There are only so many ways of crossing the River Thames east of Tower Bridge. East of Greenwich the communities on the north and south banks are little more than distant relatives. Continuing our look at London’s first highway, we examine TfL’s plans for three new major river crossings between the Blackwall Tunnel and Dartford in an effort to finally overcome this natural barrier. We also look at why TfL are suddenly interested in building roads.
Lucky number thirteen
In December 2015, Transport for London published a strange document called “New River Crossings for London”, a single-page map showing the river spanned by red markers that was designed to promote TfL’s work to offer new ways across the river. It seems to suggest that there are no less than thirteen new river crossings in the pipeline.
This is a bold claim and it involves more than a little hubris. The bar is set quite low for inclusion in the list, and the thirteen crossings include several pedestrian bridges proposed by developers of luxury riverside apartments, the “conceptual” Overground extension to Thamesmead, and the Lower Thames Crossing, a Highways England scheme to be built near the Medway Towns. None of these seem particularly worthy of promotion by Transport for London. Crossrail 2 and the Garden Bridge are also on the list.
TfL’s crossing map
However, three of them are particularly interesting and even quite unexpected. In the east, the map includes bridges or tunnels at Silvertown, Gallions Reach and Belvedere – three new road crossings, when until recently none were on the cards. All three are being pursued by an organisation that has never previously shown much interest in road construction. TfL is responsible for London’s major roads, but in its 16-year history it has built just one very modest new length of road at Coulsdon, and has otherwise demonstrated that it does not believe in expanding highway capacity.
So, while it’s widely acknowledged that cross-river connections in East London are far worse than in the west for all modes of transport, and for road traffic in particular, it has been years since there was any real interest in doing something about it. To understand why TfL is suddenly so interested in building new road bridges and tunnels, it will be necessary to look at what’s proposed, how we ended up with so few crossings in East London, and what these new crossings are expected to do.
Three new crossings, three very old ferries
Between the Blackwall Tunnels and the Dartford Crossing, more than eleven miles as the crow flies, there are no fixed crossings of the Thames – just the Woolwich Free Ferry, which offers slow crossings for relatively small numbers of vehicles and is prone to delays and cancellations at short notice. Indeed, it can even be called off during particularly high tides, making it a waterborne service that is periodically cancelled when there is too much water.
We will examine the new proposals, and the ferry, in order from west to east.
Silvertown Tunnel
Between the Greenwich Peninsula and Silvertown, immediately to the east of the existing Blackwall tunnels, the Silvertown Tunnel is proposed as a new road tunnel constructed as either deep bore or immersed tube. It follows approximately the same alignment as the Emirates Air Line cable car, and its location is chosen to make the most of under-used road capacity, avoiding the need for new approach roads, so it would connect to the Blackwall Tunnel Southern Approach on the south bank and the Lower Lea Crossing to the north. Two bores would carry two lanes of traffic each.
The river here is just under 400m wide, but the tunnel will cross at a slight angle, spending closer to 500m under the water. TfL expect it to be operational around 2023.
The tunnel would be for the exclusive use of motor traffic, with one lane each way reserved for buses, motorcycles and goods traffic. Heavy goods vehicles would be encouraged to use Silvertown in preference to Blackwall. Both the northbound Blackwall and Rotherhithe tunnels have height and width restrictions, which entail long detours for heavy goods vehicles, so one key benefit of Silvertown is the reduction in the excess mileage that large vehicles would travel.
Woolwich Free Ferry
The ferry at Woolwich has operated as a free public service since the late nineteenth century, when the London County Council abolished tolls on several West London bridges and wanted to extend the same benefit to residents in the East. It’s now, theoretically, the link between the North and South Circular Roads, though its capacity is limited.
Two ferries provide a frequent service, with a total fleet of three boats used in rotation. In the early 2000s, TfL consulted on withdrawing the ferry if the previous incarnation of the Gallions Reach crossing were built, and subsequently proposed moving the ferry service to connect Beckton and Thamesmead.
However, neither of those options found favour, and TfL is now procuring three new boats to replace its 53-year-old fleet. This suggests the service is likely to remain for the foreseeable future, even if it cannot be significantly expanded to meet growing demand. If the new bridges and tunnels are built to either side it will become a decidedly local service.
Gallions Reach Crossing
At Gallions Reach, a bridge or tunnel would link Beckton and Thamesmead, from the A1020 and Woolwich Manor Way to the A2016 Western Way. If the location of this proposal seems familiar, that is because there have been plans for at least three other crossings on this site in the last 40 years.
Conceptual designs suggest that a high level cantilevered bridge would be necessary to clear shipping and avoid interfering with approaches to City Airport. A tunnel could be deep bored or immersed tube construction. The river here is more than 600m wide and the scale of the engineering work will be considerable.
The crossing would have a total usable width of 26m, enough to carry two general traffic lanes, two lanes (or equivalent width) for public transport, and could have a 4m-wide cycle track. The formation may be a dual two-lane road with bus lanes, or a single carriageway road alongside a segregated tram or DLR track. TfL hope this, and the Belvedere Crossing, will be operational around 2025.
Among the considerations for both Gallions Reach and Belvedere are the options for expanding bus connections across the river, the cost and benefits of building tram or DLR lines on either side, and whether provision for pedestrians or cyclists is possible in a tunnel. Some of these things may require funding as separate projects to be pursued along a different timescale, but there will have to be some certainty before the crossings are designed and built.
Belvedere Crossing
The Belvedere Crossing is partner to Gallions Reach and is being pursued as a joint scheme, at least for the purposes of consultation. It would connect Rainham on the north bank with Belvedere, just west of Erith, on the south, running from the existing Marsh Way junction on the A13 to the A2016 Bronze Age Way. Again, a bridge or tunnel could be provided; the bridge would need to be at a high level, but with no aviation concerns it could use a tall cable-stayed structure. A tunnel could, again, be deep bored or immersed tube.
The location of this crossing is entirely new – no crossing has ever been proposed here before – and it appears to be opportunistic use of an existing junction on the A13 and a reasonably clear path through to the A2016 spine road on the south bank.
TfL’s artist’s impression of bus lanes over either Gallions Reach or Belvedere river crossings
Like its sibling, the crossing would have a total usable width of 26m, but is almost certain to have a dual-carriageway layout with one general traffic lane and one bus lane in each direction, and possibly a dedicated 4m-wide cycle facility. Tram and DLR lines are not contemplated here.
Opening up the East
Why new river crossings, why here, and why now? There is a single answer to all those questions, and in fact it’s been a theme of London Reconnections articles about major new projects for several years. We are in some danger of forming a catchphrase:- It’s all about housing.
The name “Thames Gateway” is likely to be familiar to LR readers already. It refers to the vast areas of land close to the Thames in east London that are presently low-rent industrial facilities, marshland that can be economically drained, or derelict and seeking a new use, and which are therefore ripe for the construction of desperately needed new homes. Infrastructure will be needed to support the considerable population and the houses, schools, shops and – yes – luxury apartments that will be created.
The Thames Gateway may seem to be a ready-made solution to London’s most pressing crisis, but the idea of developing riverside land in the east has been around for more than a decade now without ever really taking off. One of the key flagship schemes, Barking Riverside, remains peculiarly isolated, and stubbornly refuses to grow. So far, then, what seems at first glance to be a promising site for scores of new homes has turned out to be difficult to use, perhaps because the riverside just isn’t seen as a promising opportunity by developers.
That may soon change. The housing crisis is high up the political agenda and there is tremendous will to see new homes built. There is cross-party support to inject some momentum into house-building at last. The key is infrastructure, and central to making Thames Gateway attractive is the provision of adequate transportation. That work falls to TfL.
The GLA estimates 1.5 million new homes will be built in London in the next 15 years. Half a million of those will be in East London, the majority within reasonable distance of the river, and 100,000 will be in the Thames Gateway development area itself. The task is therefore equivalent to building a city the size of Derby from scratch on the banks of the river – in a place where the river cannot be crossed for a distance of eleven miles.
The pressing need for the Thames Gateway to take off and provide a large number of the new homes that the city needs is, then, the single most important reason that Gallions Reach has returned from the dead and Belvedere has suddenly been conjured from nothing. If upwards of 200,000 people will live here there must be a way across the Thames.
Unblocking Blackwall
If that is the reason for new crossings at Gallions Reach and Belvedere, why is TfL also pursuing a new tunnel right next door to the existing ones at Blackwall?
The case for Silvertown is subtly different to the two new crossings further east. It’s less to do with housing and more specifically to do with population growth – two closely related but slightly different matters.
The Silvertown Tunnel is, of course, intended to relieve the chronic traffic congestion that plagues Blackwall for most of the day. TfL’s figures show that there is, on average, only one day in every fourteen on which this crossing operates without incident, and even when open and running at full capacity the tunnels are completely unable to handle the demand for travel across the river.
Blackwall already represents an enormous time penalty on road journeys between South East London and most of the rest of the conurbation, and also adds an unacceptable level of uncertainty. Long and unreliable travel times are bad in particular for businesses, who find it hard to predict delivery times or appointments. The result is that even with present population levels the Blackwall tunnels are a noticeable drag on the economy and quality of life in this part of London. They also represent a major air quality problem thanks to the queues that form in the morning rush and last all day – something that must be addressed before the Greenwich Peninsula begins to bristle with dozens of new high-rise apartment blocks as planned.
If the population of London is going to grow, demand for travel across the river will increase with it, and Blackwall will continue to increase in popularity because it is close to central London, has good onwards links in all directions and – perhaps crucially – because it is close to the economic hub of the Docklands.
The point of the Silvertown Tunnel is, therefore, not so much to generate new capacity to enable specific new development, but to unblock a serious existing problem in order that it does not become a limiting factor in the ability of South East London to grow. By introducing a “user charge” – or toll – to both the new tunnel and to Blackwall, it’s hoped that journeys that could be made just as easily by other means will be strongly discouraged.
The cost of infrastructure
The two really new proposals in TfL’s plans, Gallions Reach and Belvedere, are expected to cost approximately £1bn each, which is not extortionate for a major river crossing in the south east. The balance sheet avoids some of the usual big-ticket costs because these two crossings require little or no property demolition and the approach roads are very short. Most of the land that’s needed is brownfield, ex-industrial or found by slicing a corner off a car park or a yard. The only real cost is the construction of the crossing itself.
