Free Traffic Legal Advice

Overview
This is the first of three posts which analyse the TMO for Rivercourt Road, Hammersmith and Fulham. It sets the scene for detailed analysis of the two sets of restrictions which the TMO imposes.

TMO 2037 of 18 September 2024 attempted to lift the existing restriction in the Consolidated TMO 1878:

• one-way northbound for all vehicles (including cycles) from Great West Road to King Street

and instead impose two separate restrictions:

• one-way northbound for all vehicles (including cycles) from Great West Road to the start of two-way Rivercourt Road;
• only buses, taxis, cycles and H&F permit holders permitted to pass from Great West Road to two-way Rivercourt Road

The intention was that any vehicle could enter Rivercourt Road from King Street and pass southbound, turn round north of the junction with Great West Road and then return northbound to King Street, exiting there.

The lifting of the existing restriction and the imposition of the first of the new restrictions was the subject of paragraph 6 of the TMO and its Schedule. It sought to define a new one-way south-to-north restriction which replaced the old one.

Paragraphs 4 and 5 of the TMO were intended to impose the separate restriction on which vehicles can turn off Great West Road onto Rivercourt Road. There are some issues with these paragraphs, but they may have the effect which H&F intended. They are represented by the "flying motorcycle" sign with its Except plate (note that the one-way sign beneath this is part of the paragraph 6 restriction, not paragraphs 4 and 5).

The image below shows the signage as it was on 7 July 2025 (it has changed twice since November 2024):
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This post comes to the conclusion that the new one-way south-to-north restriction specified in the Schedule does not exist. While this implies that the one-way signs northbound, the Give Way road markings and the No Entry signs southbound should not be there, the restriction on which vehicles can turn into Rivercourt Road may, in principle, be enforceable.

There are, of course, other issues which affect whether a contravention occurs when a motor vehicle without a permit turns left from Great West Road into Rivercourt Road. Those include whether there is adequate signage. H&F have recently reduced the sign clutter on Rivercourt Road, but the signage on Great West Road remains variable message signs. This post is not concerned with signage issues.

One highly significant issue for the TMO is whether Hammersmith and Fulham Council acted lawfully in issuing it. Section 121B of Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 requires a local authority which is planning to make a change to one of its roads which could have an effect on one of TfL's roads to give TfL notice before making the change and obey TfL's subsequent instructions. TfL have now confirmed that the Council did not do this. Moreover, H&F also erased the edge-of-carriageway road markings on TfL's Great West Road and painted their own road markings on TfL's exit slip road. This will be the subject of a further post on this thread.

Source Documents
The primary source documents are:

• Rivercourt Road TMO 2037 of 18th September 2024
• Consolidated TMO 1878 of 24th April 2023
• H&F's plan of the junction between A4 and Rivercourt Road showing the signage after January 2025 but before the changes at the end of June 2025

Other source material has come as answers to FoI requests:

• H&F: Rivercourt Road Experimental TMO
• TfL: Junction of Great West Road with Rivercourt Road

Annotated Plan
TMO 2037 refers to various entities, notably

• junction [of Rivercourt Road] with Great West Road
• the southern building wall of No. 17 Rivercourt Road

The plan below is taken from Hammersmith and Fulham's January 2025 plan of the signage at the junction. This is the second iteration of the signage. H&F have resisted supplying plans issued to the line painters in November 2024 for the original signage (which can be seen in this image) from Hammersmith Society's report of 24 November 2024. The main change is that the Give Way lines have been moved north about 1.2 meters, as can be seen in the image at the top of this post.

On the plan have been drawn various lines which are referenced in the discussion in subsequent posts. There is a key at bottom right.
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The conventions of this plan are as follows:

land shaded:

• pale blue: TfL's highway land
• pale red: H&F's highway land
• grey: crossover or dropped kerb
• striped blue-grey: tactile paving
• white: non-highway land (the land immediately to the north of the pale blue land is laid to flowerbeds or is otherwise decorative and so is not highway land; its ownership ─ TfL or H&F ─ has not been established)

red lines and text represent proposed changes:

• thick lines adjacent to "SP" are upright traffic signs on a sign post
• other thick lines are white lines 150mm wide
• thinner lines near kerb are yellow lines
• other text and graphics on road are road markings in white

numbers in circles (red for new; black for existing) represent diagram numbers in the Traffic Signs Regulations for upright traffic signs. The most important are:

