Work has been completed on the £100m restrengthening of the Hammersmith Flyover.

Completion of the works brings an end to two years of lane closures and diversions and will come as a welcome relief to motorists.

The refurbishment to fully restore and restrengthen the 1960s flyover means it will be safe to use for decades to come and will require less regular maintenance work in the future, meaning less congestion and traffic delays, say Transport for London (TfL), which carried out the work.

The work has included:

  • New tensioning cables – totalling 6.5km in length – installed and fully tensioned, restoring strength within the structure
  • The entire flyover re-waterproofed and resurfaced with new drainage installed within the structure
  • More than 150 tonnes of steel beams and bars installed inside the flyover to hold the new tensioning system and reinforce the concrete
  • Two five-tonne expansion joints within the carriageway were replaced, allowing the structure to flex as traffic moves across it
  • All 34 bearings supporting the flyover have been replaced, allowing it to adapt to weather conditions and expand in the summer and shrink in the winter by up to 180mm

TfL is now working to clear the work site around the flyover, with all local roads returning to normal by late autumn.

Garrett Emmerson, chief operating officer for surface transport at TfL, said: “We are committed to ensuring that London’s road network is safe, reliable and well cared for. The work carried out on the Hammersmith Flyover in the last two years has been vital to ensure that the structure, a key London road artery, remains safe for many years to come.

“The engineering prowess of the team at Hammersmith has meant that the flyover has been kept open to traffic for more than 90% of the duration of the work, and I would like to thank all local residents and road users for having borne with us whilst the work was carried out.”

AA president Edmund King said: “TfL engineers working night and day on the Hammersmith Flyover has now paid off. When the flyover was found to be unsafe just before the Olympics it was a nightmare.

“Since then we have had a refurbishment scheme that has been highly innovative and which has always sought to reduce the impact of the inevitable repair works on traffic on this vital strategic route.

“Several years on and we are almost there and we pay credit to the TfL, contractors, engineers and the communications teams who tried to prioritise the needs of road users and local residents. We also acknowledge the patience of local people and drivers who have had put up with inevitable occasional disruption. The lessons learnt from this unpredicted failure of a major artery should hopefully mean an event on this scale will not be repeated in the capital.”

TfL says it will continue to work closely with Hammersmith & Fulham Council to make the Hammersmith gyratory safer and more accessible for cyclists, as part of their wider borough cycling improvement strategy.

Plans are also underway to install a new Santander Cycles docking station underneath the flyover, providing space for more than 50 bikes.

Subject to planning permission, the docking station could be in place by early 2016.