Campaign against new Silvertown tunnel launched

"PP - At the City Hall seminar last week the TfL representative said that most traffic using the Blackwall Tunnel either starts or finishes its journey in London and that there isn't much long distance through traffic that "should use the M25". I haven't seen any actual stats though."

Thanks for the note.

This worries me. Why? Because that's hardly 'news' and doesn't address the root cause (which I truly believe they don't know themselves). The tail is wagging the dog on this one, and you can bet that some significant lobbying's being undertaken by those who would secure the contracts to do the work.

Ultimately national, regional and local government needs to understand why so many single-person journeys by car are required. At a guess its because public transport infrastructure is insufficient, inflexible and too expensive.

If they don't ask travellers what it would take to do something different in their travelling habits and then address them, the best they can do is guess and force us to pay billions to fund their next folly.

There certainly is significant lobbying going on - many of those businesses pictured in Greenwich Council's press release will directly benefit from the construction of a tunnel. (I've joined the dots here: http://853blog.com/2013/01/18/the-leaders-friends-greenwich-council-relaunches-silvertown-push/ )

Unfortunately, Greenwich Council is now so close to businesses like AEG (the O2's owner), Berkeley Homes and West Properties (cruise liner terminal) that's it's becoming deaf to the fears of its residents.

As I’ve posted elsewhere, I’d be very supportive of a bridge at Silvertown as the first priority, with additional tunnels at Blackwall added only after a commitment has been made to the former. (The TfL survey suggests that a bridge at Silvertown couldn’t be delivered within the same timeline as extra tunnels at Blackwall (2021), although both have the same construction timeline. Hence, I assume that they think that it would take longer to get the approvals in place to begin work on a bridge?)

It strikes me that putting new crossings in at strategic points along the Thames east of the City is a far more strategic option than simply increasing the potential throughput of the existing crossings. This would presumably spread traffic across the wider area and avoid the risk of putting all of our transport eggs in one basket.

Replacing the existing Woolwich Ferry with another ferry-based “solution” would appear to me to be no solution at all. This has always appeared to be an anachronistic approach to modern transport issues and, other than for its novelty value, is a service that I generally avoid at all costs. It also doesn’t appear to be the most reliable of services from what I can see. Not a fit for purpose solution for a modern City like London.

What I would object to is any proposal to toll the Blackwall Tunnel. I can see no rationale for introducing tolls on existing infrastructure which we’ve already bought and paid for, and which is an essential artery for local traffic. (I could maybe see a rationale for tolling a new Silvertown Bridge – not my preferred option - but the economics would need to be looked out to ensure that it doesn’t become a white elephant by pricing locals off the roads.) I suspect that introducing a toll would probably drive more traffic through the Rotherhithe Tunnel, and thus through the streets of Greenwich and Deptford.

While it appears a study may have been done on origins and destinations for Blackwall, I would like to see the same data for the Woolwich Ferry. Many HGVs appear to come from far further afield than the Greater London area if their livery is anything to go by.



The only thing stopping more HGVs using the Woolwich Ferry at the moment is capacity and reliability. If we were to build an HGV-friendly tunnel to Silvertown how much more pollution would be created and how would the current Blackwall data change?

Sorry - I meant a bridge at Gallions Reach, not Silvertown in my earlier post.

I am puzzled about how the Silvertown tunnel would work. Who would use it in preference to the Blackwall tunnel? By the time you get to the point that the Silvertown tunnel spur leaves the A102, you have already sat through almost of the queue for the tunnel, so why would you not just continue into the Blackwall, taking you directly onto the A12, rather than having to negotiate the junctions from Silvertown Way onto East india Dock Road, and from EIDR onto the A12?
It seems to me that the Silvertown Tunnel needs a spur from somewhere between the Sun In The Sands and Woolwich Road roundabouts to remove the queues on the A102.

Or perhaps the Blackwall Tunnel could be for toll-payers and local residents (Greenwich, Lewisham, Tower Hamlets) only, with the Silvertown Tunnel being free. I struggle to find space for a toll-booth plaza either end of the Blackwall Tunnel, so that might have to be by electronic payment (tags or ANPR) only.

The Silvertown Tunnel, according to TfL's drawings, would emerge at a roundabout on Silvertown Way and the Lower Lea Crossing, suggesting it'd be for traffic towards Canary Wharf, the Limehouse Link, Wapping and the City. (No benefit for Newham Council there, oddly.)

And here we get to the real crunch - how many homes does Boris Johnson or Greenwich Council want to demolish to make this crock work?

Ah, yes, that makes sense. I'd seen the drawings, but the easy access to the Limehouse Link hadn't clicked. Thanks.
The bottleneck of the A102 remains, though - if they could take the spur off earlier (say, Woolwich Road), that would look good to me. Regrettably, there is usually too little appetite for the costs of buying out enough house-owners, so people end up getting lumbered with places fronting onto busy dual carriageways.

But what kind of place would east Greenwich/ the peninsula be with TWO dual carriageways steaming through it? You're basically looking at flattening Tunnel Avenue, or running it through the Millennium Village, and creating an even bigger polluting stink-hole at the A206 junction. Maybe that plan would have been a goer 20 years ago, when the gasworks had just wound down and the Millennium Dome plan hadn't taken shape, but not now.

Yes, the GMV is a problem. I'm not convinced, though, that a dual carriageway would be a worse eyesore than the GMV itself is, and in any case the proposal for the Silvertown tunnel already has another dual carriageway. I wonder if we can add another couple of lanes to the A102 from just north of Eastcombe Avenue, and take a spur out as an elevated section above Peartree Way and the Royal Mail depot.

Sainsbury's are moving and Comet have gone bust - maybe you could put the tunnel entrance there? ;-)

Sainsbury is moving?

Oh, that's annoying. I can walk or get a bus to the current one from the Standard.

Worth saying there's a Friends of the Earth public meeting on all this at the Forum in Trafalgar Road from 6.30pm this coming Monday (28th) - speakers include air quality expert Ian Mudgrave of King's College and ex-GLC transport engineer John Elliott. (FoE's against both crossings, No To Silvertown Tunnel doesn't have a line on Gallions, as so far Boris is firmly against it and at present Greenwich Council's wasting its time campaigning for a bridge there).

I went to the Poplar version of this last night, and the stats on air quality are hair-raising. and if you go through all the options for how Silvertown would work, even tolling it would still result in a huge increase of traffic on our streets.

If you can make it, even some of it, please coming along - it'll show you how stupid and dangerous these plans are, and how wrong Greenwich Council is in pushing this.

(and, of course, sign up: http://www.silvertowntunnel.co.uk)

There was talk of extending the 202, not sure how feasible/likely that is.

TfL refused to consider it.

Hmm, that's a bit rubbish.

The Guardian's covered the story on its website today, ahead of Monday's meeting:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/jan/24/london-thames-tunnel-pollution