• 616: No Entry
• 619: No Motor Vehicles aka "flying motorcycle"
• 652: One Way Traffic
• 670: Speed limit

thin lines with arrows at each end and numbers to 1 decimal place are measured distances in meters

capital letters

• B: bollard
• LC: lamp column (with number)
• SP: signpost

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Restriction on Vehicle Classes from Great West Road

TMO 2037
Paragraphs 4 and 5 of TMO 2037 state:

4. No person shall cause any motor vehicle to proceed in a northbound direction on Rivercourt Road past a point at its junction with the A4, Great West Road and;
5. The controls specified in article 4 do not apply in respect of a vehicle being in any length of the restricted streets –
(a) with a valid permit;
(b) being a bus, local bus, taxi and pedal cycle; ...

Paragraph 4 ends with "and;", which suggests a typo, as with the repetition of "and a point" in the Schedule to the TMO.

Normal practice with TMOs is that if some special restriction applies which cannot be defined in the Schedule, it is defined in the main body of the TMO but applies to the same length of road as that in the Schedule. If that  were so, the word "and" would be followed by "a point 8.30 meters south of the southern building wall of No. 17 Rivercourt Road." As noted in the previous post, this extended form of paragraph 4 does not define a south-to-north restriction. If it did (and I surmise that whoever drafted the Schedule thought that the junction between Great West Road and Rivercourt Road lay at the edge-of-carriageway markings on Great West Road), TMO 2037 would make complete sense.

Passing "a point"
Nonetheless, it is possible that paragraph 4 was intended to refer simply to passing a point at the junction of Rivercourt Road with Great West Road. We have seen in the preceding post that "a point 8.30 meters south of the southern building wall of No. 17 Rivercourt Road" refers to a point on the boundary between TfL's Great West Road and H&F's Rivercourt Road.  It seems likely that this is the point referred to in paragraph 4.

In races on a track (horses, athletics, motor) there is a finishing line, which runs perpendicular to the track. On one side of this there may be a finishing post, today with a camera which records what passes across the line. It therefore makes sense to refer to "passing a point". This occurs when the front of the horse, human or motor car crosses the line perpendicular to the track which runs through the specified point.

If "a point" refers to "a point 8.30 meters south of the southern building wall of No. 17 Rivercourt Road", the line perpendicular to the track passing through this point is the magenta or violet line shown on the annotated plan, or some line between these. These lines lie wholly across TfL's land. Hammersmith and Fulham cannot impose such a restriction on a TfL road.

Relaxation of the Control
Paragraph 5 states that the controls in paragraph 4 do not apply

in respect of a vehicle being in any length of the restricted streets

That phraseology, especially the words "being in any length of the restricted streets", implies that there is some length of the restricted street in which the vehicle could be. One of the purposes of TMO 2037 was to lift the one-way restriction on Rivercourt Road north of the junction with Great West Road. There is now nowhere on Rivercourt Road between Great West Road and King Street in which the presence of a vehicle going in a particular direction at some time of itself contravenes a moving traffic restriction. A restriction may apply as a vehicle passes "a point 8.30 meters south of the southern building wall of No. 17 Rivercourt Road", but when a vehicle does so, it is not on Rivercourt Road but on the exit from Great West Road (which forms part of Great West Road).

This raises the question of what "restricted street" means. Is it a street in which the characteristics of the vehicle together with its location and the time and date determine whether the vehicle is permitted to be there? Or can it be a street in which how the vehicle got there determines whether the vehicle is permitted to be there? Could a TMO impose a restriction on those entering Rivercourt Road who had passed through Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea on their way there? These are tricky issues which only the courts can settle.

Conclusions
The restrictions in paragraphs 4 and 5 may be enforceable. Paragraph 4 bars motor vehicles from passing a point which lies on the boundary between TfL's highway and H&F's. Because of the alignment of the carriageways of Great West Road and Rivercourt Road (the angle between them is less than 90°), vehicles pass this point when they are on TfL's highway. The restriction is therefore extra-territorial but vehicles which pass it do subsequenly enter H&F's territory.

Paragraph 5 seeks to exempt certain vehicles from the restrictions of paragraph 4. However, as vehicles can enter and be in all parts of Rivercourt Road between Great West Road and King Street in either direction at all times, it's not clear that this section of Rivercourt Road is a "restricted street": the restriction applies to how the vehicle got there rather than where it is. This makes it far from certain that the extra-territorial restriction is lifted for those classes of vehicle specified in paragraph 5.