If £2bn sounds like extortionate spending on a pair of adjacent road bridges, perhaps it is, but the context of that spending is very important. Elsewhere in London, as reported previously on London Reconnections, the Bakerloo Line extension to Lewisham is expected to cost £2.6bn. Its price is considered quite justifiable because it will open up the possibility of 30,000 new homes along its route. If the same level of infrastructure spending were contemplated for each new home in the Thames Gateway, TfL would be looking to spend £9bn. As part of the wider picture, the cost of those two new river crossings is not all that remarkable.
Why roads?
It would be entirely natural for the LR readership to question whether constructing new road crossings is the right thing to do, whether the Thames Gateway would be better served by public transport options, and even whether indeed Transport for London – long a pioneer of ways to reduce car dependency – has lost its marbles.
All three new crossings are still at the consultation stage and TfL’s strategic thinking is not yet very clear. But what is abundantly clear at this early stage is that we are discussing developments well into the reaches of outer London, and new communities that will have as much connection to the areas of Essex and Kent outside the GLA boundaries as they do to central London. Nine Elms this is not.
Developments in East and South East London will, of course, have good public transport connectivity too. The south bank is about to get the Elizabeth Line, potentially later extended further east to serve Erith and Dartford. On the north bank there’s good railway connections, the Underground and the Overground. The new crossings that are proposed even contemplate bus routes, new tram lines and further extensions to the DLR. What is still needed – and what these proposals will address – are connections for those who will not commute to central London, and connections for the businesses who will support and serve the new communities.
Orbital travel is still, in the main, road-based, whether by car or by bus. Businesses of all kinds rely on road transportation for movement of goods and people. In particular, small businesses on one side of the river are seriously disadvantaged if the huge number of people on the opposite bank are inaccessible, but even large supermarket chains will experience greater cost and inconvenience if they have to operate two adjacent areas of London as entirely separate supply chains.
Road connections are not a luxury, they are essential for vast new developments of all kinds and – more than that – they are something that developers and prospective residents will expect to see in place. In proposing this significant new road infrastructure, TfL are not making a bold shift in their thinking about urban transportation. They are just being realists. The fact they have never put road infrastructure of this type in place before is perhaps not to do with their planning philosophy but simply because they have not previously dealt with a development of this size.
Local roads for local people
In any case, while the size of the works involved may be considerable and the headlines may talk about new dual carriageways and major new roads, the designs are careful not to make them attractive to through traffic. TfL are proposing just one general traffic lane each way plus bus and cycle lanes. They will be no wider than the many bridges in West London that serve as extensions of the street network over the river – arguably, it’s just that in East London the river is bigger and you need a more substantial bridge to carry your local road to the other bank. The enthusiastic road-building advocate will likely find them an utter disappointment.
Transport for London has worked hard to ensure these three new roads are specifically designed to be local. They are designed for buses and other significant public transport connections. They are designed for the goods vehicles, delivery vans and other traders that will be vital to service the new community of more than 200,000 people that will be built here. And yes, they are for the myriad local journeys made in the outer suburbs that public transport still finds it hard to accommodate. Indeed, far from losing their marbles, it could be argued that these are road construction projects that have a very TfL flavour to them.
What the future holds
Later in this series, we will explore in greater detail why the new river crossings are considered so instrumental to development plans in the Thames Gateway, and why past attempts to cross the Thames in East London have repeatedly been abandoned.
We will also look at the problems that face these three proposals, the position of the new Mayor, and in light of that – and all the other issues surrounding these proposals – whether they are likely to be built at all.
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Interesting stuff. Will LR be looking at the Lower Thames Crossing as a part of this series as well, or does the move towards Option C rather than Option A mean that it is too far outside the M25 to be in your purview? It would be interesting to see it receive the full LR treatment, especially looking at the way that the DfT seems to have done a 180-degree turn on which option has the highest cost-benefit in the space of two years.
Interesting article. While the concept of not providing excess capacity above that needed for new housing demands is explained it does seem that two lanes each way for the proposed Silvertown tunnel is inadequate. Given that the adjacent Blackwall crossing is consistantly congested and has suppressed demand from larger commercial vehicles due to restrictions on height and width of trucks, the provision of two lanes each direction for the Silvertown tunnel would seem to leave no capacity for traffic generated by the new housing.
Of course they don’t really need to be at high level. You can just make them have a lifting span for very high ships…
After all if Tower bridge can be opened in the rush hour to let a Thames barge through then why can’t these? A few cameras and a bit of remote control means that they could be operated from TfL HQ….
Brief mention is made of adding a toll to the Blackwall and the putative Silvertown tunnel. But doing that would cause some road users to divert and put even more pressure on the Rotherhithe (if that’s possible…) and on the proposed new bridges. It would also open a fearsome political row as crossing the river in west London doesn’t come with a toll charge so why should folk in the east have to pay?
By the way. I’m not claiming I have a better answer. I think this is one of the toughest conundrums in the new mayors “in tray”
@ABM: The approaches on the south side are three lanes wide, so this would actually provide and extra lane each way. Expect to see southbound traffic jams in the future…
@SouthernHeights. At a guess, incorporating an opening / lifting mechanism would add huge cost – more than is saved from lower pillars. Remember at this point the river is still used by large vessels – cruise ships – navy – which come up river as far as Greenwich Reach.
Re Southern Heights,
I suspect you will get the equivalent of 6 lanes from the 2 Tunnels southbound to dispersal points such as Bugsby’s way and A206 so it shouldn’t be problem?
“Between the Blackwall Tunnels and the Dartford Crossing, more than eleven miles as the crow flies, there are no fixed crossings of the Thames ”
There are actually four, with a fifth under construction, but none of them carry road traffic
Thanks for this interesting start on a very controversial topic. My impressions, which are more relevant to the planned Silvertown and Gallions Reach crossings than the Belvedere one further East, are that TfL haven’t fully grasped all the reasons why the Blackwall tunnels are not fit for purpose. Briefly, these could be summarised as:
1. They do not have sufficient capacity.
2. They only cater for private motor vehicles (and the hapless 108 bus), when demand for public transport, cycling and walking links across the river in this area are also high.
3. They are too close to the city centre for what is supposed to be an orbital route and so unnecessarily draw traffic into areas it should not be.
4. The Northbound tunnel is too small a bore, too old, too leaky and too costly to maintain.
The Silvertown Tunnel proposal deals with 1 and partly with 2 (extra bus routes) but neglects 3 and 4. I even question the extent to which it will add sufficient capacity given that the A12, A102 and A2 are regularly bumper-to-bumper at peak times travelling *away* from the Blackwall Tunnel. The Silvertown Tunnel seems likely to only exacerbate congestion on these approach roads.
I am very surprised that TfL did not look further at shifting the strategic orbital crossing further east to properly link the North and South circulars, as per Option D6 from the 2012 River Crossings: Assessment of Options report (https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/gla_migrate_files_destination/East%20London%20River%20Crossings%20Assessment%20of%20Options%20TfL_0.pdf). Were the portal to be at Falconwood rather than Eltham Common many of flaws found in this option (gradient, approach capacity) would be removed or reduced. Although it would be very expensive to build such a long tunnel (£4-5bn?), the potential to move orbital traffic away from the city centre and free up capacity for local traffic, public transport, cycling and walking could, in my view, make for a strong transport and social case. If doing this could create new desirable neighbourhoods and free up development land too (A12 becomes Bow Boulevard?), the financial case could also be strong.
In short, the crossings TfL propose feel like small solutions to local capacity problems rather than the strategic approach to traffic management that East and South East London sorely need. Especially with air quality shooting up the agenda, this seems rather short-sighted.
@Island Dweller: Having the bridges too high would make them unappealing to cyclists, especially given the short approaches. Having a central opening section would allow them to be constructed such that most of the normal traffic (i.e. the rubbish containers) could pass through without hinderance, while still being appealing to cyclists….
A bridge such as this should do the job quite nicely! A bit bigger is perhaps required…. 😉
Southern Heights: The Google Maps Embed API must be used in an iframe. Whatever that means.
Thank you for comments so far – not wishing to stifle debate, but there is a second part to this article in the works, which looks more closely at the issue of tolling (or to use the term that appears to be de rigeur, “user charging”) and of providing for orbital traffic between the North and South Circulars.
@Southern Heights: Lifting bridges would certainly be a viable alternative, and I’ve seen concepts and artists’ impressions of a larger number of smaller lifting bridges as an alternative suggestion from bodies other than TfL. There must, of course, be a reason why that isn’t being considered for Gallions Reach or Belvedere, and TfL’s consultants will have been through those issues at some point and decided against them. I suspect IslandDweller has a point, that the additional cost of the machinery might make a high level bridge a similar cost, and often a lifting bridge is installed not for cost reasons but because approaches to a high level bridge would not fit into the available space, whereas here space is not an issue.
Other factors might be to do with future maintenance costs, reliability (LR has covered the “bathtub curve” in the past, of course) and – potentially the big one – reliability of journey times given that such bridges would lift more often than Tower Bridge and would do so at all times of the day.
Hmmmm…. What about this one?
Google reckons this should work….
@SouthernHeights. You could have found something much closer to home. The “blue bridge”, the entrance to the West India Docks on the Isle of Dogs is that design. But that’s no way big enough for the type of river traffic on this section of the Thames. In the last couple of years, HMS Ocean (length 200 metres, gross tonnage over 20,000) has sailed up this section. You need the same clearance here as you have at the Dartford Crossing.
Why was the Woolwich Barrier built with not even a footbridge incorporated into it?
Why is a London Overground link from Barking Riverside over/under the Thames to Thamesmead and then Abbey Wood Crossrail not worth looking into for TfL?
The oft mentioned argument is that only 4 tph can run. Fair enough if true, but have any studies ever been carried out on a shuttle from Abbey Wood to Barking at higher frequencies?
It would be a huge improvement for area with high housing growth, with numerous connections at each end. Also helping far wider Kent and Essex links rather than travelling into central London.
As Stewart points out above, a glance at the queues travelling *away* from Blackwall (the southbound A2/A102 is at a crawl each evening rush hour) will show you the major undoing of the Silvertown Tunnel, which will feed straight into the same road.
TfL’s publicity campaign focuses on issues in the area immediately around the Blackwall Tunnel southern entrance, but glosses over adverse effects on the fragile road network elsewhere. In the morning rush hour it’ll feed straight into the Aspen Way traffic jam, and at weekends it’ll make the queues for ExCel exhibitions worse.
