What do critics have against the Garden Bridge?

It’s not pretty (the bridge is fine, the comments not so much)

A meeting was held yesterday in Waterloo to discuss objections to the controversial Garden Bridge project.

We’ve gathered the best quotes from the event:

Architect Alistair Lenczner who was in charge of the team designing the Milau Viaduct in France, said the bridge was a “private garden platform pretending to be a bridge”.

He added: “We seem to have ended up with a design which has had a need and a brief retrofitted onto it.”

Bridge designer Cezary Bednarski said the design company Heatherwick Studio “should go back to the drawing board because this project fails on every count.”

Ann Kendrick, chair of the London Cycling Campaign, said: “It would be appalling for so much public money to be spent at this time on a new river crossing which excludes cyclists.

“This project does not seem to have been thought through. By 2030, we will have 10m people in London and there will have been a massive increase in the numbers of people on bikes.”

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett said the £60m budgeted for the scheme would be better spent creating green urban spaces in other parts of the city.

London mayoral candidate Christian Wolmar said: “What I’d like to see that money spent on is perhaps 30,000 streets across London being allocated £1000 each to put up their own trees or planters and flower beds or bike locking facilities. Think how imaginative that could be – it would be rather greener than this project.”

Read more of Wolmar’s opinion on the bridge in our interview with him.

However, a Garden Bridge spokesperson said: “The Garden Bridge is designed to offer pedestrians a new, very special, and free, route across the River Thames. It will provide a unique green corridor between two bustling areas of the capital, with thousands of new plants and trees providing real environmental benefits, as well as new views of a city and river that is always changing.

“A robust business plan is in place to ensure the bridge is self-funded once completed, and can remain a special place for Londoners to use for generations to come.”

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