Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

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jervi
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

Post by jervi »

Bridges come and go in London (and everywhere else). Surely it is time to take down the old bridge and donate it to a heritage charity to re-erect it somewhere to preserve its history.
Then put in a new bridge that has similar architecture, but wider to allow dedicated cycle facilities.
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c2R
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

Post by c2R »

I've no problem with the bridge being repaired/restored, but it is typical of this government to cut funding for local authorities for years, making them make difficult decisions on where money should be spent, and then to criticise them and TfL for failing to do anything about it. If, as has happened, significant pieces of infrastructure like this are to be the responsibility of local authorities, then those local authorities should be appropriately funded to maintain them.

In the case of London, I'm surprised that all of the roads that TfL's bus routes use aren't the responsibility of TfL - particularly the river crossings; however, similiar issues also occur up and down the country, with regionally important river crossings being split responsibility between two neighbouring authorities.
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

Post by Herned »

jervi wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2020 11:39 Bridges come and go in London (and everywhere else). Surely it is time to take down the old bridge and donate it to a heritage charity to re-erect it somewhere to preserve its history.
Then put in a new bridge that has similar architecture, but wider to allow dedicated cycle facilities.
I said on a different forum that the best practice is to sell it to an American, and build something fit for purpose in it's place
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

Post by Bryn666 »

jervi wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2020 11:39 Bridges come and go in London (and everywhere else). Surely it is time to take down the old bridge and donate it to a heritage charity to re-erect it somewhere to preserve its history.
Then put in a new bridge that has similar architecture, but wider to allow dedicated cycle facilities.
It's not even, in my view, that attractive a bridge. It's also clearly unfit for modern use so replacing it is entirely appropriate and justified. Imagine if people were so needlessly sentimental about London Bridge, it'd still have houses on it.
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

Post by Fenlander »

This is one of the problems with preservation of history/listing, particularly with stuff like this that has a continuous use - do you pick a date and freeze it forever in that condition or keep it updated? and the important question, who pays for it all?

A pub landlord I know did the research when he was renovating the place and discovered the original colours were a sort of cream & green so he painted the exterior that way, after a battle with the council he was forced to return it to bog standard whitewashed walls & black beams as that's what the council had down on the paperwork as the colours when the place was protected.
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

Post by WHBM »

It has normally been the case that for major items, like bridges, if they require complete replacement etc, there is a specific funding contribution by central government for that, rather than expecting it to come out of the normal annual amount. Most council funding ultimately comes from central government anyway.

I wonder if there are questions about not spending the appropriate routine maintenance funds on it. Bridges between authorities (this one is between Hammersmith [Labour] and Richmond [Lib Dem]) commonly can lead to one side or the other not seeing it as important. This bridge is of far more utility to the Richmond side than to the Hammersmith side.
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

Post by Uncle Buck »

It’s a very attractive landmark in my view, worthy of preservation, but that’s not really the point from a traffic perspective. It’s a very important river crossing as I know from a period working in that part of London. Either a) build a replica, or b) repair the old one for pedestrian and cycle use only, and build a modern bridge nearby for motor traffic. The former option would presumably be cheaper and less disruptive.
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

Post by KeithW »

Bryn666 wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:54 It's not even, in my view, that attractive a bridge. It's also clearly unfit for modern use so replacing it is entirely appropriate and justified. Imagine if people were so needlessly sentimental about London Bridge, it'd still have houses on it.

The last variant of London Bridge was dismantled and sold to the Americans of course
Image

Time to follow the Victorian example, when Hammersmith Bridge showed serious problems in the 1870's they knocked it down and started again. and put something useful in its place. At only 700 ft long its short by modern standards. Considering the Americans built a new 1200 ft long 10 lane bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis in just one year we look like bungling amateurs.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Sai ... lls_Bridge
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

Post by Bendo »

Just build a nice shiney new toll bridge, or as it is listed, spend whatever is needed on fixing it and toll it. Acceptable policy elsewhere.
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

Post by Bendo »

Fenlander wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2020 15:25 This is one of the problems with preservation of history/listing, particularly with stuff like this that has a continuous use - do you pick a date and freeze it forever in that condition or keep it updated? and the important question, who pays for it all?