In other words, it seems quite possible that all motor vehicles which turn left from Great West Road onto Rivercourt Road are prohibited from proceeding north along Rivercourt Road. If this were so, it would be wholly improper for H&F to turn a blind eye to such contraventions by buses, taxis and permit holders while issuing PCNs to other motorists. This would render H&F's issuing of PCNs ultra vires because they took account of irrelevant considerations, i.e. that H&F had intended such motor vehicles to be exempt.

I expect their spell-checker is set to US English.

Public Notice for TMO 2037

I've been reading the Public Notice for TMO 2037. This isn't the formal TMO, but Public Notices can help shed light on TMOs. In this case it does.

Curiosities of TMO 2037
The first curiosity of TMO 2037 is that there is no paragraph 2. The next is the apparently incomplete paragraph 4:

4. No person shall cause any motor vehicle to proceed in a northbound direction on Rivercourt Road past a point at its junction with the A4, Great West Road and;

This ends with that hanging "and;". It makes no sense because it is followed by paragraph 5, which begins as a new sentence:

5. The controls specified in article 4 do not apply in respect of a vehicle being in any length of the restricted streets –

(a) with a valid permit;
(b) being a bus, local bus, taxi and pedal cycle;...

After this comes paragraph 6 which, along with the Schedule, shortens the existing one-way south-to-north restriction on Rivercourt Road from

between Great West Road and King Street

to

between Great West Road and a point and a point 8.30 meters south of the southern building wall of No. 17 Rivercourt Road

The Public Notice
The Public Notice puts these differently:

2. The general effect of the above-mentioned Order will be to prohibit as an experiment any motor vehicle to proceed in a northbound direction on Rivercourt Road past a point at its junction with the A4, Great West Road and;-.

3. to revoke the one-way northbound traffic flow restriction on Rivercourt Road and to introduce as an experiment a northbound one way restriction on Rivercourt Road between its junction with the A4, Great West Road and a point 8.30 meters south of the southern building wall of No. 17 Rivercourt Road.

4. The controls specified in article 2 would not apply in respect of a vehicle being in any length of the restricted streets -

a. with a valid permit;
b. being a bus, local bus, taxi and pedal cycle;

This makes a lot more sense. First, the paragraphs are numbered sequentially. Secondly, it is clear that paragraph 2 (the TMO's paragraph 4) is intended not as a complete sentence but as half of a single sentence spread across paragraphs 2 and 3 (the latter being given effect by the TMO's paragraph 6 and the Schedule).

It's as though one person (a highway engineer, perhaps?) drafted the Public Notice as a statement of what the TMO would do and then a second person botched the job of translating that into formal legal language.

I surmise that the policy maker knew that the Council's Rivercourt Road started to the north of the combined cycleway/footway on Great West Road and specified that:

• Rivercourt Road between the cycleway/footway and King Street was to become two-way with unrestricted access from King Street;
• access from Great West Road was to be restricted to buses, taxis, cycles and permit holders.

Where No Motor Vehicles was Intended to Apply
The Public Notice makes it clear that the restriction on the classes of vehicle which can enter Rivercourt Road from Great West Road was intended to apply just at

a point at its junction with the A4, Great West Road

and not (as I had surmised) along the length of the one-way south-to-north restriction.

H&F now acknowledge that the junction between A4, Great West Road and Rivercourt Road lies at the northern boundary of the combined cycleway/footway to the north of the eastbound carriageway.

But suppose that it was a highway engineer who worked out how the TMO would achieve the policy maker's objectives. Highway engineers inevitably approach the design of highways from a motorist's point of view. Such a person might well consider that the junction lay at the edge-of-carriageway road markings. Then paragraph 2 of the Public Notice's "point at its junction with the A4, Great West Road" would have lain on the edge-of-carriageway road markings.

Road Markings on Slip Road
Now consider the road markings which H&F painted on the exit slip road. They are diagram 1040.3 (ignore the stated diagram number 1040.4 on the plan). This is TSRGD 2016 Schedule 11 Part 4 Item 23 and means:

Reduction in the number of lanes, or area not available to traffic, on the main carriageway or slip road of a motorway or all-purpose dual carriageway road

It is the correct road marking for a slip road from a dual-carriageway and prohibits all traffic from crossing the solid white line at its boundary. It is precisely what a highway engineer would specify to prohibit vehicles which have started to turn off Great West Road from returning to the carriageway. Unless the entire manoeuvre can be completed without any part of the vehicle's crossing one of the solid white lines, an offence is committed.

