Tag: travel

Bridges over troubled waters

London’s bridges are the city’s sinews. They hold the capital together, enabling movement and ensuring stability. But, as recent reports of structural problems on Waterloo Bridge indicate, their construction and maintenance has often been troubled and contested.

For centuries, the only permanent connection between north and south London was the old, stone London Bridge. Alternative ways of crossing the Thames were confined to the ferries and other boats that carried passengers back and forth. As Peter Ackroyd tells it, the completion of Westminster Bridge in 1750 “entirely changed the relationship between the northern and southern sections; instead of being isolated and apart, almost like different countries sharing the same border, they became interrelated.”

A flurry of bridge-building followed. Over the next 100 years, Blackfriars, Vauxhall, Waterloo and Southwark bridges arched over the river. These were initially commercial ventures, funded by toll revenues. However, over the course of the 19th Century, tolls were lifted and responsibility for the bridges passed to the Metropolitan Board of Works (and after that to the London County Council and the Greater London Council) or to City Bridge Foundation, which was established in the 12th Century to maintain London Bridge, drawing revenues from tolls and land rentals.

Today, the foundation manages Tower Bridge, London Bridge, Southwark Bridge, Millennium Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge. Since 1995, it has also been able to use income from its £1.5 billion endowment to support organisations tackling disadvantage across London. A further seven bridges (Westminster, Lambeth, Vauxhall, Battersea, Chiswick, Kew and Twickenham) are owned and maintained by Transport for London (TfL). The rest are boroughs’ responsibilities.

Building new bridges has often been tortuous or abortive. By definition, most proposals span at least two local authorities (as borough boundaries tend to lie in the centre of the Thames), and need support from the Port of London Authority, which oversees river transport. In 1994, the Cross River Partnership was set up by Westminster, Southwark, Lambeth and City of London to promote river crossings such as the Millennium Bridge and the Golden Jubilee Footbridges, though it has now widened both its role and its partnership.

The construction of the Golden Jubilee Footbridges at either side of Hungerford Railway Bridge nearly ground to a halt in 2000, when the risk that pile-driving might set off off unexploded World War II bombs on the riverbed just next to Bakerloo line tunnels caused costs to spiral. A timely intervention by Ken Livingstone, newly-elected Mayor of London, pulled together the funds to cover the overrun and the project continued.

But plenty of plans for bridges have not been realised. In recent years alone, we have seen Boris Johnson’s cancellation of the proposed Thames Gateway Bridge (primarily for budgetary reasons rather than the environmental concerns that generated intense protests) and Sadiq Khan’s cancellation of his predecessor’s chimerical plans for a “garden bridge”. Other projects, such as Cremorne Bridge between Battersea and Chelsea, and the Rotherhithe to Canary Wharf Bridge, have stalled owing to disputes over funding or rising costs.

Rows about bridge renewals are not new either. In 1924, London County Council (LCC) closed Waterloo Bridge because of concerns about its safety. A temporary steel structure enabled it to re-open, but in 1930 LCC argued for its demolition and replacement by a new bridge, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott of Battersea Power Station and red telephone box fame.

A coalition of artists was mobilised to save the old one (“the classic battle of the artist against the engineer, the aesthete against the philistine” in the words of one protestor) and Parliament initially refused to provide any money. In 1934, to break the stalemate, LCC leader Herbert Morrison theatrically took a crowbar to the old bridge and Parliament eventually relented, putting up funding in 1937. The new bridge was constructed by a predominantly female workforce during World War II.

Today’s problems with Waterloo Bridge join a long list of concerns about the capital’s Thames crossings. There is the seemingly endless saga of Hammersmith Bridge, which has been closed to motor traffic since 2019 (and was only intermittently open for the 20 years before that). In July, Hammersmith & Fulham Council paused plans for repairs, citing a disagreement with TfL and the Department for Transport over the £300 million funding package for getting it fixed. Other bridges with restrictions include Vauxhall Bridge (where TfL imposed a weight limit in May) and Albert Bridge (which, in February, Kensington & Chelsea closed to motor vehicles to enable repairs). Westminster and Lambeth bridges also need urgent repairs.