A pub landlord I know did the research when he was renovating the place and discovered the original colours were a sort of cream & green so he painted the exterior that way, after a battle with the council he was forced to return it to bog standard whitewashed walls & black beams as that's what the council had down on the paperwork as the colours when the place was protected.
The council may have been more forthcoming if he had gone through the proper channels and got listed building consent for the change.
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

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Uncle Buck wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2020 15:46 It’s a very attractive landmark in my view, worthy of preservation, but that’s not really the point from a traffic perspective. It’s a very important river crossing as I know from a period working in that part of London. Either a) build a replica, or b) repair the old one for pedestrian and cycle use only, and build a modern bridge nearby for motor traffic. The former option would presumably be cheaper and less disruptive.
Considering the existing bridge was repaired in 1973, 1987, 1997, 2000 and was showing serious problems in 2014 I would suggest that is not a good bet. The bottom line is the structure was designed to carry horse drawn traffic and had a wooden deck, not exactly suitable for double decker buses and modern LGV's let alone HGV's. With the structure being wrought iron repairs are going to be problematic at best if for no other reason than nobody has made wrought iron in Industrial quantities since the 1960's

If you want a modern replica in steel I am sure Cleveland Bridge would be happy to provide a quote. After all they built the new 750 m A14 bridge over the Great Ouse and several other bridges very quickly with minimum disruption.
https://www.clevelandbridge.com/project ... nt-scheme/
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

Post by Uncle Buck »

KeithW wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2020 16:21
Uncle Buck wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2020 15:46 It’s a very attractive landmark in my view, worthy of preservation, but that’s not really the point from a traffic perspective. It’s a very important river crossing as I know from a period working in that part of London. Either a) build a replica, or b) repair the old one for pedestrian and cycle use only, and build a modern bridge nearby for motor traffic. The former option would presumably be cheaper and less disruptive.
Considering the existing bridge was repaired in 1973, 1987, 1997, 2000 and was showing serious problems in 2014 I would suggest that is not a good bet. The bottom line is the structure was designed to carry horse drawn traffic and had a wooden deck, not exactly suitable for double decker buses and modern LGV's let alone HGV's. With the structure being wrought iron repairs are going to be problematic at best if for no other reason than nobody has made wrought iron in Industrial quantities since the 1960's

If you want a modern replica in steel I am sure Cleveland Bridge would be happy to provide a quote. After all they built the new 750 m A14 bridge over the Great Ouse and several other bridges very quickly with minimum disruption.
https://www.clevelandbridge.com/project ... nt-scheme/
I see, I'm afraid I only have a layman's knowledge, looks like the bridge has passed the point of no return. That's a shame, but in that case a new crossing needs to be built. They could always make a replica to modern standards.
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

Post by KeithW »

c2R wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2020 11:57 I've no problem with the bridge being repaired/restored, but it is typical of this government to cut funding for local authorities for years, making them make difficult decisions on where money should be spent, and then to criticise them and TfL for failing to do anything about it. If, as has happened, significant pieces of infrastructure like this are to be the responsibility of local authorities, then those local authorities should be appropriately funded to maintain them.

In the case of London, I'm surprised that all of the roads that TfL's bus routes use aren't the responsibility of TfL - particularly the river crossings; however, similiar issues also occur up and down the country, with regionally important river crossings being split responsibility between two neighbouring authorities.
The Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham stepped forward when the GLC was abolished to take responsibility for the bridge. They need to work with TfL to produce a costed scheme or schemes to move forward. That can then be a basis for a request for government funding. This is the way these things usually work, sitting back blaming everyone else is not helping.

This is what the council website says
https://www.lbhf.gov.uk/articles/news/2020/09/good-progress-work-repair-historic-hammersmith-bridge wrote: A statement from H&F Council Leader, Cllr Stephen Cowan, on the much-needed repairs to Hammersmith Bridge.

"Our engineers have worked around the clock to develop shovel-ready plans to make Hammersmith Bridge safe and fully restore it. We therefore welcome the government’s announcement today as a signal that they now intend to engage constructively with us on this matter, and we hope they will now work with our cross-party team to prioritise the needs of residents on both sides of the river.

