A design has been unveiled for an ingenious pedestrian and cycle crossing between Canary Wharf and Rotherhithe in London – but its planning process must happen out in the open, not behind closed doors

You wait years for a new bridge across the Thames then three come along at once. Joining the controversial garden bridge and a plan for a crossing between Nine Elms and Pimlico, both of which have fierce opponents, comes a proposal unveiled today for a new pedestrian and cycle bridge between Rotherhithe and the Isle of Dogs in east London that hasn’t aroused a single objection – yet.

There’s a good reason why: of the three plans, it makes by far the most sense. The new design is proposed for a place desperately short of cross-river connections and with urgent need for one. At least 3,300 new homes and places for 2,000 new jobs are fast rising out of the ground at Canada Water to the south, while around 105,000 people currently work across the river at Canary Wharf (a figure that’s set to double by 2030). The current options to get between the two without driving include taking the congested Jubilee line, waiting for an occasional boat shuttle, or risking life and lung by going through the Rotherhithe Tunnel.

“It’s a no-brainer,” says architect Nik Randall, a Southwark resident for 30 years, whose practice ReForm has come up with a design for the bridge with engineers Elliott Wood. “It has the potential to unlock journeys way beyond the surrounding area, encouraging people to cycle to work who might not ever have considered it before.”

Their scheme takes the form of a pair of sharp white steel boomerangs, tautly strung across the river and fixed so they can pivot to allow the deck to open in the middle, like Tower Bridge, and let tall ships pass through. In an ingenious – and the designers say unique – move, the 100-tonne counterweights, required to open a “bascule” drawbridge of this kind, are embedded in the length of the two masts, doing away with the need for hefty enclosures to house them in the rest of the structure. The two sides simply pivot, allowing the angled masts to slot effortlessly into the wishbone-shaped decks at either side. The result is an exceptionally lean structure, which looks like a pair of whale bones held in fine balance. It would be an appropriately graceful gateway to greet boats arriving in London, after they’ve chugged beneath the growling Dartford Crossing out in the estuary. But is it ever likely to happen?

The idea for a bike crossing in this location has a chequered history. It was first mooted back in 2008 by cycling charity Sustrans, who came up with an unbearably cumbersome scheme for a lifting bridge. It was to be accessed by two huge spiralling ramps on either side and loomed over by a pair of gigantic H-frame masts that looked like guillotines waiting to decapitate unsuspecting cyclists. “It was rather ugly,” admits Matt Winfield, acting director of Sustrans London.

Transport for London pulled the funding when the mayor seemed distracted by the more glamorous idea of a cable car across the river a little further east, which duly became the Emirates Air Line – a £60m white elephant that has yet to enjoy a single regular commuter.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bascule bridge … the deck would open in the middle to allow tall ships to pass through. Image: Reform Architects/Elliott Wood

Randall and keen cyclist engineer Gary Elliott started working on their bridge idea independently two and a half years ago, then registered their design. It came to the attention of Sustrans earlier this year when the charity’s work was revived with a £200,000 grant to conduct a feasibility study on a Rotherhithe crossing in June, joint-funded by TfL, British Land and Canary Wharf Group – the mayor’s interest in cycling having been rekindled. ReForm’s bascule design was used to scope the engineering parameters (including clearance heights, navigation routes and how the ramps meet the banks) and it was chosen as the preferred option in the confidential report, now submitted to TfL – although Winfield insists that “no design has been selected”.

Having parted company with Sustrans, the bridge designers are now pressing ahead to launch their scheme and looking for private funds to make it happen. With an estimated construction cost of £88m – half the price of the garden bridge – and some of the world’s richest companies next door (the bridge will land right next to a site planned for JP Morgan’s new HQ), it’s not hard to imagine lycra-clad bankers queuing up to throw their money, and their logos, at the project.

“It has been met with universal support and enthusiasm so far,” says Randall, “although we’ve yet to secure any confirmed backers.” With another £250,000, they say they could reach pre-application stage in four to six months, with another six to 12 months for a planning application and consultation process, and it could open five years from now. The momentum is definitely there. A pedestrian and cycle crossing in this location was picked out in George Osborne’s National Infrastructure Plan last year as “an interesting proposal and worth looking at in more detail”, while Boris Johnson tweeted “still in negotiations but we love the scheme” during an #askboris session in October.

After questions have been raised about the unconventional procurement of the garden bridge, in which the winning design was proposed before the tender process was even launched, you might imagine that TfL would be keen to be as open and transparent as possible about how a Rotherhithe cycle bridge might come to pass. Following questioning by the London Assembly’s Oversight Committee in October, TfL’s director of internal audit Clive Walker finally conceded that the garden bridge procurement process was neither “open” nor “objective”. Thomas Heatherwick had already come up with his scheme and the judging appears to have been weighted in his favour. Is there a danger the same thing might be happening again?

“If TfL was leading on this project, we would obviously go through a proper procurement process,” says Richard de Cani, TfL’s managing director of planning. “But it has been very much led by Sustrans to date. We may carry on doing it in partnership with them, but part of the next stage would be to work out how to take it forward.” He says the current estimated cost for the project could be up to £200m, using a mixture of public and private funding. “We’ve got to a point where we understand what the concept would have to be to make it work. If the best solution was to have a design competition, then that’s what we would do, but I don’t see a problem if the preferred option became the final scheme.”

It’s not a wholly encouraging response for a body that has already been accused of breaking its own rules in procuring another pedestrian bridge upriver.

“The garden bridge process has shown that TfL, with its huge legal obligations, has been quite willing to breach EU regulations,” says Walter Menteth, former chairman of the Royal Institute of British Architects’ procurement reform group, “yet that civil society is not prepared to challenge when they should.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Elegant engineering … by embedding the 100-tonne counterweights in the masts, the thickness of the deck and piers can be reduced. Image: Reform Architects / Elliott Wood

Unlike the garden bridge, which has lost more and more backers as more details have been revealed about the nature of the proposal, there appears little to object to in the Rotherhithe plan for a truly public crossing, open 24 hours a day, with a very specific purpose: to get people across the river in a place where it is hard to do so. Still, their design may well be a model of elegant engineering, but that doesn’t mean it should leapfrog a democratic process.

“A pedestrian and cycling bridge linking Rotherhithe and Canary Wharf would provide a vital link where at present there is a total lack of adequate provision for pedestrians and cyclists,” says Caroline Pidgeon, deputy chair of the London Assembly’s transport committee. “Unlike the garden bridge this is a bridge that is desperately needed and where public money should be spent. I also welcome interest from architects in designing a new bridge, however it is vital that unlike the garden bridge the design contract is only awarded after a fully open and fair competitive procurement process.”

As for the architects, it’s easy to understand why they’re pressing ahead regardless, rather than waiting for the cumbersome bureaucratic machinery of endless feasibility studies and pre-qualification questionnaires to finally kick in.

“If it went through a public procurement route, we very much hope we would be eligible to enter,” says Randall. “But smaller practices are excluded from this kind of thing all the time. EU procurement rules are based on the fears of the people being audited about the process, rather than what the physical result of the process will be. It so often precludes people with better ideas, which stifles innovation and new faces.”