There seems to be an assumption that the Silvertown Tunnel will be largely empty for much of the day, ready and waiting for whenever Blackwall falls over. Real life isn’t like that – the Silvertown Tunnel will soon fill up, toll or no toll (there are no orbital public transport alternatives), limiting its “resilience” benefit, and we’ll be back at square one.
I’ve lived close to the Blackwall approach for as long as I can remember – the last thing it needs is anything that generates even more traffic. It can’t cope. But it’s a weak link in a whole network of them.
As far as the other crossings go – they’re just new roads. There’s nothing special about them because they go across a river. And their effects will be felt for miles around. Gallions has the potential to gum up Plumstead, and while the Belvedere crossing looks superficially attractive, that’s more HGVs smashing through areas like Crayford, Northumberland Heath and Erith. (One of the few Ken-era road-widening schemes, dualling the A206 through Crayford, resulted in big increases in traffic and pollution – http://www.iapsc.org.uk/assets/document/0614_Gary_Fuller_Jun2014.pdf)
Without charging for road use in London *as a whole* to deter unnecessary journeys – ideally with serious investment in cross-river public transport alternatives, rather than the laughable “indicative bus network” suggested for the Silvertown crossing – then building any new road crossing is just storing trouble for the future.
(declaration of interest – I’m part of the No to Silvertown Tunnel campaign: http://www.silvertowntunnel.co.uk)
anonymous commenter, 17.47:
Why is a London Overground link from Barking Riverside over/under the Thames to Thamesmead and then Abbey Wood Crossrail not worth looking into for TfL?
This is a really weird one. It should be a no-brainer. A lot of cross-river car traffic actually originates in Thamesmead, according to TfL data, so there’s potential to shift at least some of that. Barking & Dagenham Council are very keen on it, Greenwich have talked about supporting it, not too sure about Bexley.
The daft “look at all these crossings we want to build” PR drive issued by TfL in the last month of Boris Johnson mentions it, and it’s in City Hall’s 2050 transport document as part of the R25 orbital link, but the whole notion is poo-pooed in the documents exploring what kind of public transport could be factored into the Gallions link, because it could only offer four trains per hour.
It should be a no-brainer – Thamesmead has been dumped on for years and badly needs its own link to the outside world instead of relying on Abbey Wood or North Greenwich. I guess the problem is that while much of Barking Riverside is yet to be built, much of Thamesmead already has been (if badly), and isn’t seen as much of a priority.
Timbeau. Because the Barrier is open most of the time, with a constant flow of river traffic passing through.
What people fail to look at is where the traffic coming out of this tunnel on the East London side will go.Also the impact it will have on Canning Town Westham ect.As a resident in Canning Town close to A13 I see these traffic jams on a daily basis.How can giving drivers the option of another crossing and expect them not to use it .That is complete nonsense it won’t decrease traffic but add to it Sort out lodge avenue flyover immediately you will aid the flow of traffic on the A13 on silvertown tunnel thank you.
I’ve always found the planning process for this very strange. If, as the article suggests, there is the plan to incorporate railed transport into a future crossing, why is this not the aspect considered first? Surely its the least flexible?
The proposed Belvedere crossing certainty seems to suggest there is a fair bit of crayonning going on, connecting one big road on one side of the river to a big road on the other. And then there is a hand-wavey “of course we will look to put in a tram/DLR/monorail” in a separate and unfunded programme. It is this highway led thinking that makes it hard to swallow the “its just for local links” line.
The Thames Gateway area is a potentially huge development site, so why build in the car dependence from the outset? If you started by looking at the public transport connections you would like to make (between current and future centres of activity) I am sure you would come to a different set of priorities – you could easily see Galleons and Barking Riverside-Abbey Wood being part of this. Belvedere much less so!
Silvertown Tunnel – bonkers – the southern approach is gummed up, so building the Silvertown Tunnel achieves what exactly?, the southern entrance is more or less next to that for the Blackwall Tunnel, so solves nothing.
As for the other two bridges – they need to be high to give clearance for shipping, so how many days a year will they be closed due to high winds?, or to high sided vehicles? – by the way I support these two bridges, but a single lane in each direction for general traffic is daft, the separate lane for buses is almost an admission that they’ll be heavily used from the start, just scrap the bus lanes and have two lanes in each direction for all vehicle motor traffic.
@Rostopher:
“…car dependence from the outset? If you started by looking at the public transport connections you would like to make…”
Last time I looked, buses were (a) public transport, and (b) required roads.
Same goes for trams, although on-street running for these can at least be avoided where sufficient space is available for full segregation. I’m not sure how viable that is in the Thamesmead area though, given that it was built during a period when trams were considered unfashionable.
@ Anonymous Silvertown Tunnel will be large enough for double deck buses to use and thus will allow joined up bus routes in east London just like the rest of London upstream has . TFL recently consulted on possible changes but given time till tunnel is built and open these suggestions were simply that .
The Bus lanes are to allow buses to move quickly through the tunnel and act as a dampener of other road traffic of course one option might be to be to build a larger single tunnel and make it bus only .
I fail to see why people in east London should be denied the ability to cross the river enjoyed by everyone else upstream from Tower Bridge .
The recent incident in The Blackwell Tunnel showed how east London needs more crossings while The Thames Gateway Bridge needs to include a DLR extension as part of its plans to avoid the 6 lane mis-information the bridge got last time when in fact two lanes were for buses only .
Rostopher –
“It is this highway led thinking that makes it hard to swallow the “its just for local links” line.”
Indeed. Surprised this line was swallowed so readily in the piece.
The Silvertown plan includes an HGV and bus lane, so leading to more and bigger HGVs in east London, as the old Blackwall Tunnel can’t cope with bigger vehicles (a prime reason why Hackney Council passed a motion against it). And with Erith, Belvedere and Rainham being big hubs for huge distribution warehouses (partly due to proximity to Dartford Crossing), you can hardly expect a bridge at Belvedere to be dominated by Bexley folk who want to visit auntie Ethel in Barking.
@Darryl:
One of the reasons why traffic tends to come to a halt along the A2 / Blackwall tunnel approach road is Kidbrooke Junction…
Due to its design originating with the old “Ringways” proposal, Kidbrooke Junction was built as a conventional flat junction with traffic lights. Traffic has to stop dead here when the lights turn red.
The other junctions along the A2 towards Kent were built with full grade separation, including slip roads, ramps, flyovers, etc. A few are admittedly overdue some improvements to allow them to cope with current and future traffic levels, but there’s no reason why TfL couldn’t do such work while the new tunnel is being built.
@Island Dweller: I picked it because it was cute 😉 and also because the Netherlands is a good example of where road traffic has to deal with lots of river traffic…
Having sailed (literally) up the New Waterway (Nieuwe Waterweg, the main entrance to the port of Rotterdam), I would rephrase the “constant traffic” as “occasional traffic”… So yes, like Timbeau I also wonder why there isn’t a pedestrian/cycle crossing on the Thames barrier, although I can understand that the political climate back then was very different, but even then…
@IslandDweller:
“Remember at this point the river is still used by large vessels – cruise ships – navy – which come up river as far as Greenwich Reach.”
I’ve often wondered why this is still permitted. It’s not as if the Pool of London is anywhere near the commercial powerhouse it was back when Tower Bridge was built. Is the continuation of the “tall ships” bridge height requirement still justified in economic terms?
If HMS Belfast and the occasional massive cruise ship are sufficiently important to the city’s economy as to outweigh the massive costs (both financial and aesthetic) of building new east Thames crossings, fair enough, but I find it very difficult to believe this is the case.
If, as I suspect, the case for continuing to allow such vessels access to the very heart of London is no longer tenable given its effects on the local and regional economies of riverine east London, I think this requirement should be removed entirely to allow new crossings to be built at much the same height as those to the west of Tower Bridge. Paris manages just fine without cruise ships wending their way up the Seine.
Not only would this drastically reduce the cost of building said crossings, but their lower height would make them far more attractive to pedestrians, cyclists, etc. It also avoids the weather problems that occasionally plague the bridge at Dartford.
Being much cheaper, you could also build more of them, eliminating the inherent bottlenecking caused by any geographical barrier with a limited number of crossing points. This is the main argument against crossing proposals in the past: they all boil down to “You’ll just end up with another Blackwall / Dartford-style traffic jam!”
This argument only holds water if you only add a measly one or two new crossings. Look at West London and you can see how much more interconnected the northern and southern sides of the river are there, thanks to the many bridges. There are so many, in fact, that I doubt many readers here could even name them all.
Make the Thames much more permeable and provide much stronger connections between the two banks of the river, effectively joining up the road networks. Bus services can then be fully integrated across the river, rather than having to duplicate routes.
If you need somewhere to park your cruise ships, Tilbury Riverside station (which still stands) could potentially be reconnected to the Fenchurch Street route. The port has competition from the new Thames Gateway complex, so may well support the addition of a dedicated “London cruise terminal” facility.
@island dweller
The structure of the Thames Barrier is taller than most of the river traffic passing through, so a footbridge laid on top would only have to be raised for the tallest vessels.
Anomibus:
TfL aren’t planning grade separation at Kidbrooke, though. I suspect Berkeley Homes, developer of the adjacent Kidbrooke Village scheme (and huge promoter of roadbuilding schemes) would have a fit if a flyover was crayoned onto the plans.
In any case, the bottleneck created by cutting from three lanes to two at Sun-in-the-Sands through to Falconwood is as big a factor as the Kidbrooke lights – and that’d be a very expensive one to fix.
But there is a (non public) tunnel underneath the barrier.
@Anomnibus
“dedicated “London cruise terminal” facility”
There is such a facility that has been approved in Greenwich, south shore, for small and medium sized cruise ships as part of the Enderby Wharf development in SE10. We shall dive into it in more detail in one of the articles in the LR River Transport series. Needless to say, please hold your peace on this terminal until then.
The official London Cruise Terminal is in Tilbury, 22 nautical miles downstream from Tower Bridge. And as it is not a river crossing, downstream from this article 🙂
Unfortunately there are far too many people who do not live in the real world when it comes to road traffic.
Commuters can indeed travel by foot, bicycle or uses buses or trains (assuming they run where the person wishes to go) but…
Your online shopping delivery, those parcels you order from Amazon, the supplies of coffee to your local trendy coffee shop, the organic fruit and veg, (let alone the supplies to your local ASDA / Tesco / Waitrose / etc) the plumbing supplies that the plumber needs to fix your leaking pipe, etc all require effective and efficient ROAD transport.
