8vo. vi + 134pp, 8 plates (5 folding), and some text ills. Orig. printed wrappers, grubby. In 1923, there was marked subsidence in one of the piers of Waterloo Bridge and the LCC was advised to demolish and rebuild it. However, a petition was submitted to the Prime Minister, urging that the problem of London traffic and bridges be looked at as a whole before the fate of Waterloo Bridge was decided. This Royal Commission was convened as a result. Its report is wide-ranging, giving a good history of earlier attempts to consider London’s cross-river problems as a whole and considering some peculiarly 20th century factors affecting traffic, notably the enormous increase in public transport, which had increased 85% between 1911 and 1925. The Waterloo bridge question is gone into in considerable depth, but all the other bridges as far as Staines are also described, as are the river crossings below Tower Bridge, ferries as well as tunnels. Like every other commission, back to 1855, the present one felt that it was vital to have some kind of central “Bridges Authority”, instead of the traditional hodge-podge of bodies. Its recommendations make interesting reading, being “designed to form integral and inter-dependent parts of a general and comprehensive scheme”. In this overall concept the Commission failed. Nevertheless, many of their proposals were implemented, such as the replacing of Chelsea, Wandsworth and Hampton Court bridges and the widening of Putney bridge, as well as the completion of the Chertsey road scheme with associated new bridges at Chiswick and Twickenham. Waterloo bridge itself was eventually demolished and replaced in 1936.
GBP 120.00
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