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Nothing better symbolises London than the Thames. It is a magnificent piece of nature at the heart of the city, the reason for the city's existence and for centuries the source of its wealth.
It is, as politicians and architects never tire of saying, London's most underused asset. It provides the views, from Waterloo Bridge or Tower Bridge, where the city looks most majestic, and you get the greatest sense of the metropolis as a whole.
Its scale is a fit subject for a mayor, and so it is welcome that Boris Johnson wants to encourage river bus services, and take them into the Oyster card system.
Johnson has declared that “travelling on the river is one of the great pleasures of London”, while his transport adviser Kulveer Ranger says “it is an iconic part of London and we want to make better use of it”. If this means the Mayor will lavish more love and attention on the river, and increase Londoners' enjoyment of it, he will be doing his job.
With this initiative Johnson is joining ranks of luminaries who have yearned to do something with the Thames. The architect Lord Rogers has been campaigning since the 1980s for better public access to the river, and recent years have seen plans for lighting the bridges by the artist James Turrell, and for unifying the Embankment lighting by Marks Barfield, architect of the London Eye.
Some of the campaigning has achieved results, including the Millennium Bridge, the new Hungerford footbridges, and the London Eye. The lawn on the river frontage of Tate Modern, modest though it is, has become one of the most intensely used open spaces in London. But many other plans have foundered, including previous river bus services, and the challenge for Boris is to make sure his ideas are not among the turkeys.
Any new ideas for the Thames will have to take account of the nature of the beast they are dealing with. It is tidal and broad, which makes it different from, say, the Seine. It winds. Its character changes from picturesque at Teddington to industrial at Tilbury.
Once, it was London's artery, and its oesophagus and colon. London's sustenance entered by it and sewage left through it. Trade centred on it, and transport passed along it. It teemed and stank. It was a combination of the M25 and a grand sewer but also, for example when it froze, a place of festivity.
For better and worse, it won't be this again. From 1874 Sir Joseph Bazalgette's embankments took the sewage away in pipes, and the Tube system offered an alternative to river boats. In the 1970s containerisation took most of the docks' business away, and with the current accelerated by the embankments it doesn't freeze any more.
Now its defining feature is its quietness. The real action of the city happens a block or more inland, partly as a result of the river's historic noxiousness: when it resembled a drain and a motorway the sensible thing was to make buildings face away from it whenever possible.
Its quiet is also due to the fact that it now works less as a centre than as two edges — of north and south London —facing each other. Its banks are like two coastlines. It also forms a boundary between 17 borough councils, and as anyone familiar with London politics knows, boroughs always neglect the edges of their territory in favour of their centres, as they reach more voters that way. The Thames, as the grandest boundary of all, is also the emblem of London's weakness at acting collectively.
It would be beyond the means of the most powerful politicians, which the Mayor is not, to return the Thames to its former thronged state. It would also be undesirable, as the river's openness, peacefulness and resistance to colonisation is part of its attraction.
But the river could be much more widely enjoyed than it is now. Too often it is glimpsed behind streaming traffic, or via intermittent walkways. Unfortunately an early act of Boris was to scrap Ken Livingstone's proposals to make the Victoria Embankment more friendly to pedestrians. While the project was grandiose and overwrought, the basic principle was good, and should be encouraged wherever possible.
One of the most imaginative unrealised plans for the Thames was a floating lido — a swimming pool on a permanently moored boat — proposed by architects Lifschutz Davidson. There is a similar pool in Copenhagen harbour. If the Danes can do it, there is no reason why London should not have such a pool, or several, which would satisfy the desire to swim in the Thames without the health risks that go with it. Encouraging projects like this would be a suitable job for the Mayor.
If river buses are to work, it will have to be on the basis of the pleasure they offer, rather than efficiency. The bends in the river make it a less direct route than the District line, and tides make timetables unreliable, but if boats were marketed for the sheer joy of them they might finally attract punters seeking refuge from the horrors of the Tube.
Another role for the Mayor is in managing those projects put forward by private developers, some of which create an opportunity for better enjoyment of the river. Over the past decade the banks of the Thames have been transformed by new residential projects replacing old industrial sites. With a few honourable exceptions they are of blistering ugliness, with a lack of coherence from one project to another, and with apologetic scraps of land where new places for enjoying the river might have been.
Much of this damage has been done and is irreversible, and there will be a pause before more are built. But this pause gives the chance of creating planning policies that actually work, before a future upturn brings a flood of applications for new flats. The shabbiness of Thames-side development is another symptom of boroughs' indifference to their boundaries: only the Mayor can overcome this neglect.
The Thames is already inspiring and beautiful, and has prompted poets from Wordsworth to TS Eliot, and painters from Canaletto to Monet. It needs no gilding. Part of its beauty is in its sense of freedom, and it cannot and should not be tamed, or mastered, or subjected to a grand plan. But it has a huge ability to give delight, which is barely tapped.
The encouragement of river buses is a step in the right direction, but should not be the only one.
Reader views (2)
If the Tories didn't sell off the piers in the 1980's so a couple of rich people could have a few house boats on them (like Dove Pier in Hammersmith) we would still have boat services!!
Boris like Thatcher only understand the spreadsheet version of life - the bottom line. Boris doesn't understand London or even pretend to wish to - this is all just a game for him ... another adventure for another rich kid. He won't achieve river transport on the Thames as he won't be bothered and if he was, he would note it is not possible cause Thatcher sold the piers that would be required to make it work.
So angry at all these press release stunts.
- Sidney Bauer, London, 08/04/2009 08:04
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Having fond memories of London holidays in the 1950s when the water buses from Westminster Pier, Tower Pier to all places on the river from Greenwich to Putney and beyond were as frequent as the road buses and so much more enjoyable. The traffic of boats and barges then added to the interest. Bring them back!
- John Moore., Chudleigh, England, 07/04/2009 16:50
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