As has been highlighted London has been facing a housing shortage for some time – yet developers have shown a remarkable reluctance to invest in the Thames gateway area because they understand that good ROAD based links are needed to cater for all the above mentioned things and until they are it is a financially unattractive proposition to invest in the Thames Gateway.
NOTE That doesn’t mean that we are talking about providing a network of grade separated 6 lane motorways – it means rather basic dual carriageway roads (with reserved lanes for buses, etc) complete with foot/ cycle paths so as to allow residents, be they on foot, on a bicycle, a bus or in a car access the surrounding centers of employment / entertainment / education plus to allow delivery and freight vehicles to service the development.
Pretending that you can make it different is a complete fantasy as it requires Governmental control of all enterprise in the Soviet tradition to force companies and people to do things they don’t want to do (as in “you will build this here and that there, all shops in sector Z will have all your groceries delivered from supplier Y so as to minimize lorry movements in sector Z, residents can work in sectors A, B & C where we will lay on public transport, they will shop in sector Z and spend their leisure time in sector G”). This is diametrically opposed to how the economy works or indeed how we live our lives where competition in all things has been embraced enthusiastically.
Also small scale (e.g. not a trainload of containers/ stone / etc) freight or business that involves the trade in ‘things’ (e.g. builders / builders merchants – as opposed to bits of paper / computer files) is now dominated by road transport – stop pretending it isn’t or that the Mayor, GLA or even the UK Government has the power to stop it.
The other thing far to many people do is amuse they can translate the London public transport experience to commuters from outside the GLA area. While TfL might be doing as much as it can to dissuade private car commuting, it has limited powers to influence things that happen in the wider home counties. For example lowering fares or providing funds to allow more trains to run in the first place are in the realms of the DfT (who are pretty hostile to things that force them to spend more money / affect their franchising plans) while like residential parking provision are in the realms of local councils who are mindful of the political backlash from the car owning commuters who quite like driving in from Surrey, Kent, Hertfordshire, Essex. etc.
Thus stuff about TfL providing ‘alternatives to the car’ completely ignores a large part of the problem with the current Blackwall tunnel -the Blackwall tunnel is linked to the M25 by the high quality A2 dual carriageway – and the A12 / M11 to the north and short of digging them up and replacing them with cycle paths the Blackwall tunnel will ALLWAYS attract a large volume of car users – to the detriment of traders and others in London who have no choice but to use the roads.
TfL recognize all the above (even if some others refuse too) and have proposed a perfectly reasonable set of proposals seeking to address real world problems relating to the current situation (with tolling to dissuade users that do have alternatives yet facilitating the business needs of those who have no alternative)
There proposals will therefor improve things for Londonders by:-
Avoiding gridlock when an incident closes the current Blackwall tunnel (e.g. the recent fuel spill, over height lorries that still get stuck in it etc).
Remove a significant bottleneck – FACT the current tunnels, particularly the northbound one has a capacity well below that of the approach roads – which at the moment are effectively large car stacking places, full of vehicles pumping out fumes in the peaks while traffic waits its turn to squeeze through the constriction that is the current tunnels.
Allows routine tunnel maintenance to be done without sending vehicles on long detours.
Makes the riverside land in the Thames gateway much more attractive to developers and their financial backers – who need to be convinced that any development they fund will be well connected to the surrounding area by ROAD – because if London isn’t prepared to to that there are plenty of other places in the UK worth developing in the meantime that are only too happy to facilitate that basic requirement.
I am obediently not commenting about the specific Greenwich cruise terminal. But about the general principle of whether the potential for such medium-sized ships to come into London proper should be terminated for ever by building a West-London-like network of lower bridges.
Yes, there are plenty of cities (Paris probably being one) where cruise ships cannot get any nearer than the equivalent of Tilbury. But this facility having been preserved hitherto in London, surely I am not perpetuating a sunk-costs fallacy by suggesting that such a feature should be preserved. Given the large and increasing fraction of our national income composed of tourist dollars, it would be an act of national lunacy to wantonly destroy such a market advantage, for the sake of letting Woolwich-based plumbers take on work in Beckton. National lunacy, in my view.
I quite agree with Phil that part of what is required to support the planned large volume of riverside housing is to ensure that the road network is improved appropriately.
It does not necessarily follow that those road improvements must include river crossings. Maybe they should, but any new river crossing must be the subject of a cost-benefit calculation (just like any other infrastructure), one which (due to the high cost of crossing the lower Thames) may result in a thumbs-down. It would be quite handy for Whitstable to be connected to Southend by a bridge, but no-one seriously suggests this, because it would cost too much. Obviously the crossings mentioned here are not quite that daft, but they may still fail such a basic check.
Darryl & anonymous commenter, 17.47:
I agree completely. A London Overground link from Barking Riverside over/under the Thames to Thamesmead and then Abbey Wood Crossrail has huge potential.
At the moment basically all journies in Thamesmead are by car. These are indeed the people clogging up the existing crossings, along with others from wider Kent and Essex. The article says “Nine Elms this is not”, but that exaggerates the difference.
Why have the Overground running all the way to Barking Riverside, and just stopping just short of an ultra useful connection with the Elizabeth line at Abbey Wood? Even if only 4tph, a no brainer.
Such a devastating shame that the now agreed design for Barking Riverside Overground has NO provision for future extension across the river, despite the mealy-mouthed statements that it “doesn’t preclude” it. Any future extension would require a total rebuild – i.e. TfL are not serious about this option anytime soon.
A couple of factual issues.
TfL are buying 2 new ferries at a cost of £46m – see Appendix 2 of http://content.tfl.gov.uk/fpc-160302-07-project-monitoring.pdf I think work is also proposed to allow the piers to cope with a greater range of tidal conditions once the new ferries can be used.
Barking Riverside development has been slow because the size of the development is capped until adequate public transport is available. Only once a rail link receives the go ahead can more housing construction commence. The developers are also “on the hook” to part fund the link. This is why I am still so angry that Bozza cancelled the DLR Dagenhal Dock link back in 2008. If he hadn’t been so clueless we’d have had that service running for 3-4 years and he’d have had far, far more houses built and he’d had have benefitted from lower construction costs as a result of the economic issues in 2008/9. Madness. We will be lucky to have the GOBLIN extension in service by 2021.
On the more general theme I don’t think a wave of communism will be necessary if planners decide that car free housing developments should be built rather than car dependent ones. If we stopped destroying industrial zoned land and had a more mixed approach to land use then plumbers, bakers and candle stick makers wouldn’t need to drive 50 miles from Essex or Kent to do business. Our roads also wouldn’t be so overloaded. I’m not aware that the Netherlands or Denmark have been become adjuncts to North Korea since they adopted more rational transport priorities. 😉
I am afraid I really do not buy this argument that these three new road crossings are just “local” roads. They all link into dual carriageway roads at one side or both. They will end up sucking in vast volumes of traffic. This will place enormous strain on roads like the South Circular, the A11 / A12 and even the more generously provisioned A406. I also don’t see why bridges in West London are somehow viewed as little side streets – they often frequently jammed solid. Last time I tried to get across Battersea Bridge in the early afternoon it took nearly 30 mins due to the traffic volumes and limited traffic light phasing at the north side. Hammersmith Bridge is literally falling to pieces – TfL have had to reduce bus movements and only 1 bus can cross at a time. Nearly £30m has to be spent on it but there’s no sign as to when the closure for the work will happen. All this just reinforces the fact that if you put in the capacity it will be full to the brim within weeks and that’s before you build the houses / cater for Greenwich Peninsula redevelopment / deal with the private sector triggered development in places where you don’t expect it today. Why are we supposed to believe these proposed bits of infrastructure will not be full up within weeks (cf. Peter Hendy’s remarks about Crossrail’s likely popularity)?
While it would be stupid of me to argue that there are no issues with the Blackwall Tunnel there is nothing to stop TfL from running more buses through the tunnel. Yes there would be some risk of delays but that is true of every road in London. TfL could extend multiple single deck routes through the tunnel within months if only they could be bothered. That we somehow have to wait until 2023 for a new tunnel before any bus related cross river improvements could be made is beyond belief.
@timbeau: Intriguingly there are two foot tunnels incorporated into the Thames Barrier, but they are not wide enough to be used by the public. I would guess that the cost of making them bigger plus the security implications of public access directly below such a sensitive structure meant that it wasn’t considered worth providing a public crossing at a time when the area around the barrier was largely industrial land, and there was the Woolwich foot tunnel more conveniently located for public transport.
Sorry, I see Bob G already mentioned the barrier tunnel. But here is a picture.
@Phil: The easiest way to free up road space for delivery vans, tradespeople etc is to impose more road pricing (eg. a toll on the Blackwall Tunnel, as TfL is proposing). The delivery companies etc would be happy to absorb the cost because less congestion will increase their productivity (Ken Livingstone was fond of quoting the example of the piano tuner who could do more jobs in a day once the congestion charge came in). It would probably make economic sense to extend the concept of dedicated commercial-vehicle-only lanes to the Blackwall Tunnel as well as the Silvertown one.
@ww
Extending more bus route through the Black wall Tunnel would result in plummeting reliability for all of them. At present the problem is confined to the 108.
It would also reduce capacity on any of those routes currently operated by double deck vehicles, as they would have to be converted to single deck operation.
@ Timbeau – I fully acknowledged the points you make but I simply don’t accept the 108 is the disaster area you are suggesting. Yes there are occasions when it is affected and the controllers have to manage the implications. This is no different to any other bus route where there are accidents, road works, unexpected high volumes of traffic etc etc. The performance levels that TfL publish show the 108 slightly worse than the target levels and some of that could easily be down to the traffic problems in and around Lewisham town centre. I have seen plenty of other routes with far, far worse variation from target than the 108 sees.
There are several single deck routes that could run across the river and there’s nothing to stop TfL, shock horror, creating some new ones. It’s a false premise to suggest no cross river public transport improvement is feasible until we build a massive new tunnel for which there is no TfL funding nor a viable PFI type arrangement (as things stand today).
@Anonymous pedant 00:14
I thought this too at first, but it has been pointed out that in order to dig a tunnel you need to have ~400m of clear space to launch a tunnel boring machine. So in order to build a station at Barking Riverside with provision to extend under the river it would need to be 400m or more north of the planned location. So the planned solution gets a more sensible location sooner. Then they need to ensure that there is no other development on a suitable tunneling/underground station which I believe has been mentioned. See also Island Gardens DLR
Returning to the “Nine Elms this is not” comment, evidently this is true of some of the further out parts of Greater London formerly considered to be Essex and Kent. But there is a strong argument that Nine Elms is precisely what the Greenwich Peninsula aspires to be, with the O2 substituting for Battersea power station as its iconic centrepoint. This doesn’t seem a realistic aspiration if all of London’s inner orbital traffic is encouraged to crawl its way through the area. Would the Nine Elms redevelopment have happened if an urban motorway were planned through the centre of the site?
