Hammersmith Bridge should stay car-free.
The Bridge closed to cars on April, 2019. Its future has been subject to local, national and international attention. It is owned by Hammersmith & Fulham Council. It wants the Bridge restored. But only if others fund most or all of the work. The UK Government has, until now, refused to support this. There is a high-powered Hammersmith Bridge Task Force but it is not known if and when it will make its views known.
Meanwhile the case for a car-free crossing, grows. It is based on the following:
Climate
Place
Health
Geography
Change
This proposal is part of a wider Manifesto for a better Barnes and Mortlake: a collection of ideas grounded in local insight, climate responsibility and a people-first approach. You’ll find the full list of proposals, along with the thinking behind them, throughout this section.
Climate emergency
Transport produces roughly 24% of greenhouse gas emissions in Richmond borough, the largest share coming from cars.
Reopening Hammersmith Bridge to private vehicles would be, in climate terms, like building a new road across the Thames. New roads beget more cars. This phenomenon is called induced demand.
To be clear, cars could be restored to Hammersmith Bridge and efforts could continue to address climate change, including other transport initiatives.
But it would be so much harder to achieve.
The alternative is to reduce the number of cars and the trips they make, while giving walking, cycling and public transport the advantage. Both the Mayor of London and Richmond Council have committed to that shift.
Keeping Hammersmith Bridge car-free would be a direct, visible step in that direction.
People-first Barnes
Inside every car there’s at least one person; in the case of Hammersmith Bridge, often just one person. But the physical nature of cars - their bulk, their speed, the demands they place on the landscape collectively - mean much of the built environment has been sculpted around the needs of drivers rather than residents.
Cars now dominate our physical world.
The Bridge is part of an area regularly placed high on lists of most desirable places to live in the UK. Yet even in south west London, focussing on the needs of car drivers has, over the years, made walking and living much less desirable than it could be.
The equilibrium between people and cars has been tipped too far.We need to start over and adopt a people-centred approach to design.
Healthier residents
22,000 vehicles coursing through an area produced vast quantities of pollution every day. We can tell this because draft Richmond Council Air Quality strategy notes the improvement in air quality after the Bridge closed.
It is less clear what if anything the council could or would do in the event it re-opened to private cars to maintain this improvement.
We need to acknowledge that reopening the Bridge is not just a transport decision. It’s a public health one.
Geography can be destiny
We need to learn how to live a climate-friendlier way of life.
Not just decarbonised. But at least decarbonised.
Richmond council wants us to walk, bus and cycle more; replace our gas boilers; and recycle more of the things we no longer require.
The best way to explore this new life is to experiment. Run trials. Tests. One of the qualities required for any test is a controlled space. The River Thames provides just that.
The river bend which so frustrates car drivers - the only Bridge north, broken like the country which hosts it, some riff - becomes a source of strength. Like a moat of old, it provides protection on three sides.
It throws a protective arm around the Barnes peninsula. It changes from constraint to enabler.
That quirk of topography could be a gift for us. Barnes is a self-contained unit. It’s walkable. It’s neighbourly. And it’s wealthy enough, by and large, to absorb change and lead the way.
If we can’t make a low-carbon lifestyle work, where can we?
This is a rich corner of a rich city. Not all of Richmond borough is rich. There is a pocket of North Barnes, a few hundred metres from the southern end of The Bridge, that is poor by any and all London standards. If we can transition to a climate-friendlier future and help those fellow residents, all the better.
No-one ever won fighting nature. Go with the flow with the bend in the Thames.
We’ve done the hard part
The hardest part of persuading anyone to adopt a new way of doing something, is to ask them to forgo the familiar. Stop doing the thing which have you had done for years. Instead try something new that will be as good or even better. People are always very reluctant to do this. The bird in the hand.
I want my kids to enjoy a better future. I know that means we need to make some changes to fight climate change. But I don’t want to do that just yet. It’s not convenient.
Said all the members of the driver-first group.
The closure of Hammersmith Bridge has made the decision for all of us, including the car drivers. The concrete, ruined by climate change, cast the deciding vote. That moment of rupture did what no climate policy ever could: it forced a change in behaviour.
And the area is still functioning. Still desirable.
We’ve done the hard part.
Why undo all that hard-won adjustment?
Why not build on it instead?
Practical considerations
There is a more nuanced set of changes required if the Bridge remains car-free. That nuance was why I started the blog.
There have been surprisingly few changes in the wider area since the closure - bus re-routing springs to mind as an exception. We need to do more. We need to look at traffic flows and land use.
Meanwhile, the closure of Hammersmith Bridge requires finessing on a number of topics.
mobility solutions
bus and ‘blue light’ services
seating and shade
More on these and related topics, later.
Other stories about Hammersmith Bridge
Notes & thoughts
Recent news updates
Background on Hammersmith Bridge
This proposal is a work in progress.
It will be reviewed and improved on a regular basis.
This story was last updated on Friday 08 August 2025.