Boris Johnson’s £200m ‘utopian’ city project that ended in misery

Boris Johnson’s project to build a bridge across the Thames ended in misery, with millions of taxpayer pounds wasted.

The Garden Bridge was imagined by Joanna Lumley in 1998 as a “floating paradise” memorial for Princess Diana and picked up in 2012 by then-Mayor of London Boris Johnson.

The pedestrian-only bridge was to be filled with trees and shrubs, hedging plants and climbers, perennials, ferns and grasses, and bulbs.

It was meant to connect the Temple tube station on Arundel Street to South Bank by the ITV London Studios, between Waterloo Bridge and Southwark Bridge.

In 2013, Johnson threw his weight behind the project, squashed objections and committed millions of public money to the venture.

City AM said of the project: “Garden Bridge was meant to have the utopian charm befitting a city still in a state of euphoria after London’s 2012 Olympic triumph. Most importantly, it was then-London mayor Boris Johnson’s baby and not (repeat NOT) a vanity project.”

Originally supposed to cost £60 million, estimates swelled to £200 million. Along with £140 million of privately raised money, the bridge would have been funded by £30 million from Transport for London and £30 milllion from the Department for Transport.

Its construction would also have required the felling of mature trees on both sides of the river, including 28 plane trees on Queen’s Walk, which were planted in the 1960s as a living memorial to London’s war dead.

There were already nine bridges in the two miles between Westminster Bridge and London Bridge.

The bridge was proposed to be open from 6am to midnight, with closures for 12 private commercial events per year to raise funds for its maintenance, up to £3.5 million.

But in 2016, work on the bridge was halted before building ever began and the new Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announced a formal review into the project and its value for money.

The subsequent report by Margaret Hodge MP was highly critical of the plan, its cost, the risk to public funds, its lack of value for money, its unpopularity and its purpose.

The failed Garden Bridge project was scrapped by Khan due to concerns about its financial viability. The planning work cost £53 million – £43 million of which was public money.