Londoners have better ideas for the Silvertown Road Tunnel, says new report

Green London Assembly member, Sian Berry, has today offered the Mayor of London a wide range of greener alternatives for using the tunnel that is currently being dug for the Silvertown Road Tunnel project.

Sian’s new report, Better ways to use the Silvertown Road Tunnel,[1] comes out of workshops held in City Hall earlier this year with children, campaigners and experts, and gives campaigners a new tool to think about how a tunnel that has already been started could be finished in a way that doesn’t cause so much harm. 

This summer, Sian brought together Londoners with a scale model of the tunnel plans in two workshops. At the first workshop, local children came up with creative ideas for performances, art, and play to make use of the vast space, including a ‘hospital for nocturnal animals’, an ‘underwater playpark’ and a stables.

In the second workshop, campaigners discussed earlier ideas that had been considered and developed by Transport for London and local councils, including for trams and a DLR extension, and they explored ways to include walking and cycling within the plans.

Green London Assembly member Sian Berry says:

“The work I have done with local people to produce this report shows there are still better and greener ideas for improving options to cross the Thames in this area. 

“A wide range of Londoners and their elected representatives now accept that building a new road tunnel in east London is wrong, and the Mayor must have the political courage to listen to them and think again. 

“Working with the children and seeing their imaginations go to work on the possibilities was wonderful, and I hope the Mayor can take a leaf out of their book and think more creatively about how to use the vast space his tunnel boring machine is creating.”

Alternative transport options suggested in the report include:

• A two-way tram link, similar to the earlier Greenwich Waterfront Transit scheme
• A DLR extension, as proposed by local councils in the 2000s
• A walking and cycling tunnel, with a potential additional link to Canary Wharf
• Options that create an upper and lower level within the 11 metre diameter space, potentially combining walking and cycling with public transport
• Ideas for if the second bore at Silvertown is started, including converting the old Blackwall Tunnel northbound to walking and cycling.

The tunnel-building consortium Riverlinx launched its tunnel boring machine from Silvertown in September 2022, and it is currently making its way to its exit point on  the Greenwich peninsula. A second bore is planned to begin early in 2023. [2]

Most of the ideas laid out in the report published today focus on alternatives for a single-bore tunnel, with savings made from reducing the tunnelling required being made available to invest in new public transport infrastructure.