The parable of the London bridge, constructed during the Blitz

On September 15, 1940, London endured the worst attack it had ever known as wave after wave of German bombers rained death on the capital. Forever after, the date has been immortalised as Battle Of Britain Day.

Little wonder that no one was terribly interested, just ten days later, when what was then called London County Council unveiled a new crossing over the River Thames.

It was not a thing of beauty, and had to be painted a drab grey/blue to make it less obvious to enemy bombers, a colour scheme it retains to this day. Indeed, Wandsworth Bridge has been described as the dullest of all the bridges in London.

Yet the mere fact of its completion and opening, under constant threat of bombardment in the darkest month of the darkest year in British history, is a feat of engineering which seems utterly astonishing.

There were no celebrations, of course. The opening of a crossing primarily designed to service industrial wharves on either side of the Thames does not even warrant a footnote in the history books.

However, we can be sure that, more than eight decades later, the imminent closure of Wandsworth Bridge will make headlines.

Recent inspections have revealed that its weight-bearing parts must be replaced, and Labour-run Wandsworth Borough Council, which these days owns the bridge, has announced that, from July to October, only pedestrians and cyclists may cross while the work is done.

The 50,000 vehicles that currently use it every day — travelling between the capital and the southern suburbs, Surrey, Sussex, the A3 and the coast — will have to find another route.

This means months of extra misery in a metropolis that has been declared ‘the world’s most congested city’ two years running. 

For a mere three and a half miles upriver, another major route over the River Thames, the famously fragile Hammersmith Bridge, has now been shut off to motor traffic for four years (pedestrians and dismounted cyclists are permitted). It is expected to be another four years before it is back to normal.

This means the only functioning river crossing for miles around, Putney Bridge, can now look forward to tens of thousands of extra vehicles every day.

It also means that what is already the most congested street in Britain (some say Europe), Putney High Street, is about to become even more polluted and miserable.

When I walk along it talking to locals — most of whom were unaware of the news — they genuinely don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

The closure of Wandsworth Bridge may be scheduled to last two and a half months but many have their doubts. ‘Once they start taking it apart, what else are they going to find?’ asks Richard Kendal, owner of Creatures Of Putney pet shop.

A mile or two farther up the Thames, I discover another set of residents up in arms. Here in the Barnes ward of Richmond-upon-Thames — where houses can sell for many millions — they are seeing an alarming spike in crime: assaults up 100 per cent year-on-year, shop burglaries up threefold and muggings up fourfold. 

These figures are helpfully provided by the plucky local bobby who has come to address the latest meeting of the Barnes Police Liaison Group. If he was hoping for a near-empty hall and an early night, he is in for a shock.

So many people are queuing to get into a packed community centre that organisers have to delay the start. So why this surge in local crime? As one resident after another tells the audience, much of it is down to the closure of the bridge.

Gangs and muggers from the grittier Hammersmith side of the bridge have been coming over to leafy Barnes in increasing numbers to do their stuff and then leg it back across the bridge on e-scooters and bikes, safe in the knowledge that no car can follow.

Matters are not helped by the fact that the nearest police station, south of the river, is now seven miles away in Twickenham.

The locals are promised that more cameras will be deployed around the bridge, while the authorities at either end are going to have a meeting to explore joint strategies.

It might be tempting to dismiss this as a little local difficulty. But the truth is that London’s bridges problem is emblematic of the chaos within national and local government when it comes to infrastructure.

There can be few other ‘world cities’ that would allow one of their main bridges to fall apart, then spend years wondering what to do with it, before shutting another nearby crossing.

Little wonder foreign newspapers such as The New York Times gleefully publish headlines like ‘London’s Bridges Really Are Falling Down’.

And the crisis is slowly but steadily costing the economy billions in lost investments and productivity. The ‘global traffic scorecard’ produced by U.S. transport analysts INRIX, which covers 1,000 cities in 50 countries, has ranked London as the worst for a second year running.

In 2022, the average driver in London spent 156 hours in jams, at an average cost of £1,377 each. INRIX specifically pointed to the closure of Hammersmith Bridge as a factor.

An obsession with cycle lanes is also adding to congestion. Just take the average journey into town over Wandsworth Bridge. One of its four traffic lanes has now been coned off for bicycles by Wandsworth Council.

Once you crawl across to the other side, you are in Labour-run Hammersmith & Fulham. Here, a new ‘clean air’ diktat means any non-local driver straying off Wandsworth Bridge Road into side streets will get an automatic £65 fine. 

So everyone sits in a queue with their engines running. London Mayor Sadiq Khan calls this ‘traffic-calming’. 

It certainly leaves the traffic calm, if not comatose, but motorists from outside the borough are boiling at what they regard as punitive Nimbyism. Locals may freely seek alternative routes but they may not.

It’s the same story farther west on approaches to Putney Bridge (soon to be the only way out of this mess). ‘I come this way twice a day and it just gets worse and worse,’ says Peter, a van driver for Bruce’s Doggy Day Care.