"There is an urgency to tackling this issue, so while Transport for London (TfL), Hammersmith & Fulham and Richmond councils will play a full part in the government’s taskforce, we must avoid an empty talking shop. Only the government has the financial resources to fix this bridge. Ministers must urgently commit to funding the necessary repairs."
No plans or options have been made available - if the government takes over they must do the planning as well it seems. The council seems to be asking for a blank cheque. Apparently the underlying cast iron pedestals is riddled with micro cracks. Frankly the primary purpose of the structure is to be a functional bridge if that means replacing it with a modern version so be it. If they cant bear to part with it they can stick one of the abutments in Hammersmith park as a piece of ironic sculpture. As an engineer who worked in risk assessment I would recommend replacement, It has too many potential single points of failure to be really safe. The suspension chains are held together by single link pins, the failure of any one of them could be catastrophic and they are nearly impossible to properly inspect. To date it seems the wrought iron and cast iron components are faulty and the current cost of 'repair' is over £140 million. Thats a lot of money to fix a 2 lane 700 ft long bridge. The new 10 lane wide, 1900 ft long bridge over the Mississippi built in 2008 only cost $220 million and it was built in a year.
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

Post by A320Driver »

What a sorry state of affairs.

Literally in any other developed country, the bridge would be dismantled and a new one built, tout-suite. But no, here in the UK the government would rather spend money on pub food for us all. :shock:

If anyone wants a rough time line of how long a bridge takes to be commissioned, have a look at the A244 at Walton. Decades.

Pathetic.
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

Post by Uncle Buck »

A320Driver wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2020 23:14 What a sorry state of affairs.

Literally in any other developed country, the bridge would be dismantled and a new one built, tout-suite. But no, here in the UK the government would rather spend money on pub food for us all. :shock:

If anyone wants a rough time line of how long a bridge takes to be commissioned, have a look at the A244 at Walton. Decades.

Pathetic.
I don’t want to go too off-topic, but the other factor at work here is our toxic nostalgia. It’s (in my opinion) a nice old bridge and I think Betjeman wrote a poem about it, etc. That means the government will spend a fortune trying to fix it rather than just grasp the nettle and
replace it. It’s the same with people calling for us to “save BA” while umpteen other airlines going to the wall is apparently fine. Bonkers.
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

Post by Al__S »

Don't forget the political aspects- the government seem to be keen to blame the Labour run council (although the Conservatives ran it 2006-2014) whilst some Conservative Assembly Members seem to be joining in with the cabbies that blame Sadiq Khan, whilst it suits the council to point and go "we've got no money because of the government".
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

Post by Bryn666 »

Al__S wrote: Fri Sep 11, 2020 08:45 Don't forget the political aspects- the government seem to be keen to blame the Labour run council (although the Conservatives ran it 2006-2014) whilst some Conservative Assembly Members seem to be joining in with the cabbies that blame Sadiq Khan, whilst it suits the council to point and go "we've got no money because of the government".
Further underlines the point that all of our political overlords should be rounded up and fired into the sun via one of Elon Musk's spacecraft prototypes.
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

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Bryn666 wrote: Fri Sep 11, 2020 09:14 Further underlines the point that all of our political overlords should be rounded up and fired into the sun via one of Elon Musk's spacecraft prototypes.
One of the greatest mistakes is that politicians were allowed into government :)
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

Post by KeithW »

A320Driver wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2020 23:14 What a sorry state of affairs.

Literally in any other developed country, the bridge would be dismantled and a new one built, tout-suite. But no, here in the UK the government would rather spend money on pub food for us all. :shock:

If anyone wants a rough time line of how long a bridge takes to be commissioned, have a look at the A244 at Walton. Decades.

Pathetic.

The government is not in charge of this bridge or the road, this is a matter for the local council and TfL. It is the inability of those organisations to put forward a credible plan that has forced government intervention. The minimum they should have done is draft a plan of action and made a formal request for funds. They failed to do this, in fact if you look at the website it clearly shows that the first request for assistance was made on 24th Aug 2020
"https://www.lbhf.gov.uk/sites/default/files/article_attachments/hf-richmond_leader_letter_to_pm.pdf" wrote: Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP 24 Aug 2020
Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
London
SW1A 2AB
Dear Prime Minister

Hammersmith Bridge
We write to seek the constructive engagement of the government to help resolve the
serious problems with Hammersmith Bridge.
Urgent safety issues
As you know, Hammersmith Bridge had to be closed to all pedestrian and river traffic on 13
August because there was a risk it would suddenly collapse into the river. The estimated
cost of the bridge stabilisation works, simply to make the bridge safe and avoid a potential
catastrophic failure, is £46M.
No local authority has that kind of money available. We therefore write to ask that the
government funds this work as a matter of urgency.
If the bridge is stabilised in this way, it can then be permanently reopened to pedestrians,
cyclists and river traffic. Despite the best efforts of world-leading engineers, the 133-yearold structure continues to deteriorate without these works.
Meanwhile, all river traffic has had to be halted which cuts off the Chiswick RNLI station
from sending any lifesaving mission east of Hammersmith Bridge.

