undertake huge capital works.”
The transport committee meeting came five years after previous assembly members released a landmark report into the state of Thames crossings warning of a massive maintenance backlog and calling for a centralised, coordinated approach to funding repairs.
Baroness Pidgeon, a Lib Dem peer who used to sit on the London Assembly and chaired the cross-party committee at the time, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “The recommendations of the report I chaired still stand and are more pressing than ever if we are to have long term and sustainable funding for river crossings in London and to stop further bridges closing for years on end due to a lack of planning and finance.”
Carl Eddleston, TfL’s director of streets and network operations, said: “We remain committed to maintaining the safety and long-term future of London’s bridges. TfL’s bridges remain safe for people to use with the relevant restrictions in place. We have a robust structural inspection regime that continuously monitors London’s strategic roads [on the Transport for London network including] large structures.
“While we invest around £30million a year in maintaining structures across the TfL road network, the future renewal of these structures depends on securing additional funding. We are exploring a range of options, including applying to the government’s Structures Fund for Vauxhall Bridge and we continue to engage with government to explore further funding opportunities for our river crossings. We are currently undertaking investigations and feasibility studies to determine the scope, costs, funding requirements and delivery timelines for future renewal work across London.”
A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “The repair and maintenance of bridges in London is the responsibility of the relevant local highway authority or bridge owner.
“This year we launched a new Structures Fund to help local authorities repair and replace ageing bridges, flyovers and tunnels. We are now considering all applications and funding decisions will be made soon.”
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