The Thames Path (and some other newish features) in London

I’ve been in London twice this summer, in early July and then just last week.

In London, as in just about every other big city in the Western world, there has been a serious effort over the last fifty or sixty years to reduce the role of the automobile in urban transportation, and I wanted to see some of the results of this effort for myself. I’d been in London numerous times over the years but hadn’t been there (except to change planes) since 2013.

Some of what’s been accomplished has been widely publicized and requires little comment.

[1] Congestion charging. London has had a congestion charge on most vehicles entering central London since 2003. The charge is now a steep £15. Its effect is somewhat uncertain. There has been only a modest reduction in the amount of traffic in central London, and it’s not clear that this is due to the congestion charge.¹ Still, the congestion charge has brought some income to Transport for London (TfL) that’s been used for transit and for various projects that benefit pedestrians and cyclists. More recently, London has instituted an ultra-low emissions zone (the “ULEZ”) in its central city and has begun charging highly-polluting vehicles that enter the area.

[2] New bicycle infrastructure. Government agencies have created a substantial network of bicycle routes throughout the urban area. Some of these were labeled “bicycle superhighways” for a period. This label is no longer used, which is just as well, because the bike routes, impressive as they are, are not all protected and include numerous traffic lights and awkward street crossings; they are not much like superhighways at all. Some of them are quite heavily used nonetheless.²

[3] Constant improvement of rail transit. London, of course, had the world’s first subway lines (1863), and it supplemented the original just-below-the-surface lines from the 1860s and 1870s with new, deep “tube” lines in the 1890s and early in the 20th century. What is most striking to a New Yorker is the energy with which London (like Paris) went back to extending its subway system in the 1960s and continued to add lines in the following decades.³

One of the results is that London’s system, overtaken in length by New York’s in the 1920s, is now, with at least 402 route-kilometers, once again longer than New York’s system and is, in fact, probably the largest system in the Western world.⁴ Ridership before the Pandemic was rising faster than in New York too (although it remains much lower).

Here’s a map of the London Region, showing, among other things, cycleways and TfL rail routes:

And here’s a similar map for central London:

Pedestrian infrastructure improvement. Governments in London have also put a great deal of energy into an activity that’s received much less publicity: the improvement of the city’s pedestrian infrastructure including its recreational trail network. I acknowledge that, by its very nature, improving pedestrian infrastructure does not require the same kind of effort—or the same monetary resources—as some of the other activities noted above. It also may not have the same potential decarbonization consequences. The chief effect of building better pedestrian infrastructure is the creation of a more congenial environment for pedestrians. But there are presumably some decarbonization effects. Every trip made on foot rather than by a vehicle of any sort (including a train or bus) eliminates carbon use almost completely. And it’s a little hard to see how London’s transit systems could operate as they’re supposed to without good pedestrian access. In urban areas (like many in the United States) where walking is difficult, there are firm limits on how much decarbonization is even possible.

Improved pedestrian infrastructure has had the backing of London’s governments for the last several decades. The Walking action plan (2018) from the Mayor’s Office and Transport for London is the most recent of several official statements on the subject. Few other cities have taken pedestrian infrastructure quite so seriously (Singapore is one of them).

London, of course, was an excellent place for walking long before governments started talking about “pedestrian infrastructure.” London has been a walkable city at least since the streets were mostly paved and a proper sewer system was installed late in the 19th century. In most of London, sidewalks these days are in adequate shape and likely to be busy. Density is substantial enough so that walking is practical for many tasks. More often than not, drivers are reasonably respectful of pedestrians (there are exceptions; you’ve got to be careful about turning vehicles). And, in general, in London, there do not seem to be the kinds of cultural barriers to getting places on foot that many Americans face. Walking has been seen in a positive light in Britain among a substantial proportion of the population for many decades.⁵

The problem is that, at least since World War II, London, like most cities, has allowed cars to play a larger and larger role in urban transportation, and this has had all the usual effects. Noise and air pollution can reach astounding levels. Traffic deaths and injuries are common. Large parts of the outer city are so automobile-oriented that walking isn’t easy and doesn’t take you to where you might want to go. Even in the inner city, some arterials (Euston Road, for example⁶) are so choked by traffic that they repel those on foot and make access to certain areas a chore.

Government action to improve pedestrian infrastructure has taken several forms. Some of what’s been done has been easy and cheap. Installing pedestrian-oriented directional signage is tremendously useful and costs practically nothing. Changing traffic signals to reduce pedestrian wait times and to give pedestrians more seconds to cross is a no-brainer (but still needs doing in many places). Adding additional patches of sidewalk and closing streets, at least part-time, is also not difficult. This can engender opposition, but London is now full of newly pedestrianized spaces nonetheless, and there has been a very active discussion in public media about what more could be done in this area.⁷

London has also constructed new pedestrian facilities, some of which are only cheap when compared with the cost of building, say, subways. Among these are two (or maybe three) new pedestrian bridges across the Thames: the Millennium Footbridge (the “wobbly bridge”) between (roughly) the Tate Modern and St. Paul’s (2002) and the twin Golden Jubilee Bridges, which flank the Hungerford Railway Bridge between Charing Cross and Southbank Centre (also 2002).