1) The reasons for closure
Cast iron is brittle and prone to shattering – one reason why this is the only bridge of its kind in the country and one of only two in the world today – the other spans the Danube in Budapest.

Sensors attached to Hammersmith Bridge for monitoring
Stress monitoring sensors attached to Hammersmith Bridge

In 2015, the council began the first series of thorough reviews in the bridge’s recent history. The scope was to check all aspects of the bridge’s structure. These new, weekly safety checks, included using new sensor technology to assess if the stresses being imposed on the bridge were causing structural damage.

The safety checks revealed that over decades the bridge’s bearings had seized up due to corrosion. This has caused the bridge’s natural and necessary flexibility to become compromised. The bridge was closed to motor vehicles in April after our engineers discovered hairline micro-fractures had started to appear in the iron casings around the pedestals of the bridge.

Below are images of these new micro-fractures in both pedestals:
and
''Clearly safety comes first. Closing the bridge was the right thing to do. Hammersmith & Fulham Council and Transport for London are committed to re-opening the bridge and restoring it to its former Victorian splendour as soon as possible. It is a complex and highly-skilled job. It is also Grade II Listed, which makes its restoration even more complex.

TfL and H&F Council are continuing to explore the most appropriate funding for the next phase of construction, ahead of the planned award of a contract for the next stage of the works next spring. The work is expected to take approximately three years.
So they want to control what happens but not pay for it !

Now we know the cast iron plinths are cracked - repairing cast iron will not work
The towers are something of an unknown quantity
The bridge deck is a mess, a wooden deck with cast iron balustrades and wrought iron girders.
The suspension chains are a serious risk with wrought iron links connected with pins that cannot be removed for inspection.
The bearings need replacing

Essentially the only way to repair it is to completely dismantle it and replace the deck, plinths and remove, inspect and repair the chains. This is a problem as nobody has used wrought iron in this way for over 100 years. There is no guarantee as to what will be found when this occurs.

The major problem though is the reason these faults have developed. The bridge was built to handle horse drawn traffic at much lower volumes than it handles today. Take structure designed when 4 tons was a heavy load and pound it with high levels of vehicles such as double decker buses which can weigh 18 tons in addition to LGV's of anything between 3.5 and 12 tons and nothing good with result.

The information from the council shows the latest estimate for repair is £46 million and at the end of the day there is no guarantee as to how much it will really cost.

Now as a long term member of the National Trust I am all in favour of maintaining historical structures but I believe we have to draw the line where transport infrastructure and safety is concerned. Its time to replace this turkey with something that can meet the needs of the 21st century rather than the 19th. You can make it look like the drawbridge for Camelot if you like as long as you use modern maintainable materials and methods.
Last edited by KeithW on Fri Sep 11, 2020 12:27, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Hammersmith Bridge closed indefinitely to traffic

Post by WHBM »

In fairness it's a bit tough on local boroughs to expect them to manage major assets like this without periodic support. And by and large the government has done so - when asked.

The bridges all used to be the responsibility of London-wide GLC. When that was abolished the ones not on the strategic road network in London managed by the DfT were given to the relevant local authority. They were given maintenance funds by the government, but not a major replacement fund. When the Mayor/TfL organisation was created, the major roads (essentially those defined by DfT in 1991 as London Priority Routes, often known then as the Red Routes) were given back to London-wide control, but not the bridges.

Although TfL are not financially responsible, there's nothing to stop them supporting such issues with their contacts with government and especially DfT. If only they would do so instead of political sniping at every opportunity driven by the Mayor's acolytes then things would be a lot better managed. The principal drivers for the new initiative appear to be the MPs south of the bridge.
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