London Bridge / Borough High St pollution

https://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/10342

This is all very well, but ignores the fact that much of the traffic will have been pushed onto Tower Bridge and Tower Bridge Road. I doubt very much that there's been a reduction in pollution here.

Also, at the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, London Bridge was built to take heavy traffic; Tower Bridge was not. Tower Bridge comes to a standstill for 15 minutes 6 times a day when the thing is opened to let tourists get their snaps; London Bridge does not.

I idea of permanently restricting London Bridge so that traffic gets pushed onto adjacent bridges is entirely wrong headed, IMHO.

Agree, by closing roads,streets,lanes etc. For what ever reason normally traffic...or trinity st...restricted.... just makes pollution far worse for people on other streets.

I wonder what the difference in pollution readings are between Trinity St and Great Dover St.

Jan the old one wrote:

Agree, by closing roads,streets,lanes etc. For what ever reason normally traffic...or trinity st...restricted.... just makes pollution far worse for people on other streets.

Hi Jan,

That seems intuitively true, but I'm not sure it is.

In the same way creating new roads causes people to do journeys they'd otherwise not have done (the opening of the M25 is the classic case of this), there's a traffic evaporation effect visible when routes or links are closed.

Fortunately, there's already an example of what happens when a bridge across the Thames closes to motorised traffic - Hammersmith Bridge has been broken by the amount of heavy traffic on it, and open only to pedestrians and cyclists for a while now.

The local experience is that pollution has not increased in Chiswick or Putney (the obvious routes an alternative road bridge). There's a report here. There are similar findings in Hammersmith here.

stxmld is mistaken about bridge lifts at Tower Bridge. When the bascules are raised this follows a request by an owner, Master or agent of a vessel that has been submitted in advance. Tourists cannot order a bridge lift to take place at the drop of a selfie stick.

The Tower Bridge website states bridge lifts occur "around 850 times a year", which is an average of two-plus a day.

https://www.towerbridge.org.uk/lift-times/book-a-bridge-lift