A mistaken belief that TfL's highway coincided with the carriageway could also explain H&F's failure to give TfL notice under s.121B of Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 of a proposed change to one of H&F's highways which could affect TfL's highway. It would certainly explain why H&F felt able to change the road markings on that part of the slip road which lies within TfL's highway.

There's still the risk that vehicles turning onto Rivercourt Road will crash into vehicles which have come south from King Street and are doing a 3-point turn just north of the Give Way lines. This would have an impact on the carriageway of the A4, as would vehicles which come south and ignore the No Entry signs (see this PCN video).

The road markings on the exit slip road therefore lend support to the inference that the intended "point at its junction with the A4, Great West Road" lay on the edge-of-carriageway road markings on Great West Road.

South-to-North Restriction
Further support for this is provided by the definition of the south-to-north restriction. This begins at the "junction between Great West Road and Rivercourt Road". It ends at "a point 8.30 meters south of the southern building wall of No. 17 Rivercourt Road". H&F have stated that this latter point lies on the northern boundary of the combined cycleway/footway. If the "junction between Great West Road and Rivercourt Road" lies at the edge-of-carriageway markings, the south-to-north restriction applies to the exit slip road where it crosses the grass verge and combined cycleway/footway, a distance of some 6m.

Reality Intrudes
Unfortunately for H&F, TfL's highway, Great West Road, includes the verge and the combined cycleway/footway. At some point, H&F accepted reality. In their responses to my FoI request, they acknowledge that the junction lies at the northern edge of the cycleway/footway.

Notwithstanding this, they maintain that the south-to-north restriction is of length greater than zero. As I have set out in Reply #1, the fact that Great West Road makes an acute angle with Rivercourt Road means that the end of the restriction lies to the south of its start. As it's defined as a south-to-north restriction, this isn't meaningful, so the restriction is void.

Implications
To return to the Public Notice, its placing the south-to-north restriction as paragraph 3 means that when paragraph 4 refers to "restricted streets", it made sense to its authors because paragraph 3 has just applied a restriction to what they considered to be part of Rivercourt Road. With that restriction in place, paragraph 4 relieves buses, taxis and permit holders, which have been in a "restricted street" (i.e. the south-to-north restriction) from the prohibition of paragraph 2.

In the real world, the "junction with Great West Road" lies to the north of the end of the south-to-north restriction. This means that not only is there no south-to-north restriction but that the "restricted street" does not exist. It follows that paragraph 4 of the Public Notice (paragraph 5 of the TMO) does not relieve buses, taxis and permit holders from the prohibition of paragraph 2 of the Public Notice (paragraph 4 of the TMO).

Conclusions
I'm not convinced that a TMO can impose a restriction on crossing a line or passing a point, especially when that happens on another traffic authority's highway. Assuming that it can, TMO 2037 has these effects:

• the entire length of Rivercourt Road between the northern boundary of the cycleway/footway on Great West Road and King Street is open to all vehicles in both directions;
• all motor vehicles (with no exceptions) are prohibited from crossing the northern boundary of the cycleway/footway northbound; cyclists may do so;
• the No Entry signs and Give Way road markings have been placed 4m too far north; they should be at the northern edge of the combined cycleway/footway.

Traffic authorities are required to place signage to show the effect of TMOs which they impose. Needless to say, the signage H&F have placed does not show the effects of the TMO. For instance, the "flying motor cycle sign" lies 1-2m north of the (single) point where the prohibition on northbound traffic applies. This is where the No Entry signs and the Give Way lines should lie (but there would be even more crashes if they did).

Given the road markings on the exit slip road, motorists on the A4 need to be advised that they are not to start turning left onto Rivercourt Road. Once they have started to turn left, they commit an offence if they turn back onto the A4. They incur a PCN if they continue. H&F's variable message signs do not provide the necessary information and are beyond the 6-month time limit on such "temporary" signs. As has been stated in so many cases,

If the signs do not in fact provide adequate information no offence is committed; see James v Cavey [1967] 2 QB 676

Unfortunately, that doesn't stop H&F from sending out PCNs.


P.S.
I now think I know why H&F moved the Give Way lines north: it was because the northern edge of the northern Give Way line should lie between the No Entry signs. I don't know why they didn't instead move the No Entry signs south so they were on the back of what are now a pair of No Motor Vehicle signs.