London’s former Mayor told a London Assembly committee last Thursday that his successor Sadiq Khan is responsible for the financial loss, having cancelled the scheme “completely unnecessarily”.

 

He said his two regrets regarding the Garden Bridge were not starting the project earlier and that the scheme became a political football.

 

“It is a bitter disappointment to see the project no longer proceeding. When I left office around £37M was spent and a further £9M was then racked up during a period of indecision,” Boris Johnson said. “I think £46M was the final bill and that is a great shame. If I was still Mayor of London I would have continued with that project and it would not be money down the drain.”

 

The Garden Bridge would, he continued, have been “a beautiful piece of engineering and stood the test of time,” helping to satisfy connecting transport needs between Waterloo and Aldwych on either bank of the River Thames.

 

Boris Johnson went on to say that “all fantastic infrastructure projects are hated by the public” at a certain moment in their lifecycles. “The same was true of the Olympics, people said scrap it; people hated the M25 before it was finished and some people hate HS2 with a poison.” Those in positions of leadership need to show courage to “get on and get things done”, he added.

 

The former Mayor also claimed that Crossrail “was almost dead” during his early years in office and his team “had to fight like tigers to get this off the mortuary slab” and progress the scheme.

 

“Killing infrastructure projects is the easiest thing in the world as it looks as though you are saving money, but you always regret it,” he also said.

 

In a statement, the current Mayor’s office said that Boris Johnson oversaw a “catalogue of failures” associated with the Garden Bridge. “When Sadiq Khan took over as Mayor, huge outstanding issues remained with the project facing spiralling construction costs, a funding gap of over £70M and no agreement on how to fund maintenance costs.

 

“Sadiq couldn’t risk a situation where London taxpayers had to step in and contribute millions of pounds in additional funding to ensure the project could be completed.”

 

The Garden Bridge was cancelled last August. The Garden Bridge Trust had said it had no choice but to wind up the project because of a lack of ongoing support from the Mayor. In April 2017 Sadiq Khan wrote to the Trust stating he was not prepared to commit any further money to take the project forward.