Drivers face toll for Hammersmith Bridge
Council consulting on plan to bring in private sector to help fund repair works on west London crossing
DRIVERS could be hit with a daily toll if Hammersmith Bridge is part-privatised to pay for repairs of the west London crossing over the River Thames – with work finally scheduled to begin in October.
Officials are consulting on how to fund a £130m “stabilisation and strengthening process” to reopen one of the world’s oldest mechanical suspension bridges. It has been closed to vehicles for more than three years. Equity and debt investors are being invited to lodge “expressions of interest” by Hammersmith & Fulham council, according to a government filing published this week.
Groundwork to facilitate the longawaited repair of the bridge will formally begin in October, it added.
The prospect of private investors being brought in to pay for the works increases the risk of thousands of Londoners being slapped with a toll every day to use the 19th century bridge, local MP Sarah Olney said.
The 135-year-old crossing, a crucial plank of south-west London’s road network, has been closed to traffic since being declared unsafe in April 2019.
Prior to its closure, some 22,000 vehicles crossed the bridge every day. The closure followed an inspection by engineers, which discovered socalled microfractures as a result of decades of unchecked corrosion that is riddled throughout the suspension structure.
Unlike many of London’s other bridges across the River Thames, the crossing is owned by the local council rather than Transport for London. Hammersmith & Fulham does not have sufficient funds to pay for the necessary repairs.
The situation descended into farce last year as the bridge was reopened to pedestrians and cyclists just months after millions of pounds was spent choosing a river ferry operator to run services between the north and south banks. Meanwhile, the bridge has been at the centre of a bitter funding row to put TFL – whose finances have been decimated by the pandemic – on a better financial footing. Ms Olney, whose Richmond Park constituency sits on the south side of the bridge, said it was a welcome surprise to hear that progress was finally being made to reopen the crossing.
The Liberal Democrat MP, who ousted Conservative heavyweight Zac Goldsmith in the 2019 general election, conceded that the government filing came as a surprise after months of radio silence from officials on how the repairs will be funded.
“It feels like a significant step forward,” she said. “[But] it is interesting that this certainly hints that they’re exploring tolls.”
Ms Olney said the explicit invitation for equity and debt funding suggested that money would need to be raised to repay private financiers – a £3 toll has previously been mooted. She added: “It’s just whether the income to repay is going to come from users of the bridge through tolls or whether it’s going to come from council taxpayers and Hammersmith and Fulham.”