@WW
I would expect the targets for the 108 to be rather generous compared to most routes. Moreoever, most bus routes have possible diversionary routes which allow an end to end service to be maintained if a road is closed. Any route running through the Blackwall Tunnel risks being cut in two at the drop of a diesel slick.
@Malcolm
“for the sake of letting Woolwich-based plumbers take on work in Beckton. ”
or take work from Beckton-based plumbers (and of course vice versa)
@Herned
OK, so you have your TBM space if you spend 5 years demolishing the extension and rebuilding it again = not going to happen anytime soon. If TfL were serious about continuing across the river they would be putting the extension in a cutting and reserving the TBM space alongside it. See also King George V DLR.
@Walthamstow Writer: “I am afraid I really do not buy this argument that these three new road crossings are just “local” roads. They all link into dual carriageway roads at one side or both. They will end up sucking in vast volumes of traffic.”
Indeed, the idea that they are local roads, or extensions of he street network over the river, is one I make not because I seriously believe that this is the happy future we will all experience once they’re built, but because that is the aspiration that seems clear from the choices already made in terms of their design, cross-section and provision (or not) of onward connections. The intention is to link local communities each side of the river.
However, realistically, the Royston Vasey “local bridges for local people” design brief seems to have its head in the sand, and yes, the reality could be very different if they are built as planned. There is much more detail on this, and discussion of whether or not the crossings are worthwhile despite this possible drawback, in part 2.
@ Timbeau – the 108’s targets look to be in line with many other suburban bus services.
http://bus.data.tfl.gov.uk/boroughreports/routes/performance-route-108.pdf
Anyway we clearly disagree so let’s stop what could become an endless toing and froing of opinion to no one’s great edification.
@ Herned – the last artist’s impression I saw of the Riverside extension was that it was all on viaduct. I don’t know if this is because of ground conditions along the route. The other thing I’ve seen is that new planned buildings are shown on what would appear (careful wording there) to the logical onward alignment of a cross river extension. I am not aware that TfL have sought any safeguarding of a possible alignment on from Barking Riverside. I also don’t know if Barking and Dagenham Council would be prepared to voluntarily protect a possible alignment given the lack of any obvious commitment by TfL to building an extension. Seeking safeguarding would seem to be a logical thing to do but perhaps TfL won’t do this until they obtain powers to actually build the line as far as Barking Riverside! There may also be a view that it’s a relatively simple thing to build given the lower scale of development in Thamesmead and Barking Riverside when compared with what Crossrail 2 has to deal with to get through London.
Chris Marshall –
“The intention is to link local communities each side of the river.”
In the Silvertown Tunnel’s case, that would only be true if the southern exit was on, say, Millennium Way rather than feeding straight into the A102 trunk route, and if there was some facility for walking or cycling, which there isn’t.
The proposed two new crossings are retrograde on account of likely induced traffic exacerbating congestion and the limited contribution that cross-river road travel will make to development. Arguably, the money that the crossing would cost would be better spent on improving radial rail routes to employment in central London, which would stimulate housing construction in East London.
See http://peakcar.org/east-london-river-crossings-how-worthwhile/
Re WW,
Hammersmith Bridge was meant to be happening later this year.
The final detailed (6 week) survey was done in March and April.
The centre span of the bridge is going to get a temporary support structure similar to the permanent one under the Albert Bridge. The plywood and wooden baulk deck (20 year life span and currently 22 years old) is going to be replaced with steel deck (100 year life span) with the pedestrian walk ways getting fibreglass decks. The bridge will be able to take Double deck buses afterwards which could benefit 6 routes.
Homes without vehicle spaces are precisely the reason why tradespeople or couples where one has an awkward journey not viable on public transport have effectively been socially cleansed out of newer developments in the more central areas, continuing that policy is only going to make the problem worse.
ngh refers to homes without vehicle spaces. The trouble is that if some homes with vehicle spaces are provided, there is no way (in a free society) to restrict these to the categories he mentions (tradespeople etc – the etc would be particularly difficult to define).
So if they were provided, many of them would be taken up with people who just want a Chelsea tractor (or even a normal car) for prestige/occasional-use/because-they-can. Leaving the tradespeople etc no better off.
@ Anonymous pedant
Quite possibly yes, but that is the theory! I would also say that the location of King George V station is pretty central to North Woolwich, so more suited to being built in stages, and the DLR can cope with steeper gradients and tighter curves than normal heavy rail so needs less space for a tunnel mouth
I forgot to mention how well the article sums up the current state of a rather complex issue. I am looking forward to the next instalment.
David Metz says “Arguably, the money that the crossing would cost would be better spent on improving radial rail routes to …”
Although I agree (and said as much earlier), I would prefer to generalise it and say that it would be better spent on almost anything! The particular problem with improving radial rail routes to central London is that, while it can be done, it is eye-wateringly expensive. Most of the easy gains have been achieved (perhaps excepting a bit more carriage-purchase here and there to make more of the trains maximum length), so all that is left is things like new crossrails or tube routes: these do not come cheap.
I’m surprised it’s only Anonymous (8 June 2016 at 19:04) who’s noted the flaw in high bridges. Given the utter chaos that ensues around Dartford whenever the bridge has to be closed – and at least there’s an alternative right next door to it, admittedly requiring a 50% capacity reduction in each direction – it would be crazy if any of these crossings – or the new one hopefully below Gravesend – are anything other than tunnels of some sort.
Like 100-year-floods, we’re getting 100-year winds more often 🙂
@WW 11:29
I fear drifting off-topic here, but I’ll risk the moderator wrath. The Barking Riverside masterplan does appear to leave a nice clear path South from the planned station to the river.
http://barkingriverside.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Barking-Riverside-Development-Masterplan-1024×703-min.jpg
But there is only a clear path for two tracks through the site, meaning that the station would presumably have to be closed whilst tunnels were dug and an underground station constructed. The not-wholly-dissimilar rebuilding of Island Gardens and Mudchute resulted in these being closed for over 10 months. It is difficult to see the residents of Barking Riverside being overjoyed at such a prospect given the importance of the rail link for the development.
@WW
This is the latest masterplan according to the development website. There would appear to be ample land further north along the planned extension to being tunnelling from, and plenty of open space to dig a big hole in for an underground station near the planned elevated station
A few comments earlier about restricting the size of vessels, and therefore enabling a lower height bridge.
As well as the problem (mentioned above) that LB Greenwich has just approved a new cruise terminal, there is the more fundamental problem that I believe restricting the navigation on this bit of the Thames would require an act of Parliament. That moves the political difficulty level up quite a few notches. I suspect the Navy (with endless historic links to Greenwich) would be lobbying hard against any suggestion our own navy can’t sail to Greenwich.
I think this idea from 1938 would be good and it only cost £3,000,000
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/damming-the-thames
@Malcolm I find it very hard to imagine that allowing tall ships into London is worthwhile in purely economic terms. Yes the tourists aboard those ships probably spend a fair amount each, but surely they would be outnumbered thousands or millions to one by users of any new bridge? Thought experiment: if there was a bridge there already, how much would we be willing to spend on raising it to allow big ships into London?
Remember that adding a new route that immediately becomes full is not necessarily pointless – it could be the route is enabling a lot of very valuable journeys and that’s why it’s full.
If I remember from the comments on one of the overground articles (possibly by PoP?), one of the reasons the alignment is on a viaduct is because this area is outside the Thames barrier & therefore liable to flood. To build a future proofed underground station with appropriate flood prevention would be an enormous up-front cost & prolong the opening of the much needed extension (as WW states to facilitate further house building).
@Snowy 16:57
Thamesmead will be waiting until the Thames Barrier is replaced c. 2070 then.
Re Snowy,
I think the previous comment about design and flood risk was from me rather than PoP (I was going to dig it out earlier today but didn’t have the time). The ground conditions in the area aren’t great either so also somewhat easier to to start afresh above ground!
SIlvertown
Maybe – plus tolling, because something must be done to relieve the Blackwall.
[SNIP]
Gallions Reach
NO
The approach roads cut through far too much & will be bitterly opposed to the last ditch, I suspect
[SNIP]
A lower Thames RAIL River crossing is really needed [SNIP]
[Would commentators please try to avoid comments with no content or that regurgitate the history. Just saying you favour or disfavour something without evidence or reasons is bad enough, but to mention a crossing (or other sub-topic) just for completeness, saying essentially nothing about it is just a waste of readers’ time. Not aimed exclusively at Greg by any means, but he is included. Malcolm]
@ Stewart / Herned – thanks for the Riverside plan clarification. I was clearly mistaken. I do still wonder if there is some form of informal safeguarding of the land to the south of the Riverside station.
What a dump proposal. Like the Blackwall tunnel, the new road crossings will only lead to traffic jams on the bridges and on the key routes to *and from* them. I’m sure Thameslonk residents really feel that what they need to cure their isolation is a big daily traffic jam.
The rest of the pro-roads arguments are totally shallow too – another crossing at Blackwall will cause extra traffic and will have a substantial negative impact on air quality across London. The fact that much orbital traffic is road-based is an issue, not something to be accepted and strengthened.
The fundamental issue is that public transport is more efficient, and road traffic less when it comes to moving people. If you want to move away from low-density sheds, the roads won’t be able to cope. So what’s the point of building short stretches of very expensive roads (which is what bridges are) without Los Angelisation of the whole area? And surely nobody wants that?
Yes, I know that the definitive treatise on levying tolls on those crossing the river will come in the next part, but one can already see how the wind is blowing. Although the Dartford crossing has been paid for, and the accounts are now in surplus, the tolls will continue indefinitely because the DfT or its agents wish to use the charge to dissuade use (or some such officialese). It seems from this article that Blackwall/Silvertown will get a toll for exactly the same reason. Given the notes above about how unsatisfactory all the take of and landing points are for road connections to the proposed crossings between Blackwall/Silvertown and Dartford, it seems to me very likely that every single one of them will also be tolled to dissuade traffic from diverting. Thus TfL will just be replacing the physical barrier to crossing the Thames with a financial barrier.