London has also made an effort in recent years to maintain and improve its long-standing off-road pedestrian facilities on land. There are hundreds of parks in the city that contain walking paths. There are also a small number of longer-distance walking trails, most along water courses, that go back a long time. Examples include the towpaths that line the Regent’s and Grand Union Canals. (The towpath along the Grand Union Canal will take you most of the way to Birmingham.) These older off-road paths have been improved in various ways over the last few decades. Irregular surfaces have in some cases been smoothed or even paved, and the paths have acquired much better signage.

Completely (or mostly) new paths have been built as well. An example is the Lea Valley Walk, a path along the once highly polluted Lea River in East London that was radically upgraded as part of preparations for the 2012 Olympics.

There has also been an effort over the last twenty-five or so years to construct a continuous walking path along the Thames. The Thames Path (as it’s called) is an urban continuation of a path that extends for nearly 300 km from the river’s source to London. The rural portions of this trail (which I’ve never been on) are apparently like Britain’s many other long-distance footpaths, an elaborate concatenation of various rights-of-way that include narrow muddy segments, occasional busy roads, and just about everything in between. Since much of the Upper Thames, like the canals, was used for navigation before the age of steam, the Thames Path often has a towpath to follow. The Thames Path outside London was officially inaugurated as a national trail in 1996, and maps showing a finished route appeared soon afterward (there have been some minor route alterations in the years since).

Most of the Thames Path in London is of necessity quite different. The Thames is tidal below Teddington Lock in western London, and, as it heads to the Channel, it generally gets wider and wider. As a consequence, there never was a towpath along the lower parts of the Thames, east of Putney. In other words, there was often no obvious place for most of the urban continuation of the Thames Path to be sited. An additional complication is that a decision was made to build the Thames Path on both the North and the South Banks of the river between Teddington Lock and the Greenwich Foot Tunnel.⁸ (Upstream from Teddington Lock and downstream from the O2 more or less, only one bank has a path.) The Thames Path in London thus covers a substantial distance, something like 80 km. Including the paths along both banks, the Thames Path in London is approximately 130 km long. (It may be the world’s longest urban recreational path.) I walked very nearly its entire length during the course of my two trips to London this summer, and much of the rest of this post is based on this experience.

The only part of London’s Thames Path that was somewhat straightforward to build was that along the South Bank from Greater London’s western boundary down to the Putney Bridge, which generally just follows the right-of-way of the ancient towpath. Much of this part of the Thames Path has been left unpaved.

In the few places along the river where there was already parkland (for example, Battersea and Wandsworth Parks), park walkways have been declared to be part of the Thames Path.

There are also several stretches where the Thames Path alternates between having its own right-of-way and following lightly-used or pedestrianized roads through old medium-density suburban areas.

Much of the Thames in central London (especially on the North Bank) has long had major roads parallel to the river with a narrow stretch of sidewalk along the river embankment. In these areas, the sidewalk has been declared to be part of the Thames Path. This isn’t ideal, since users are always aware of traffic, but at least there’s often a busy bicycle path between the riverbank sidewalk and the road. The parts of the city where the Thames Path follows a sidewalk along the river are generally high-prestige residential or commercial neighborhoods (like Westminster, Pimlico, and Chelsea), and there are interesting buildings to look at across the highway.

Much of the Thames riverbank in London has, however, been the site well into the 20th century of docks, warehouses, and factories. This is especially true of the lower Thames, downstream from (roughly) the City. But, starting something like sixty years ago, with containerization and an enormous increase in the size of ocean-going ships, major port activities moved eastward, to points many kilometers beyond inner London. At roughly the same time, manufacturing activities in London fell into a radical decline. Land uses in cities don’t change overnight, however, and it’s taken many decades for this process to occur, and, in a few places, it’s still not complete. And there’s an additional complication. Over the last decade, the Thames Tideway Tunnel, a gigantic new sewer line that roughly follows the Thames, has been under construction. Work on this project has required substantial above-ground construction space, which blocks access to the river just as completely as factories and warehouses once did. The Thames Tideway Tunnel is scheduled to be complete, however, in two or three years.

There is now a different competitor for space along the Thames. In the same years that port activities were disappearing, middle- and upper-class residents were finding the idea of inner-city life more and more appealing, especially when it came with views of the cleaned-up river. There has been massive gentrification of much of inner London, including once industrial and/or working-class areas along the river. As in many other cities, this has led both to new construction and to the conversion of older buildings into expensive housing. It turns out that 19th-century warehouses make pretty good apartment buildings. Floors are strong, ceilings are high, and walls are often thick.

Most boroughs have been requiring new construction by the river to include space for the Thames Path. This hasn’t always worked, however, in part because new residents have sometimes been unenthusiastic about having a public right-of-way as a component of their expensive river views. A 2015 article in The Guardian suggested that real estate interests have not complied very well with rules requiring public access.⁹

There has nonetheless been a huge amount of progress. When I tried to follow the then newly declared Thames Path from central London to the still new Canary Wharf along the North Bank (and to came back via the Greenwich Tunnel and the South Bank) in 2001, very little of the path actually existed. It was necessary to use streets parallel to the river most of the way, and signage was not particularly helpful. These days, there are many more sections of continuous path, and the signage is a little better (although still imperfect).

