You won't be surprised to learn that I can't see any arguments for the proposed double decked structure. However, in the spirit of playing devil's advocate...
Now, if you drive a car regularly, you might look at the bridge and imagine how easy your life would be if you were allowed to drive your car across the bridge again.
You can imagine yourself cruising up Castelnau, swooshing effortlessly over the bridge and reaching your destination - say, King Street in Hammersmith - in just a few minutes.
But think about it just a bit longer. The fact is, it won't just be you wanting to drive your car over the bridge - it'll be plenty of other people too. And what happens when lots of people try to drive their cars in the same place at the same time? That's right - traffic! And everyone gets frustrated, and everyone gets angry...you don't need me to tell you the inevitable result.
And of course it's not just you being inconvenienced. You are also holding up buses (at least, if you're travelling south from the bridge), and of course you are producing noise and pollution for all the other people in the area.
Whereas, of course, you could probably get to King Street much more easily by simply getting on a bicycle. In fact, sometimes the traffic on Castelnau was so bad it would literally have been quicker to walk!
So, really, this isn't an argument in favour of opening the bridge to cars at all.
This is probably the biggest argument in favour of opening the bridge to vehicles. If buses could cross the bridge, it would make life much easier for people who have trouble making the walk from the top of Castelnau to Hammersmith Broadway.
The problem is that buses are heavy - around 12 tonnes or so. And so they would need the bridge to be fully strengthened to let them cross - which would inevitably lead to demands to let cars cross too.
If people who have trouble walking across the bridge could be provided with some sort of public transportation, it would seem to be the best possible solution. And the climate charity Possible have come up with just that.
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