Hammersmith Bridge is Falling Down

Hammersmith Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down.
Hammersmith Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady.  

First the bridge was closed for heavy vehicles, then for all vehicles and now it is closed to pedestrians and cyclists and no river traffic can pass under it. The latest deterioration was caused by the heatwave causing the metal to expand.

I don’t know how serious it is having no river traffic but I imagine it is having a greater impact than making the Boat Race impossible. Residents of Barnes, on the south side of the bridge, were accustomed to walking over the bridge to Hammersmith to go shopping or catch the tube. There are some 1,000 pupils at St Paul’s the majority of whom got to school by walking across the bridge.

A quick fix would be to have a passenger ferry across the river. This might be sponsored by the school for their staff and pupils but could recoup some of the cost by taking fare paying passengers. In the medium term plans have re-emerged to build a temporary bridge. As it will be temporary it should have a life of at least a century. Income tax, introduced to pay for the Napoleonic wars, and the makeshift flyover above the Hogarth roundabout are both temporary measures still with us. The bridge will be expensive and Transport for London and Hammersmith Council are playing pass-the-parcel with the bill.

Is there a long term solution? I don’t know. The bridge is rightly Grade II* listed but it should be possible to repair it for at least pedestrian access, work that will take many years if funding is made available.

There is a petition to get work started – https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/549607