While there are still plenty of places where pedestrians are directed to leave the riverfront, there are now many more areas where a newly built Thames Path passes along the river, often next to brand new developments, which occasionally come with ground-floor amenities.

This transformation is continuing. New segments of riverfront Thames Path are being added every year.

One of the difficulties of building the Thames Path along the river is that many “docks” along the Thames are actually man-made inlets rather than piers. Expensive bridging is thus needed to avoid substantial detours. Older buildings also often require analogous structures, built over the river.

Users of the Thames Path get to see views of a London that’s changed enormously. It’s arguable that the new developments along the Thames make up the largest urban renewal project anywhere in the Global North over the last few decades. It’s no longer correct to view residential London as made up almost entirely of low-rise, “terraced” houses. Many of the new apartment buildings in, for example, Chelsea, the Vauxhall-Nine Elms-Battersea area, and East London are very tall. The view of London from the Thames Path would hardly be recognizable as London to a traveler from, say, the 1980s.

Diversions from the river remain a problem, however. Some of these have a certain charm. There’s no great hardship in having to walk (or run) along a lightly-trafficked road lined with 19th-century warehouses.

Elsewhere, though, you have to walk through areas that only the most dedicated urban pedestrian would feel completely comfortable in on foot. Thames Path diversions in central Brentford, Mortlake, and Woolwich, for example, run on sidewalks right next to crowded arterials. Downstream from Greenwich, the Path often passes between active factories. And detours in Deptford take walkers through decidedly ungentrified neighborhoods.

The South Bank between (roughly) the Tower and Lambeth Bridges (with one gap) is a special case. In the years after World War II, the government began a long-term project to develop the riverfront of the not-so-prestigious South Bank as a cultural center. One consequence of the 1951 Festival of Britain was the construction of the Royal Festival Hall next to the Hungerford Bridge and the development of riverside public space that (radically) ignored the grid of streets. This new space proved enormously popular and was gradually expanded over the next decades. Tourist attractions like the Shakespeare Globe (1997) and the London Eye (2000) enhanced its appeal.¹⁰

One byproduct of the construction of new office buildings for the Greater London Authority headquarters near Potters Fields Park in 2002 was still more South Bank public space. This area has come to function to some extent the way that Times Square functions in New York: it’s a place for tourists to sit and simply enjoy being in a distinctive place. Of course, it’s not very likely that most of the crowds on this part of London’s South Bank realize that they’re on something called the Thames Path. (The government offices recently moved; rent on this high-use space had become too expensive.)

Walkers along the Thames Path will encounter even larger throngs across the river at the Tower of London. And there are more modest crowds in the central parts of Greenwich and (45 km away) Richmond. These business districts, of course, offer places to eat and drink. They also have bathrooms and easy access to public transit.

I acknowledge the risk of overstating the case, but I’m still inclined to argue that the construction of the Thames Path has fundamentally changed the pedestrian geography of London. It’s provided access to the Thames in many places where it simply didn’t exist during the years when most of London’s riverbanks were used for factories and port activities, and it’s provided a new facility for long- and medium-distance urban walking (or running) in parts of the city where no such facility existed. The outer parts of the Thames Path work for cycling too.

Although the Thames Path hasn’t made it yet onto most travelers’ bucket lists of things to see in London, it’s not exactly a secret. There’s an excellent TfL website that provides a detailed guide to the trail. There’s also a published guidebook on the Path’s London portions.¹¹ And the Path now appears on most tourist maps of London.

The Thames Path remains a work in progress, however. Except where the Path follows an old towpath, if you want to go more than a short way, you still have to keep shifting between more or less finished sections and temporary passages along streets, some much more attractive for pedestrians than others.

In this respect, the Thames Path is very much like comparable new facilities in many of the cities with which London competes—and in numerous smaller cities too. Examples include New York’s Hudson River Greenway, Tokyo’s Sumida River Terrace, Hong Kong’s harbourfront “promenades,” and Shanghai’s Huangpu Riverside Greenway. All of these waterfront paths were created partly to provide recreational space for local residents and partly to leverage an urban landscape made newly attractive by the disappearance of industry and docks and the construction of striking new residential and office buildings. These paths have mostly been imposed on complex areas with long-standing if somewhat moribund land uses. Thus, it’s not surprising that their installation has encountered roughly speaking a similar set of problems although to radically different extents. Remaining fragmentary port and industrial establishments often just couldn’t, for the moment, easily be moved. And, just about everywhere, there has been some opposition from local residents. As a result, all of these facilities have been under construction for many years and remain (to different extents) unfinished.¹² But they’re all now usable nonetheless.

I wouldn’t be inclined to argue that encouraging a shift away from automobile use is the chief reason for building new waterfront paths anywhere, but it’s certainly an appreciated byproduct. The addition of the Thames Path (and other new walkways) to London’s repertoire of pedestrian spaces can be seen as one of the results of the city’s turn over the last several decades toward focusing on the creation of alternatives to the automobile.