Hammersmith Bridge is one of London's most cherished landmarks and, at the same time, one of its most vulnerable structures. Built in 1887, this Grade II* listed suspension bridge currently carries pedestrians and cyclists.
The bridge was closed to motor vehicles in April 2019 after engineers found dangerous cracks in its pedestals, the cast-iron supports holding up the suspension structure. Accolade Measurement Ltd was chosen to operate an extensive structural health monitoring system built around 263 physical gauges, automated total stations and a dedicated web platform.
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Before the installation, Accolade's engineering team already had a highly detailed picture of the bridge's structural behaviour. What this structural system could not provide was a live count of how many pedestrians and cyclists were on the bridge at any given moment.
The technical brief was demanding. Any new counting solution had to plug into the existing monitoring platform without creating a separate interface. For a team already managing a complex sensor network on a historic, hard-to-access structure, the solution needed to be robust, low-maintenance and straightforward to integrate at the data level. |
Traffic Technology Ltd (part of Eco-Counter Global Group) installed six CITIX-AI Evo camera counting systems, three at each end of the bridge, covering both the Hammersmith and the Barnes approaches. This marked the first multiple CITIX-AI Evo Active Travel installationof its kind in the UK.
Each unit is a self-contained, industrial-grade camera counter designed to run autonomously, with remote configuration and no need for regular manual intervention. Counts are anonymised at the point of capture, in line with GDPR requirements, and pushed out in real time via standard APIs, feeding directly into Accolade's existing monitoring platform.
"We are very pleased with the installation of six CITIX-AI Evo camera counting systems on Hammersmith Bridge, carried out by Traffic Technology Ltd. These advanced units are providing accurate, real-time counts of pedestrians and cyclists at both ends of the bridge. As a historic and sensitive structure, Hammersmith Bridge requires careful monitoring to prevent overloading."
Alex Whittaker, Head of Engineering & Technology, Accolade Measurement Ltd
Since going live in May 2025, the six CITIX-AI Evo units have been running continuously, feeding data into the shared platform. A quick review of the key metrics shows:
● 9.9 million counts recorded across the bridge since going live in May 2025.
● An average of 25,600 pedestrians and 11,000 cyclists per day.
● A one-third / two-thirds split between cyclists and pedestrians.
This occupancy data now plays a direct role in how the bridge is managed. When pedestrian and cycle numbers approach the thresholds defined for safe loading, the system flags the risk in real time, enabling bridge managers to close access to pedestrians and cyclists until levels return to an acceptable range.
Structural stress and human occupancy are now viewed as one combined data set, with automated alerts triggered whenever loading approaches critical thresholds, cross-referencing the CITIX-AI Evo counts with the 263-gauge structural sensor network.
The Hammersmith Bridge project shows how active travel counting through a dedicated solution like CITIX-AI Evo can be added to an existing, complex ITS or structural monitoring ecosystem without multiplying tools and maintenance overhead. Two lessons stand out:
Interoperability should be a starting requirement. Choosing a system with open APIs made it possible to merge occupancy and structural data into a single platform rather than running them side by side.
Autonomous units reduce operational risk on hard-to-access, sensitive structures, where every site visit needs to be justified and planned.
This model is directly transferable to other ITS environments managing historic bridges, viaducts or sensitive crossings, wherever technical teams need new data sources to strengthen, rather than complicate, their existing monitoring set-up.
Hammersmith Bridge remains a working, living part of London's active travel network, thanks in part to six CITIX-AI Evo systems now feeding real-time occupancy data straight into its existing structural monitoring platform. By treating interoperability and reliability as core requirements from the outset, Accolade Measurement Ltd, Traffic Technology Ltd and Eco-Counter have shown how active travel counting can strengthen an ITS ecosystem, keeping one of the city's most historic crossings safely open to the people who rely on it every day.