Look at it this way. For decades, plans and schemes for additional ways to traverse the Thames east of Tower Bridge have come to nothing. The mighty river that gave birth to an astounding city also severs and inhibits it, yet the task of engineering a new route for road traffic within London to travel over or beneath it has defeated us since 1967, when the southbound side of the Blackwall Tunnel was opened by Desmond Plummer, leader of the Greater London Council (or General London Council, as Pathé News had it at the time).
Forty thousand vehicles a day had “a direct link with The Continent” from then on. The Continent! Ooh la-la! But not until 7 April, 2025 would the now clogged, pinched and accident prone dual Blackwell bores be supplemented by the all-new, two-track Silvertown Tunnel, connecting the regenerating Greenwich Peninsula south of the river switchback close to the O2 with Silvertown to its north at a point between the Royal Docks and the last twists of the River Lea before it flows into London’s defining aquatic artery.
It is a scheme which, given its scale and historic import, has not received huge attention, a deficit BBC London’s Tom Edwards has contrasted with the yard-by-yard coverage of the Crossrail tunnelling. Perhaps that ought to change. The new tunnel is that rare thing, a major civil engineering project completed within its (private finance initiative) budget and on time. Just under a mile long, it will carry about 25,000 vehicles a day, providing an alternative to Blackwall while intending to manage down any “induced demand” with tolls. These will also, for the first time since its first half was completed in 1897, be applied to the Blackwall.
So, London has a new road-user pricing scheme. How green, though, can a road tunnel be? Well, there is a lane for lots of zero-emission buses as well as the larger freight vehicles the Blackwell can’t accommodate. Those Londoners with a preference for bicycle travel are to have their own special facility in the form of a shuttle that won’t cost them a penny to use for the first year. Motor vehicles are getting cleaner all the time, a trend hastened by Sir Sadiq Khan’s Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ).
What’s not to like? Plenty, according to some. Campaigners against the tunnel over the years have been vocal and various, ranging from environmentalists, to Labour-run local authorities, to neighbourhood activists fed up about the disruption and prospect of more noise, to Greens and single-minded Conservatives.
The Guardian’s transport correspondent, Gwyn Topham, has argued that the Mayor himself and his team have seemed ambivalent about the enterprise, talking up positives while also reminding people that they inherited the scheme from Boris Johnson, who kept it alive on becoming Mayor in 2008 while axing (among other things) the long-proposed Thames Gateway Bridge, which would have spanned the Thames further east, between Belvedere and Gallion’s Reach.
Even so, Khan, who co-chairs the international C40 Cities group that seeks to combat climate change, has stuck firmly to his chosen course, never once looking like he would be swayed. Hardcore opponents, meanwhile, have sometimes appeared mostly motivated by a dislike of cars, vans and lorries per se. Transport for London’s modelling of the tunnel’s environmental, congestion and economic impacts have been dismissed as a “scam” a “fraud” and “lies”, rhetoric as furiously uncompromising as the pro-car lobby’s rages against Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) and the ULEZ.
The fog of these transport culture wars obscures the immutable reality that London’s roads and streets will always have to accommodate a mix of different transport modes, one calibrated, nudged and regulated according to circumstances and to policy objectives that embrace not only congestion and pollution but also economic considerations, investment finance options and a range of sometimes conflicting public needs. No single interest group is ever going to get everything its own way. Nor should it.
The pros and cons of the Silvertown tunnel will continue to be argued over, but what is done is done and the outcomes should be instructive. Will the tolls have been pitched at the right levels? If there is, in any case, additional traffic using both tunnels in total, will that result in a higher level of air pollution or will a reduction in queuing enabled by greater road capacity bring that level down?
Meanwhile, there is a much bigger London road transport picture to consider, one far more important than a single, subterranean river crossing, however potently symbolic in some eyes: a picture in which bus speeds are falling, cycling remains the lifestyle choice of a small minority, the efficacy of LTNs is contested and London keeps being measured as the most congested city in Europe. And no one seems willing or able to put things right.
OnLondon.co.uk provides unique, no-advertising and no-paywall coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. Support the website and its writers for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things that other people won’t. Details HERE. Follow Dave Hill on Bluesky. Image from Riverlinx.