I voted for Sadiq Khan, both as my former constituency MP and when he stood as a candidate to be Mayor of London. So what follows is not generic criticism from a political critic, but a plea from a Londoner who would like the mayor to ensure that this great capital remains just that.

Currently, the experience of travelling in what is supposed to be a ‘world city’ is evidence that it is anything but: instead a messy amalgam of failed ideas, operational incompetence and political indifference.

Last month, in what was a symbolic moment, Tower Bridge became stuck, having opened to allow a ‘tall ship’ through but then jamming. The police, invariably absent when traffic problems occur in the capital, on this occasion eventually arrived on the scene, providing useless advice to roader users that they should ‘seek alternative routes’.

To Londoners such as myself, especially those who dare to live south of the Thames, this advice was par for the course. The moment you drive west of Tower Bridge you incur a £15 road tax penalty (sorry, ‘Congestion Charge’).

If you reverse your journey, you negotiate the nightmare of crossing the river via the Rotherhithe Tunnel, hopefully not when the police are conducting one of their helpful traffic checks on the other side, thereby extending the crossing time by 15 minutes (as happened to me).

If you just keep going, bear in mind that the £15 penalty now operates at the weekends as Mayor Khan’s contribution to making life easier during the pandemic.

To cross the river is no simple matter. You cannot turn left from the Embankment onto Westminster Bridge. Vauxhall Bridge is closed to most traffic because of roadworks.

You cannot turn left onto Chelsea Bridge. Wandsworth bridge is half-closed for roadworks; Hammersmith Bridge is closed (as usual) for ‘strengthening’.

Almost needless to say, there are no extant plans for replacement/relief bridges in central London, though there are terribly exciting plans to illuminate those that exist – a good example of decadent design trumping good old engineering principles which explain why we have bridges and tunnels in the first place.

Bring back Brunel, you might say.

London has lost the habit of bridge-building. The last new crossing, the Millennium Bridge, was a private initiative and contributed nothing to relieve traffic congestion. It is hard to think of a new London bridge carrying vehicles, built in the 20th century and still operative.

Public policy appears to be that bridges are bad – unless they are for pedestrians and cyclists. But if you hate the idea of bridges for cars, it is a short step to hating any bridge: hence the abandonment of the Rotherhithe Park-to-Canary Wharf idea and, further west, the proposal to link Vauxhall and Pimlico.

It goes without saying that there is no extant proposal being supported to building a relief crossing, given the repeat closures of Hammersmith Bridge, which again unduly penalise Londoners living south of the Thames.

Mayor Khan hails from Tooting, so must be well aware of the grotesque inequity of London Underground provision for people like him and me, with only about 10 per cent of stations south of the river. We need bridges and we need transport policies that work for all, not just the lucky transpontine majority.

The mayor claims that he wants London to get back to work, yet he has done little or nothing to encourage this to happen. On the contrary, the message is that not only should we be wary of using public transport, but that we should fear the £15 penalty charge for travelling about in our own city by other means, weekends included.