Has everyone in TfL forgotten the old BR practice of trying to dissuade London area rail travel by putting up the fares so that fewer people could afford to travel? And what that did to the credibility of BR? Or more recently how Livingstone’s westward increase in his congestion charge area got quite a bad reaction from the intended victims and was hastily undone for fear of a similar hit to credibility?
Surely the cabbies are right. South East London is South of the river: “there be dragons there”.
Yea & Buccaneers ?
@Greg
The way to ‘relieve’ the Blackwall Tunnel is not to build Silvertown – because this has no chance of providing any relief for Blackwall except for, perhaps, the first 6 months after opening – but to close the slip from Blackwall Tunnel northbound to A13 westbound (and vice-versa). This would reduce the attractiveness of Blackwall Tunnel as a part of a dog-leg radial route into the city. Yes, those radial car based journeys would find it more difficult, they would need to go via Blackheath and New Cross instead but this may be sufficient to persuade some of them to use the train service instead.
@quinlet: Well worth a try. This could be a real-life illustration of Braess’ Paradox, where removing a link could conceivably make everyone’s journey quicker. I can confirm that the dog-leg seems to be a favourite for private-hire coaches between Kent and central London (what with the miseries of Blackheath), and doubtless plenty of car drivers too. However, whether that would be enough to make a big impact on Blackwall congestion may be a bit doubtful.
Incidentally Blackwall tunnel is the only way (apart from Dartford and Woolwich) of avoiding the congestion zone on the east for goods vehicles over 18 tons because of the Tower Bridge weight limit. However, probably only a theoretical issue, because the other costs of running such vehicles are so great that a congestion charge would be hardly noticed (and most big trucks – except flatbeds carrying loads like steel – won’t fit through Blackwall northbound anyway).
I’ve often thought that 2 bridges, One northbound only. and one southbound only would be a good idea. But not side by side.
It seems that the most congested part of a bridge is the approach. Once over traffic seem to dissipate quite quickly.
So if you build the northbound bridge where there would be enough space to accommodate congestion and the south bank.
and vice-versa for the southbound bridge.
Re: Barking Riverside: why couldn’t you launch the TBM from the south side of the river? Then you would only need a retrieval shaft on the north side (to extract the TBM so it can be sent back over the river to bore the second tunnel).
In the case of Island Gardems the excuse would be that the viaduct was there already (and a surface alignment across the park wouldn’t have been acceptable). If Barking Riverside has to be on a viaduct because of the flood risk, has anyone pointed the implications out to the buyers of the homes around the station?
@ quinlet ‘cos there’s loads of room on those trains, right? & the operator is globally renowned for quality of service & punctuality? Mmm? GLWT
OB
Given that only 5% of commuting to central London is by car, with the overwhelming majority by rail, I think it is highly likely that the relatively small number of car trips displaced onto public transport will be accommodated. And even SouthEastern’s punctuality record shows an order of magnitude better reliability than journeys by car.
In practice it wouldn’t matter if dog-legging radial journeys that currently go via Blackwall were rerouted via Blackheath or displaced onto public transport. At the margain, the short term additional congestion at Blackheath/New Cross would be subject to the normal principles of traffic evaporation. There might be an uncomfortable two or three months (during which the politicians would need to be steeled to keep their nerve), but the problems would all level out eventually.
I’m generally in favour of the new crossings. The problems for the new crossings are whether they are tunnel or bridge, they are going to need significant approach ramps to clear the river with sufficient room from above or below. This contributes to their increased cost and makes them more difficult to use for pedestrians or cyclists.
A tunnel would avoid visual intrusion of a high bridge but is not a great environment for cyclists or pedestrians, plus they have higher maintenance costs and safety issues. A fire in a tunnel is a major risk and potentially closes a crossing for a long time compared to an open air fire on a bridge.
But as people have said it’s a bit windy along the lower Thames and that poses issues for any high bridges.
Ideally low level bridges would be much cheaper, usable by cyclists and pedestrians and take up less land with long approach roads.
The problem is the Thames is still used by a lot of ships in it;s lower reaches and the London Plan still protects working wharfs, much no doubt to frustration of developers.
Bascule bridges could work in areas where there are not too many large ships. I could see at some point a changing of the rules governing bridges over the river, but only so far as Greenwich where the switch to larger river going vessels occurs.
So I could see the construction of simple pedestrian and cycle bridges between Tower Bridge and the Isle of Dogs (2 or 3 at most).
As to the design of the bridges/tunnels themselves with only 1 lane each for cars and the others for HGV’s and buses. I see that as a necessary political fig leaf to dual carriageways built, considering these routes will likely be dominated by HGV’s in the first place.
Previous plans of the Gallions reach crossing envisioned a 6 lane crossing at one point, but now it’s to be a locals only bridge with just 2 general traffic lanes and 2 HGV/PSV lanes, that’s a big cut in capacity.
The Belvedere crossing, I feel, is just some of those lanes moved down river to help prevent traffic east of the Gallions reach overloading the crossing.
These new crossing will certainly improve the accessibility of the industrial land along the South Banks by allowing them to access the superior A13 route in and out of London. which also allows people to avoid the Dartford Crossing to go North or access the main ports on the North bank of the Thames.
quinlet, Malcolm
Re: Closing the Blackwall tunnel – A13 Westbound link:
Central London bound vehicles would simply use the A11 instead.
I live in the Isle of Dogs, and work in Shooters Hill. This would probably add about 10 minutes to my journey time (currently 25-40 minutes depending on Blackwall traffic) as I make a detour causing more air pollution and congestion.
I would certainly not switch to public transport which takes one hour by any conceivable route.
@Andrew 11:25
I think your comment emphasises the need for better public transport links in SE London. That a journey entirely within Inner London still takes twice as long by public transport as by road is disappointing. Some may argue that your commute is unusual, but its reverse is, I suspect, rather common, and SE London’s sparse and all-radial rail network isn’t designed to accommodate it.
@Stewart
Agreed – better public transport in SE London is urgently needed. Shooters Hill is a bus ride from any station; my best public transport option is DLR to Lewisham, 89 bus. It is not reasonable to expect commuters to choose to lengthen their journey times. Measures to make car journeys more difficult simply cause resentment. Also, bear in mind that many road users cannot switch to public transport if they carry heavy objects or have disabilities.
@ Ian J
Yes you could do that, but if you were planning on joining it up with the existing railway then you will still need a portal and ramp somewhere on the north side of the river
On the subject of wind, I don’t know how often the QE2 bridge is closed because of high windz but the Second Severn Crossing rarely is, and that is surely in a more exposed location… the downside being it has big steel sheets to act as windbreaks – although I imagine there is no engineering reason why they couldn’t use something transparent
@Herned: The QE2 bridge is for vehicles only, if pedestrians and cyclists were to use it as well then it would probably need to close much earlier to that particular kind of traffic….
That would then give you all sorts other headaches: Free shuttle bus? Carrying bikes on normal buses?
@ SHLR – there is a minibus at the Dartford Crossing which does transport cyclists because the crossing is defined as a local, rather than M, road.
I see we are back to believing these new bridges will be “local” roads. Unless they introduce toll booths and issue residents permits and also impose 7′ wide width restrictions at each end then these bridges are anything but local roads. They will be part of the Greater London / National strategic road network. Is there any proposal for TfL to transfer responsibility for these new crossing to the boroughs? Not that I’m aware of. The usual distinction is that the boroughs look after local roads (including a number of river crossings) and TfL look after major roads (like, oh, the Blackwall Tunnel!). It matters not what lanes there are or what colour tarmac there is – these crossings will be chock full of lorries, vans and cars. They certainly will not be full of buses, trams, DLR vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians.
There used to be a regular motorboat ferry from the end of Southend pier to somewhere on the Kent side. Anyone have details??, all I can recall is that the boat was called ‘Vanguard’. Date was late 40s or early 1950s. This, together with the then regular Burnham on Crouch, Fambridge and Wivenhoe ferries provided some interesting, if slow possibilities. And I suppose the (RAF operated) Felixstowe and Southwold ones??
@Andrew, Quinlet, Malcolm
No need to drive all the way to Bow, merely take the A13 east the short distance to Leamouth, and then take the A1261 west. 😉
I’m not sure, therefore, that closing the slips would cause more problems than it’s worth, though I’m sure those on the East India Dock Road through All Saints would be happy at the moving of through traffic nearer to Canary Wharf.
Public Transport options wouldn’t help much with Blackwall, unless something similar to the Silvertown tunnel is built to allow double-decker buses across. TfL looked at Greenwich council’s DLR to Eltham proposal and found that such a route would cater for a tiny fraction (9%, IIRC) of journeys through the tunnels. The origins and destinations are disperse and buses would be the main way to do it.
Andrew
Unless, of course, there was a new public-transport link across the Thames ( for “local” use ) below Greenwich/Woolwich … um, err … [ Barking / Thamesmead .. Tilbury / Gravesend ??? ]
Why are the “ministry of Roads” people being let out of their boxes for this exercise is a question that might need addressing, since a rail-crossing of some sort that actually linked usefully into the rest of the system would be a great advantage & could carry very large numbers of people.
Or is that discussion ( re a rail-crossing) out of bounds for this specific thread?
The notion that there ought to be another rail crossing can certainly be mentioned. Further discussion of it, though, needs to avoid crayonism (which in this context probably means sticking a pin in a railway line north of the Thames, another south, and suggesting that the two pins be joined, or similar). And it needs some support in the sense of specific justification of particular plausible journeys which would be made easier for a significant number of people, or plausible other benefits (less pollution, less cost, and so forth). And of course, it should avoid the frequently deployed fallacy of suggesting the extension of railway lines which are already full to capacity. So a bit of a challenge, I would have thought.
The follow-up to the notion of closing certain slip-roads to persuade a certain amount of traffic away from the Blackwall Tunnel is very interesting, and links nicely with the proposals of various other proposed crossings “for local traffic”. Journeys between the Isle of Dogs and Shooters Hill, or any others where at least one end of the journey is within a mile or two of the tunnel, are obvious prime candidates for “sensible” use of the tunnel. But the original target was journeys like Rochester to Blackfriars (say), where the only benefit of the tunnel is the way its north end happens to have faster journeys to Blackfriars than its south end.
But drivers are free to choose their route, so it turns out to be quite difficult to encourage the “local” use without also permitting the non-local use. I feel exactly the same would happen on new crossings: impossible (or at least very difficult) to restrict them to local traffic.
Greg says “[a rail crossing] could carry very large numbers of people.”