So, London’s bridges are a mess. Responsibility for their upkeep and enhancement is contested and their governance is split, in a characteristically London manner, between a medieval endowment, central government, a handful of local authorities and a city-wide transport body. Allowing this mess to continue (or quite likely worsen) is risky: closing bridges damages business, impedes free movement and makes London look pretty shabby internationally.

A city-wide approach is needed. After all, bridges are strategic transport infrastructure for London as a whole, not just for the citizens of the boroughs in which they land. But it’s no surprise that TfL, already under financial strain, seems reluctant to take on the associated costs.

Where could the money come from, given the fiscal constraints facing all tiers of government? Looking at the City Bridge Foundation’s impressive cash pile might seem tempting, but taking £80 million away from London charities would be controversial, even before the legal complexity of unwinding a 900-year-old organisation.

Tolls, recently introduced, for the Blackwall and Silvertown tunnels have worked. However, this method has a more chequered history for central London bridges, often being dodged or kicking off riots. And aside from the rich comic potential of charging north Londoners to visit the capital’s cultural heartland (adjust polarities to taste), bridges should tie London together, not segregate it.

There would be a logic to using some of the forthcoming tourist tax for bridge maintenance, as London’s bridges are particularly heavily used by overseas visitors, but there will be many other claims on those revenues. The longer-term solution is almost certainly to be found in a comprehensive scheme of road user charging for the capital, so that the costs of all London’s surface transport, bridges included, can be shared among those who use it. We just need a Mayor of London who will make the case for that increasingly urgent change.

First published by OnLondon.

Licence too ill

London’s nightlife has been taking a pasting: a recent (not very scientific) survey suggested that the city has the worst nightlife in the UK; pubs and clubs are being closed down, their numbers falling by eight and 30 per cent respectively since 2010 according to UK business counts; industry bodies say that London is losing nightlife faster than other regions; and social media reports frequently bewail empty pubs, dead streets and early closing times.

What is to blame for this thinning out? There is a grim alignment of factors: changing drinking habits, higher prices and constrained wages, staff shortages following Brexit, changed working and commuting patterns following the pandemic, cautious licensing authorities and the rise in take-away (or delivery) culture.

Some critics point the finger at Amy Lamé (pictured, front left), the Night Czar appointed by Sadiq Khan in 2016. How, they ask, can her six-figure salary can be justified when London’s nightlife is crumbling? More recently, Conservative mayoral candidate Susan Hall has weighed in, presenting Lamé’s appointment as symptomatic of Khan’s “chumocracy” approach to administration and promising to bring in “real experts committed to reviving our city’s night economy” if she is elected.

Lamé has mounted a vigorous defence of her record, both in keeping venues open and making nightlife safer for all. And I don’t think it is fair to blame her every time the shutters roll down on another London venue (full disclosure: I don’t really know Lamé, but I did spend many 1990s Saturday nights at Duckie, the arty club night she co-founded). But there is a deeper problem too: neither she nor Khan have access to the levers that can keep venues open or close them.

This seems strange, given the wide-ranging remit of London’s Mayors. Nightlife is an essential part of a city’s economy and culture, but licensing late night entertainment and hospitality remains a local authority function.

Licenses are granted by the 33 local authorities in London and governed by central government policy objectives focused on preventing crime, nuisance and negative impacts on children or public health rather than on fostering cultural or economic vitality.

Furthermore, substantial areas of central London are subject to “cumulative impact” policies, which restrict the opening of new premises and extensions of opening hours in order to minimise strains on local infrastructure and the risks of disorder.

The deck is stacked against the hospitality industry. Some boroughs, such as Camden, have sought to relax policies in response to headwinds that have battered the sector since the pandemic, though this has been controversial. In many other cases, restrictions either haven’t been reviewed since 2020 or have been reaffirmed. At the heart of the issue is a balancing act. How does licensing weigh the concerns of local residents, who vote, against the interests of local businesses and visitors, who don’t, and the representations made by the police, who are in the front line when things go wrong?

There’s a similar challenge in town planning – balancing local community interests and the strategic needs of the city. This is why the Mayor was given powers to set policies on issues such as density and use mix, and to intervene in significant cases where local decisions might undermine those policies. Indeed, Khan has already used his planning powers to support London’s nightlife through the “agent of change principle”, which makes developers rather than pre-existing entertainment venues responsible for sound insulation and other mitigation measures.

