This isn’t just about traffic. It’s about the kind of city we want to live in
Idi Amin makes a surprise appearance - story 4
My work note books were full of a simple acronym - C4C.
Case for change.
All those templates in the Google search return above, show there is an industry built around fashioning the perfect case for change.
My use of acronym was down to one man - Idi Amin.
I was raised in Blackburn, Lancashire so had come across him when I was young. My home town welcomed Ugandan Asians immigrants in 1972, victims of his brutal regime.
Years later, a colleague - exasperated with something I had said - recalled a brilliant scene from the 2006 movie, King of Scotland, which told the story of Amin through the eyes of his Scottish personal physician.
Amin, played by Forest Whitaker, talking to Dr Nicholas Garrigan, played by James McAvoy, takes just twenty eight seconds to make clear the difference between saying something and persuading someone.
Hammersmith Bridge: a case for change
This blog is designed to persuade. This post is focussed on the opportunity presented by Hammersmith Bridge.
Should we return to the old ways—cars, congestion, combustion? Or should we break with 100 years of history and keep the Bridge for walkers and wheelers?
I think there are five reasons to make that change:
Climate change
People-first lifestyle
Healthier residents
Geography can be destiny
We’ve done the hard part
Climate emergency
The first reason is clear from the organising question for this blog,
How do I live my best life in the world’s greatest city during this climate emergency?
That’s not a rhetorical flourish. It’s a test of seriousness.
I will go in to detail later but the broad argument goes, in the UK transport plays a big role producing emissions and private cars are a big part of transport. Richmond council have said transport produces about 24% of greenhouse gas emissions in the borough. The largest share of those transport emissions comes from cars. And yet we continue to indulge in the fiction that convenience must always trump consequence.
To be clear, cars could be restored Hammersmith Bridge and efforts could continue to address climate change even around transport. But it would be so much harder to achieve. If we restore private cars to the Bridge, it would be tantamount to building a new road across the river. That would take at least three years. By then the road will have been closed nine years. New roads beget more cars. This phenomenon is called induced demand.
Instead, we should not be encouraging cars, increasing the number of internal combustion engines. We need to reduce the number of private cars and reduce the number of journies they make. The Mayor of London is committed to this, as is Richmond council.
To do this, we need to encourage drivers to try other forms of transport such as walking, public transport or cycling. And we need to make driving more challenging. Incentives and disincentives.
Closing Hammersmith Bridge to cars will not stop climate change but it would force more people to reckon with a change to their transport habits.
People-first lifestyle
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. I write that knowing The Bridge is part of area regularly placed high on lists of most desirable places to live in the UK. Yet even in South West London, catering for cars over the years has made walking and living much less desirable than it could be.
The sheer size and scale of the lanes adapted to cope with traffic has rendered them out of proportion to some of the areas. The equilibrium between people and cars has been tipped too far.
We need to start over and think about how we we begin to tip the balance back towards human-scaled living, initially in North Barnes but also across the area.
Healthier residents
This is the least developed of the five arguments, but no less important for that.
As I explain here, this blog is an attempt to codify my beliefs about living a better life in Barnes and Mortlake during this climate emergency. I start with assumptions and instinctive reaction. Some posts will be weak because of that. I want to challenge those and produce something more persuasive. This is an example of a topic about which I know very little. That is ok. The process of writing this blog will force me to confront that fact. This paragraph is then, literally, a work in progress.
I will mention only the obvious - the pollution produced by 22,000 vehicles coursing through an area. The draft Richmond Council Air Quality strategy makes clear the improvement flowing from the Bridge closure. It is less clear what if anything they could or would do in the event it re-opened to private cars.
We need to acknowledge that reopening the Bridge is not just a transport decision. It’s a public health one.
Geography could be destiny
Climate, place and health are generic points. They are as true in Barnes as Barnsley. This is not a blog about Yorkshire. This is the case for creating a people’s Bridge in south west London.
Enter geography.
We need to start learning how to live a new climate-friendly way of life, Not just decarbonised. But at least decarbonised. Richmond council not only want us to walk, bus and cycle more but also retrofit all our homes. And recycle so many more things which we no longer require. This is just the beginning. Ai anyone?
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 - 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, people-first model future here, 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 of the bend in the Thames.
We've done the hard part
Transformational change is hard. The hardest part of any transition is the first step: giving something up. But in this case, that step has already been taken. Not by choice, but by necessity.
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 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 now, six years on, 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?
Notes & thoughts
I am going to write more about each of these reasons in the months ahead:
Climate
Place
Health
Geography
Change
Stories about climate will dominate in order to establish clarity about the issue at hand. As will stories about cars simply because they are such a dominant feature in our corner of London. The future of the Bridge provides a unique opportunity to set the area on a credible future path.
There was a sixth reason but it was removed because it needs much more work. What role economic growth? Would a more pedestrian-friendly economy be better for Barnes and Mortlake than one built on tens of thousands of cars passing through? Much more work to do.
Public opinion on this topic is difficult to guage. There has been one credible survey by Richmond council in 2019. It is likely the majority do want the Bridge restored but .. There is a lot of evidence about UK public reaction to traffic changes that shows once the measures become familiar and people see the benefits, they quickly shift to being supporters. Things are also complicated by the different outlook to car ownership. Framing all of this a widely held perception issue on climate issues. People want to act on the climate but wrongly think they are in the minority. These and methodological issues with other local polls on this issue mean it is hard to say with any confidence what proportion of people want to have the Bridged restore.
This list is a work in progress. I will return to it. If the facts do not support the claim, the reasoning will be changed.