Perhaps it could, but there is no evidence that a large number of people want or need to cross the eastern Thames for a local journey. Yes there are some who do, but the real big demand is between (say) Dover and Birmingham (for which a rail crossing is pointless).
If sufficient bridges and tunnels (whether road or rail) are built, then of course people on one side will get jobs (or haircuts) on the other, and the crossings will be used. But most of the traffic will have been generated by the very existence of the crossings. A futile exercise, I call it.
@ Southern Heights (Light Railway)
They assist the crossing of pedestrians and Cyclists over the QE2 using the emergency response vehicles.
Its a local thing for local people so, shhhhhh.
Don’t tell anybody.
There is an ensign bus (X80) that goes over as well. If you don’t fancy the special ‘treatment’. My preferred method, as the views from the top deck are simply stunning.
Malcom @ 20.30
By your argument, then, extra crossings after Old London Bridge were completely futile.
Err, shomething worng here shurely?
And I (thought I was) suggesting a circumferential, rather than a radial approach for a rail crossing. Maybe.
Greg says “By your argument, then, extra crossings after Old London Bridge were completely futile.”
Perhaps they were, or at least a waste of money. But some of them were built a very long time ago, and we are where we are. No point in wasting more money now just because money was (perhaps) wasted in the past.
Regarding circumferential rail links (further out than the Overground ones), these are everywhere tricky to justify, as discussed many times before. Having them cross a rather deep and wide river is just a (slightly) higher level of trickiness.
(The desired journey lines form a very diffuse network all over the map which nowhere condenses thickly enough for a railway, or so it seems, though of course Croybledon trams may be a counterexample).
Good article Chris, on a subject I’ve referred to recently 🙂
I find it slightly surprising that people almost want to keep the south and north sides of East London in their current separate state. Imagine West London with all the bridges removed, it would be a big drag on the local economies. Why shouldn’t a plumber operate on both sides of the river, or an ambulance cross the river to save someone’s life?
Public transport crossings by rail over the river in East London have improved massively over the last 20 years – 2 separate DLR crossings, 2 Jubilee Line crossings, with Crossrail to come – but the road network has seen nothing, and with a growing population. Apart from anything else, the northbound Blackwall Tunnel is a disgrace, an antiquated piece of Victorian infrastructure with sharp bends so that horses weren’t startled by the light! No other major city on the planet has so much traffic forced to go through such an inadequate piece of infrastructure
In reality not all these crossings will be built, and all have potential flaws. I still can’t help feeling that the crossing East London needs is the original “Ringway 2 style” Beckton crossing linking the North Circular and the A2, as this would take a lot of through traffic away from the Blackwall Tunnel area, but the difficulty in linking this to the A2 in environmentally acceptable way seems to have ruled this out for ever.
@ Malcolm
Re an East London rail crossing of the river (and I agree with others that more road crossings ARE needed).
It’s 34¼ miles in a straight line east from Tower Bridge to Southend Pier. The same distance west from Battersea Bridge gets you to Reading. In case no-one’s noticed, there aren’t exactly many major orbital rail crossings of the river even where it’s nominally easier in West London and the Thames Valley.
The main ones are the Overground twice, via the West London Line (with a poor man’s version of the East London Line orbital frequency, and important for freight), and via Strand-on-the-Green.
Other than that the few railways are essentially radial – the District Line in several places, the LSWR Reading, Windsor, Kingston and Hounslow lines all have their own crossings, and famously there’s the GWR main line at Maidenhead. The railways haven’t even managed to join themselves together yet as an integrated network, at a naturally busy point of late 20th and 21st century passenger demand on the Greater London/Thames Valley borders, Heathrow.
I’d also point out that no one is rushing to offer new EAST-WEST rail crossings of the major NORTH-SOUTH river in this neck of the woods, the Lea, where 34¼ miles gets you from Stratford (Regional) to just past Audley End. It’s 45½ miles to reach Cambridge where East West Rail is struggling to make a showing. Meanwhile making better use of what there is, eg NLL and Goblin, is the name of the game.
So what hope is there for East/SE London where large scale tunnelling or bridging and related costs might be unavoidable? Radial railways exist and they don’t (yet) need duplication, though Crossrail has that capability – and has river crossings already built – in respect of the safeguarded Ebbsfleet extension. The DLR has justified several cross-river lines, based primarily on localised urban flows, area renewal and redevelopment, and, also importantly, with a lower construction cost baseline.
Based on the work I undertook for London 2050’s R25 in 2013-14, the business case for new rail construction for major orbital rail is unlikely on the evidence to rely just on one corridor flow, such as, say, the North/South Circular Road.
It would require considerable amalgamation of flows and willingness to transfer from road to rail, and quantification of other benefits (eg relief of over-stressed road crossings and local traffic bottlenecks, fewer traffic emissions, enabling more housing capacity, etc), to begin to justify anything even small in scale.
You also then run the risk of incurring other significant costs in order to garner enough basic volume – interchanges, rail spurs and junctions, accommodating orbital services in SE London on a primarily radial network, etc. Nor is Thamesmead a simple rail construction zone, so tunnelling might need to continue for some distance. So London 2050 puts such a scheme in the distant future.
Options reviewed for London 2050 pointed to the possiblity of a railfreight-capable Thames crossing starting near Barking Riverside (maximum 1 in 50 gradients required, so a long tunnel), connected potentially also towards downstream Thames industries and radial corridors on both banks, and enabling other Essex-Kent or South London passenger services as well as Overground options. Or simpler Overground-only tunnel choices. However, TfL’s recent analyses (referenced by others) suggest that a DLR option is currently better value than a simple Overground cross-river scheme.
So, instead of reviewing river crossings at innumerable places, and trying to propose answers looking for the right questions, a combination of strategic transport and land-use problems where a rail solution could generate adequate benefits to offset a high cost scheme over a (say) 15-year project development and construction period, could be a better starting point for consideration.
Mikey C says “ Imagine West London with all the bridges removed, it would be a big drag on the local economies.”
Indeed it would. That is because, with the existence of the bridges, the local economies have grown up together.
But imagine West London if it had never had any of its bridges. It would comprise two separate local economies, just as Thames-side East London does today. Not a perfect situation: any barrier whatever slightly limits the “agglomeration effect” from which all cities benefit. But a situation which just possibly might do better by tolerating the barrier and finding other ways of spending any money which the exchequer is prepared to make available.
Anomnibus – “Same goes for trams, although on-street running for these can at least be avoided where sufficient space is available for full segregation. I’m not sure how viable that is in the Thamesmead area though, given that it was built during a period when trams were considered unfashionable.”
A tram would be viable. The extensive dual carriageways are pretty much all wide with large verges and central reservations. Some parts of the road network are three lanes wide with the centre lane hatched off. It’s almost like it was tailor made for a tram, or at least expanding to three lanes or more across the board.
I still find the DLR is better line hard to swallow. It would do the same job as LO south of the river but feed into far less to the north. Beckton with nothing, or Barking with many options? And those to the south would be unlikely to use it to head west after crossing the river, as going south to Abbey Wood then Crossrail is faster.
@Christian Schmidt, et al:
“What a dump proposal. Like the Blackwall tunnel, the new road crossings will only lead to traffic jams on the bridges and on the key routes to *and from* them.”
The traffic jams are already there, so I don’t understand the reasoning behind such arguments.
I also don’t understand the reasoning behind implications that new river crossings elsewhere will magically cause lots of new HGVs to appear out of nowhere. How are all these magical new vehicles supposed to get through South London’s notoriously poor road network to get to new bridges at Belvedere or Gallions Reach? Is there also a new road tunnel out to the M25 being proposed, because, right now, the only viable radial roads from there up to the Thames itself is the A2, which is a dual carriageway for some of its length.
This is why I have no trouble at all agreeing with the planners, who insist that the new bridges would be primarily for local traffic. Long-distance traffic would be far better off using the existing crossings, simply because they already have the necessary road access from outside Greater London. Furthermore, those new bridges would reduce local demand on the existing crossings by reducing the demand from local users.
Finally, if you really, really don’t want HGVs from France or beyond crossing at Belvedere, then there’s this trick our continental cousins use on a routine basis: ban the damned things during certain hours of the day.
Or just make the bridges limited to pedestrians, cyclists, buses and permit-holders only. Problem solved, with no need to throw these crossings out with the bathwater.
In short: the congestion argument is invalid.
@Mikey C / @Malcolm It seems to me that if most travel through the Blackwall tunnel is commuting, demand for cross-river travel makes sense if there’s an imbalance between housing and employment on the two sides. If so, maybe the best answer is things to address that? (Maybe a Canary Wharf / Stratford style development on the south side? (Is Croydon already that?))
@Imm
It’s not that there is an imbalance between housing on the south and jobs on the north, but that the main centre of Lon don is on the north bank of the Thames and radial routes into the centre focus on destinations on the north bank of the Thames. Wherever you come from if you are south of the Thames a river crossing is almost essential if you work in the centre.
But, in reality, this is almost irrelevant if you consider radial journeys in principle. For radial journeys by car there are pinch points whatever direction you come from. Some are notorious junctions, others maybe bridges. We are now wise to the fact that increasing capacity for traffic at junctions will not relieve congestion on radial routes at all – it will just move it somewhere else. The accepted answer today is demand management and better public transport to make this more attractive. A river crossing is actually no different from a bottleneck at a road junction. ‘Relieve’ the congestion there (whether by a new crossing or anything else) and it will just move the congestion somewhere else.
I was going to add that is purely romanticism that encourages people to think that pinch points caused by water going underneath (or over) a road are any different from pinch points caused by other reasons.
quinlet: “Purely romanticism”
And if you are right (which I suspect you are) that romanticism could end up costing us a lot of money – most pinch points can be relieved rather more cheaply than the ones which require new river crossings.
The sort of exception to this might be a railway anyway in tunnel, where passing under the Thames costs not much more than passing under anything else: this may account for the otherwise rather absurdly large number of times that the Jubilee Line Extension crosses the Thames.
quinlet says “increasing capacity for traffic at junctions will … just move [congestion] somewhere else.”
The most notorious exemplar of this is probably the Hyde Park Corner underpass, which has probably never significantly speeded up a single journey since it was built in the early sixties.
Imm & all subsequent comments
If, then the Blackwall “problem” is caused by commuter-congestion [ locked-up northbound in the AM, southbound in the PM ], the “answer” is to make public transport substitutes more attractive & viable … & I don’t mean the already-horribly-overcrowded 4-car units on the signalling-constrained Thames Tunnel either.
