Hammersmith Bridge will stay closed to motorists for six more years  

Hammersmith Bridge will remain closed to vehicles for another six and a half year, chair of the Hammersmith Bridge Taskforce Baroness Vere has revealed.

The bridge has already been closed to motorised traffic for 18 months after Hammersmith & Fulham Council closed it in April 2019 when engineers found hairline factures in the cast iron “pedestals” that support the chain saddles that carry the 130-year-old suspension bridge’s chain links over its abutments.

Widening of those cracks in August this year led to the full closure of the bridge, preventing cyclists and pedestrians from crossing it and stopping river traffic passing beneath it.

A full timeline of temporary and permanent repairs has now been worked up by the Hammersmith Bridge Taskforce – which was set up by transport secretary Grant Shapps after local leaders warned the bridge faced a “catastrophic collapse” without urgent action.

Under the timeline, a ferry service will be up and running by next spring, with the 66 working days needed to award the contract.

It will then take a further four months to understand the condition of all the pedestals - and it is possible that there could be a controlled opening to pedestrians and cyclists subject to a risk assessment by next summer.

This will then be followed by seven months of emergency stabilisation work costing £13.9M, followed by 21 months of permanent stabilisation work at a cost of £32M.

At this point – estimated to be summer 2023 – the bridge can be permanently opened to pedestrians and cyclists, with a further 30 months’ worth of work needed for additional strengthening to allow the bridge to reopen to motorised traffic.

Baroness Vere added: “We are looking at six and a half years until the bridge is open to vehicles.

“When I started on the taskforce I had no idea that that was going to be the case. Not having it open for six and a half years is a significant amount of time and means we have to look at alternative temporary measures.”

Baroness Vere added that the taskforce has effectively ruled out a temporary pedestrian crossing at the site as “the time it takes to put up a temporary bridge doesn’t make sense” under the revised timeline.

She did, however, suggest that the taskforce “would look at the feasibility of a motorised bridge” in more detail.

However, the taskforce’s project director Dana Skelly added that there is “no feasible option” for a temporary motorised bridge currently on the table.

She added that she didn’t think further studies of a temporary motorised bridge would be “value for money”.

As revealed by NCE in November last year, TfL tasked Pell Frischmann to draw up plans for temporary crossing running parallel to Hammersmith Bridge.

Alternative plans for a temporary road and cycle bridge parallel to the 133-old-year structure were also tabled by marine engineering consultant Beckett Rankine last October, as revealed by NCE.

In total, TfL has spent £16.7M on Hammersmith Bridge repair plans, with £7.6M of that being spent in the last two years since the bridge was closed.

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