Public meeting on flyover closure

Skip Navigation

Public meeting on flyover closure

Thursday January 12, 2012

Hammersmith flyover is today still closed to traffic, while Transport for London’s engineers analyse the extent of water damage on a stretch of the road more than half-a-mile long.

A public meeting has been arranged for Saturday, January 14, at West London Free School, in Cambridge Grove, Hammersmith, 2pm-3pm, to discuss the current closure. Residents will have the chance to put questions to TfL’s director of public affairs and stakeholder engagement, David McNeill, about the road. Cllr Nick Botterill, deputy leader of H&F Council, will also be there.

Mayor of London Boris Johnson visited the structure last week to inspect the ailing flyover. Hammersmith & Fulham Council is continuing to call for the repair works to be completed as soon as is safely possible and for planning on a longer term replacement to the flyover to start immediately. Transport minister, Theresa Villiers MP, is meeting with the council tomorrow (Friday, January 13) to discuss the situation.

However TfL engineers are not yet able to confirm whether the structure is strong enough to reopen – on a partial or full basis – even to light traffic.  That decision will be made following analysis of the extent of the damage.

Hammersmith & Fulham Council says the repair works must be carried out as quickly as possible to minimise further disruption to motorists, residents and businesses in the area, who have been hit hard by the closure. TfL says workers are busy ‘day and night’ fixing the flyover and is encouraging motorists to avoid the area and take alternative routes.

Cllr Botterill said: “It is good news that the Mayor and TfL are now on the case, but the progress needs to be fast and the problem must be solved as soon as possible.

“This closure has not only been terrible for H&F, but also for the whole of London. This is one of the capital's busiest roads, with 90,000 vehicles passing over it every day, and the closure is causing traffic chaos, far and wide.

“The repair works may not be a long-term solution to prolong the life of this 50-year-old structure and we need to plan in earnest for the future. Local people and H&F Council need to be at the heart of any future plans for a replacement, being central to the decision making process right from the start. We simply cannot leave such a vital part of our economy vulnerable again and need a fool-proof scheme."

The flyover has been closed since December 23, when a TfL inspection found that tensioning cables that offer support within the structure had corroded, due to water and salt from grit leaking into the structure.

As well as visual inspections by engineers, camera investigations have been carried out at 100 locations along the bridge, evaluating key sections of cable within the flyover.

Local traffic diversions and signs advising drivers to avoid the area, including on the M4 and M25 and on other major routes, are in place. TfL is also working with the council and utility companies to curtail any non-urgent road works in the local area in a bid to minimise disruption and help ease traffic flow. TfL is also re-phasing hundreds of traffic signals in the area and has created an extra lane on Talgarth Road.

Leon Daniels, TfL’s managing director of surface transport, said: "Our team continues to work night and day alongside the world’s leading structural engineers to fully understand the extent of the flyover’s structural problems. A solution which will allow the flyover to be fully open to traffic before the Olympics is now being implemented and we will re-open the flyover to traffic as soon as it is safe to do so."

» Send us your comments now

Now is the moment to review the whole strategy of the A4 through Hammersmith and consider the idea of a tunnel between Hogarth Roundabout and Hammersmith Broadway and which would allow the reconnection of Hammersmith with the River. This one of several ideas put forward in 2008 by West London Architects as part of the London Festival of Architecture. It would be part paid for by the development opportunities of building over on the streets that would be re-instated. I hope the Council can persuade TfL that this is a wonderful ''once in a lifetime'' opportunity.
From West London Architects on 12/01/2012 at 14:03
I would like to close the Hammersmith Flyover for good, demolish it, and permanently re-direct through-traffic to other parts of London. Please have a look at the traffic now on the Great West Road: it is just local traffic, and that is what we want. If the volume of traffic was kept down to present levels we could have a surface level crossing over the Great West Road, which seems to me the best way of "reconnecting" King Street with the river. Before the flyover was built and the Great West Road was widened the main entrance of the Town Hall was on the south side on Nigel Playfair Avenue, and the Mayor's Parlour above looked over Furnivall Gardens and the beautiful flower beds below without any screen. Surely that is the landscaping which we want to re-create?

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reduce through-traffic in the borough, and to push traffic further out to the north and south circular roads and to the M25. We want people to leave cars outside London, and use public transport only (including taxis, for the most wealthy).

As for a tunnel to replace the flyover: it would have to be quite deep to avoid the existing rail lines, etc. and thus too expensive.
From Una Hodgkins on 12/01/2012 at 11:32

Comments

Your comments

Name:*
Display name:*
E-mail:*
Comment:*
 
characters
 
Enter the code shown above:*

                      I accept the terms and conditions of posting to this site*
 

* denotes mandatory field