I interview him through his window until the light turns green. He moves off. Moments later we resume the interview when the light turns red again. He has travelled all of 20 feet.

He is on a major route, the New Kings Road, otherwise known as the A308. And it is not even the rush hour. ‘Wait until they close Wandsworth Bridge,’ muses Peter. ‘We might as well just park here.’

So how on earth have things reached this situation along the Thames? Everyone round here accepts that Wandsworth Bridge needs maintenance. A council spokesman says all those likely to be affected have been written to. However, many tell me they have yet to be informed.

And no one can fathom why Hammersmith Bridge has now been under repair for four years, when it took the Victorians just three years to build it in the first place.

In a nutshell, the issue is a combination of ageing metalwork and historic neglect. It was in 2014 that engineers discovered tiny fractures in the bearings that support its chains. By 2019, the bridge was no longer deemed safe for traffic and the 22,000 vehicles that used its two lanes daily were banned.

In 2020, the situation became so grave that it was suddenly shut off to all human life, and even boats were prevented from going under it.

The Government realised it was no longer any use simply telling the council to sort things out. It established a task force, which agreed three phases: emergency work, then stabilisation work and, finally, ‘strengthening’.

We are now nearing the end of the second phase. The task force also established the principle that the overall bill — now up from an estimated £141 million to about £200 million — should be shared three ways between the council, Transport for London (run by the Mayor of London) and the Treasury. The task force, incidentally, last convened two years ago.

Pedestrians were finally allowed across again in 2021, once emergency work had finished.

Planning permission has just been lodged for a clever scheme which will erect a temporary truss above the deck of the current bridge, allowing pedestrians and certain vehicles to cross while the old deck is dismantled and replaced.

The council now has to approve this proposal — which a spokesman says should happen ‘later this year’. Then it will take two years to complete ‘procurement’.

If all goes well, traffic could be running over the temporary track in four years’ time, with repairs finally completed in five. However, things have a habit of not going well with Hammersmith Bridge.

The third and final stage of the repairs is the most expensive, and the council says it can’t afford its share without introducing a toll of around £3.25. That will need parliamentary approval, something which can take years.

As well as being a great London landmark — featuring in everything from the latest Bond film to the annual Varsity Boat Race — the bridge also has a Grade II listing. So all repairs must be approved by Historic England.

Many argue that the fundamental problem is a surfeit of politicians on all sides. Labour-controlled Hammersmith council owns the bridge but those who use it are mainly from Liberal Democrat-controlled Richmond on the other side. 

When I ask their leader, Gareth Roberts, if his borough will chip in, he says a firm ‘No!’.

Keeping London moving is the duty of Transport for London, under the direction of Labour’s Mayor Khan. He has said he lacks the funds to pay his share for Hammersmith Bridge. 

All the above want the Conservative Government to foot the bill. London’s 31 Thames bridges have many owners but the Government is not one of them.

None of which is of any solace to the average driver heading between London and the South or West this summer, once Wandsworth joins Hammersmith as a no-go zone for cars. 

Walking alongside the Thames for many miles this week, I encounter anger, doom and despair.

Wandsworth Bridge Road used to draw people from all over London to its boutiques and interior design shops. 

Now it is clogged with through-traffic, while no one from farther afield wants to visit these shops for fear of a fine as they try to find a place to park.

Many shops are now reduced to opening on an appointment-only basis. ‘Footfall is right down,’ says Helen Masters at the Pret A Vivre curtain showroom. ‘You’re only the fifth person in here all day.’ It is 4.30pm.

A mile upstream in Putney High Street, florist Zac Watson-Smith is incredulous when I tell him Wandsworth Bridge is due to shut for ten weeks.

‘I live in Kent and I have to drive in to get the flowers,’ he says. ‘On a good day, it can take an extra 16 minutes just to get from one end of the High Street to the other.’

The local Labour MP, Fleur Anderson, blames the Government for failing to grasp the central problem — Hammersmith Bridge — years ago.

She says the Tories were so wedded to the doctrine of ‘levelling up’ in the North, they would not countenance spending millions on a landmark in prosperous West London. ‘This is not just any bridge and they can’t expect a local council to fix it,’ she says.

Not so long ago, Wandsworth was a flagship Tory borough (much loved by Margaret Thatcher). These days, the Conservatives are in opposition. 

Their leader, Will Sweet, says Labour dogma and incompetence are to blame, not central government: ‘This is no way to run a capital city. Labour’s mismanagement of road schemes on both sides of the river is causing gridlock and misery.’

To the rest of the country — and the wider world — it is a situation that beggars belief.

Victorian Britain managed to erect one of the world’s best-known suspension bridges with pick and shovel. Wartime Britain spanned the Thames under enemy fire. Twenty-first-century Britain, meanwhile, simply grinds to a halt.

Perhaps it is time for Londoners to follow the example of the Tudors — and move around the capital by boat.