Should London’s Mayors, who already have oversight of the capital’s police force, take a greater role in licensing, setting a framework for local decisions and perhaps intervening where there is a strategic case for doing so? Giving them more power in this area could take the heat out of local debates and allow for a more consistent and strategic approach to the capital’s night-time economy.

Such an extension of mayoral power might be restricted to central London, where nightlife serves capital city and world city functions, as well as the needs of local communities. Again, there’s a read-across to town planning: the Mayor already has an enhanced planning role in the Central Activities Zone, though interestingly many of London’s nightlife hotspots are distributed around its fringe.

All that said, licensing is difficult. I’m not sure whether the current Mayor or his successors would welcome responsibility for decisions that almost invariably annoy someone. But if we want London to be a successful, liveable and thriving 24-hour city, intelligent licensing has a vital part to play.

First published by OnLondon.

Density – free riders and secret sauce

Russell Curtis, architect, On London contributor and one-man spatial think tank, published a new paper, Towards a Suburban Renaissance, on his blog last week. Reflecting on their generally low and static densities, Curtis argues that London’s suburbs could accommodate many more homes near stations, by gentle densification of existing residential streets – an upwards extension here, a replacement of a house with a low-rise block of flats there, a new build in a back garden there.

Without even encroaching on protected industrial land or open spaces, Curtis calculates that London could accommodate around 900,000 more homes in this way. Current completions are much lower than the current London Plan target of 52,000 homes a year, and both government ministers and London think tanks say that target should be set higher still. Realising even a small part of the potential that Curtis identifies would be a big boon.

You might think that in a city with a rampant housing crisis and record levels of homelessness, such a modest proposal would be enthusiastically debated by mayoral candidates in an election year. Or…you might not actually, because if you are the sort of person who reads On London, you are probably aware just how politically tricky suburban densification is in a contest where every Outer London vote counts.

Politics confounds any attempt to boost housing supply in the capital through suburban densification. The result is that any vacant site is developed to the max and everything else remains untouched, leading to a lumpy cityscape and eerie juxtapositions such as the transition from towers around East Croydon Station to the two-storey terraces of surrounding streets. Everybody can see the dysfunctional results of this approach, but the politics of changing tack are too tough: as Curtis has written for On London before, both the Mayor of London and Croydon Council have backed down from suburban density-friendly policies.

There are ways to open up the conversation, at least. The “Street Votes” proposal, developed by Policy Exchange and championed by the Nicholas Boys Smith, chair of government’s Office for Place, proposes empowering local communities to redevelop their own neighbourhoods, sharing in economic benefits and ensuring that redevelopment is seen locally as an enhancement rather than a blow to quality of place. A government consultation on making this idea a reality has recently closed, and Street Votes could make a difference where communities can see the potential benefits.

But I think there’s a bigger strategic issue too, about how we talk about density and amenity. I was thinking about this recently over lunch in a small village on the edge of London. Our hosts, heavily involved in the parish council, were discussing how they hoped to use tree preservation orders to scotch any danger of new homes being built on adjacent land.

Their other big campaign was to find a way of re-opening the local pub, which was shutting down owing to dwindling trade. They were prospective clients of my partner so I bit my lip, but in my mind’s eye I was shaking them by the lapels and shouting, “Don’t you see the connection? No more people means no more pub!” To which you might add, no more primary school, no more bus service, no more local shop…

When I look on borough planning consultation portals, I can always find an option to comment on loss of amenity from a development. It’s much harder to comment on loss of amenity from not developing. Across London’s and other cities’ suburban high streets, shops, restaurants and bars are struggling to survive in the face of changing consumer habits and constrained spending.

One answer to this is to shrug, feel a twinge of sadness and let the market find more economically viable uses for the space. Another is to try to make sure these services have enough customers to keep going. You don’t have to go to the pub every evening or ride the bus every day yourself, but you shouldn’t prevent the people who might do so from moving into the area and then complain when the landlord shuts up shop or Transport for London cuts service frequencies.

In urban areas we are all free riders, locked into relationships of mutual reliance on other citizens, and their use of public and private services. If we seal off our neighbourhoods from newcomers, we don’t preserve their character so much as undermine it. We need more homes in London to address the housing crisis for sure, but also to sustain the urban services, quality and vitality that bring people here in the first place. Density is the secret sauce of our cities. We need to sing its praises.

First published by OnLondon.