[ Or do I? – the money spent on making that line fully 8 or 10-car compatible & 24 tph would be less than any of the proposed river crossings by road, wouldn’t it ? ]
What would be the cost of, say, the Belvrdere crossing & all associated joining-up link roads? Or more likely any two of the suggested four road-links discussed?
Now, what’s the cost of doing something “LIKE” (not exactly) Barking-Thamesmead by rail in comparison & what’s the BCR?
@ Malcolm – surely deciding to serve some areas and main line termini south of the Thames is why the Jubilee Line crosses so many times? Hardly “absurdly large” when you see how immensely busy the service is nor the fact that Crossrail will also cross the Thames to provide some new links and add capacity over corridors broadly served by the JLE and DLR.
On an earlier point it is just worth noting how immensely busy every rail link in East London that crosses the Thames actually is. They’re all full to bursting in the peaks and not exactly devoid of passengers at other times. Not all of the travel is oriented to Central London either – witness the growth of Stratford (and further waves of development) as more and more new rail links have been added.
While I understand, up to a point, the caution urged by J Roberts I still think that some additional cross Thames rail capacity further east than Woolwich would very quickly become popular. Clearly there are major strategic decisions that would be have to be taken in designing such a rail crossing but we really need to get on with making those decisions rather than wafting them off into the future. Given it takes us nearly 50 years to decide and build anything remotely important for London’s transport network we are already 16 years late even if we believed a new NR scale Thames rail crossing would arrive in 2050. We can decide in a trice to build strategically irrelevant links like the NLE to Battersea but everything of any value takes forever.
Yes such a link would need connecting lines and flyovers but the same is equally true of any future road crossing – new bridges are not to be connected to the rest of the road network through the equivalent of a residential side street with parking on both sides of the road. There will be roundabouts and dual carriageways and the whole shebang you always get with new roads. They will also get bigger over time as the inevitable demands for “congestion relief” come forth and as more “out of town” shopping areas and industrial parks get built to pull in more cars and lorries.
Just look at anywhere else in the country where you add significant road capacity and see what happens. I can cite two areas in Tyne and Wear where such massive expansion has occurred – Quorum Business park near Longbenton (used to be green fields) and Northumberland Park / Cobalt between Shiremoor and Percy Main (again used to be green fields). Now both are a source of massive traffic congestion because so many drive even though there are convenient bus and metro connections and the local councils have been working for the last umpteen months on road and junction widening to try to handle peak time traffic volumes. For anyone to try to imagine the same pressures will not arise in respect of new Thames road crossings is just a falacy. Exactly the same pressures that rail network improvements bring will arise with an improved road network that releases capacity and initially shortens journey times – people adjust very quickly and will increase their journey volumes until the capacity is used up. None of this is news (e.g. 7th car on Jubilee Line – capacity eaten up in the peaks within 10 weeks, Overground EMUs needing 5th car within 3 years).
@WW
My last para sets out how to make a case for a rail crossing!
I was not clear. The number of JLE Thames crossings would have only been absurd if it had been an above-ground line (or road) where one pays a lot extra for bridges or otherwise-unnecessary tunnels. Given that the line is anyway in tunnel, the route is entirely rational, even if a little surprising when it was first made public. And of course, as people have said, the line is doing an absolutely vital job as built.
JR
Except you say “15 years” – & we need a lower Thames crossing right now, same as we need CR2 right now, since CR1 is at least 15-20 years late …..
[ And as WW & I repeatedly point out, (CR1) is going to fill right up, very quickly indeed. Even without a putative extension Slade Green / Dartford / Ebbsfleet / Gravesend & extra turn-around point, oh dear. ]
@WW ” Exactly the same pressures that rail network improvements bring will arise with an improved road network that releases capacity and initially shortens journey times – people adjust very quickly and will increase their journey volumes until the capacity is used up.”
Indeed – needed new links, ones that justify the spending on them, fill up – otherwise they aren’t worth spending money on!
There’s a very different reaction when it happens on rail to when it happens on road. When it happens on rail, people view the scheme as a success and lobby for longer and more frequent trains and new routes to relieve the ones just opened. When it happens on roads, people view the scheme as a failure and use it as a weapon against additional schemes.
Mention was made of Kent commuter coaches heading for the City using the Blackwall. They do this because they all serve stops at Canary Wharf on the way to/from the City.
Further argument for better rail links. People use these coaches (which are slow because of the inevitable queue into the tunnel) because the cross river rail links and Kent commuter trains are full to bursting already.
IslandDweller – 12 June 2016 at 12:59
“People use these coaches (which are slow because of the inevitable queue into the tunnel) because the cross river rail links and Kent commuter trains are full to bursting already.”
Having talked to a number of people who use the coaches, the reasons you put forward are wrong – the real reason is that the coaches are significantly cheaper.
Malcolm 11 June 2016 at 13:10 &
quinlet 11 June 2016 at 21:42
My wife used to drive through the Blackwall tunnel to Catford for work. It was the quickest way to get there, despite the queues, due to poor connectivity of the public transport, notably from Lewisham to Catford. She wasn’t the only one.
The most productive new crossing would be the Thames Gateway Bridge, the one that Boris Johnson cancelled, between Beckton and Thamesmead. It would enormously expand the local job markets on both sides, making the Greater London part of the Thames estuary attractive to private sector investors and boosting job creation.
Coaches from Kent to the city via Canary Wharf. There are really two separate questions. 1) Why do the operators send them that way?, and (2) why do people choose to use them even though train might be quicker? I suspect that Anonymous might be correct on question (2), if I can add my anecdotal evidence – which is only of one user, but he certainly goes for the lower price.
As for question (1), I suspect that this is a combination of being able to offer a Canary stop, but also getting to Monument (or wherever they stop in the City) 5 or 10 minutes sooner. Not much, but for passengers using them every day, even 5 minutes saving is good. If the route south of the Thames was quicker, then they could still “serve” Canary Wharf by stopping at Canada Water (not ideal I know), but they are not going to even consider that if the time difference favours the Blackwall queues over the Blackheath queues.
I noticed that when I use a 486 bus from North Greenwich it passes beneath a railway which I believe is only used for freight trains on a branch which must begin near Westcombe Park Station. Which raises the question as to whether this branch could be upgraded for passenger services and extended through a new cross river tunnel to serve east London thus creating a new link from South East London to say Stratford where it could be linked into Lea Valley route creating a new North South cross river railway ?
As for lack of crossings downstream of Tower Bridge its easy to forget that for several centuries this area was dominated by docks with people who lived near to where they worked and for those who needed to cross the river they used the foot tunnels .
As for lorries they still cross the river but have to use the Woolwich Free Ferry provided it’s not foggy . It’s these lorries who would have transferred to The Thames Gateway Bridge . A bridge which was not 6 lanes for all but 2×2 for traffic and a 2 X1 lane busway built for upgrade for DLR or tram .
One recent announcement by Sadiq is he is going ahead with planned Thames crossing from Canary Wharf for cycles and pedestrians a link which in some ways replicates the old foot tunnels !
While it seems the growth in use of Overground in east London may need a revival of the original Ringrail planes which saw a link from Stratford to South East London using what is now DLR/Jubilee Line section of old North London Line .
If crayonistas want a field day then I suggest this months Modern Railways which is a London Special and looks at plans to sort out south Londons railways with billion pound scheme for Streatham etc.
@Alan Griffiths
I am sure there are some journeys for which driving through the Blackwall Tunnel is entirely appropriate and the quickest way. A bit surprised about your comment that there is “poor connectivity of the public transport, notably from Lewisham to Catford”. Two to four trains per hour (OK that could be better) and several buses providing links every 3-4 minutes. If this is poor connectivity then I wonder what counts as good.
It is very hard to get any good evidence that a Thames Gateway crossing “would enormously expand the local job markets on both sides”. The arguments I saw for this bridge’s predecessor, the East London River Crossing, were extremely crude along the lines that there were so many acres of development land south of the river (I forget just how many) which, if developed, would provide so many thousand jobs half of which would be filled by people form north of the Thames and half from south. So, went the argument, if ELRC was not constructed half of those jobs would be lost because those for people from north of the Thames couldn’t get there. It was complete nonsense then and is complete nonsense now.
The attractiveness of a site for development will depend far more on the type of development proposed, land values and labour costs, including accessibility from a suitable labour market. It is not clear that the labour market is south east London is dramatically different from the labour market in north east London so that job creation is unlikely to be significantly different with or without the Thames Gateway Crossing.
@ Quinlet – I’m pleased you pointed out the existence of public transport between Lewisham and Catford. It’s not exactly devoid of connectivity.
While I sort of understand your remarks about the previous crude assessment of the benefits of the ELRC we haven’t really moved on very much. Every major bit of infrastructure investment stresses how it will lead to shorter journey times, more houses, more jobs, more development and easier access to employment in “businsess zones”. If you apply your final sentence, which essentially says job creation has no great connection to transport links being improved, to other proposed schemes like Crossrail 2 or STAR then one wonders why we are bothering. Either there is a link or there isn’t.
WW
I think there is a link between transport and development but it’s not as simple as saying that better transport creates jobs. The Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment’s report on this, many years ago, was not bad but it got ignored becasue it wasn’t saying what people wanted to hear.
As I see it, better and cheaper transport has a major concentrating factor when we are talking about an industry’s internalised costs, principally freight. Thus, making transport cheaper will reduce the number of warehouses needed to serve a given area and reduce the number of plants or production centres needed, giving economies of scale in each case, which are usually much bigger than any increased transport costs (as these have been cut).
An example I looked at about 30 years ago was Courage’s breweries. In the 1970s they had four breweries in the south east: Two in central London, one in Reading and one in Alton. Construction of the M4 enabled them to close all four and replace them with one larger brewery outside Reading. As 80% of the output went back into London it is unlikely that this move would have been commercially justifiable without the M4 as trasnprt costs would have been that much higher. As it was, Courage subsequently made a nice killing in selling the older sites (particularly the two in central London), which paid for the capital cost of the new brewery and subsequently benefitted from continuously lower running costs.
With passenger transport it’s a bit different, but essentially it widens the catchment area from which you can draw your labour thus enabling developments to be built in areas with lower land costs which previously couldn’t have attracted sufficient suitable labour.
@Melvyn
The line you see from the 486 bus is the branch serving Angerstein Wharf, and branches off the Charlton / Blackheart line just west of Charlton Junction, diving under the Greenwich line east of Westcombe Park.
It is indeed “just” a freight line, which means if you want to run a passenger service on it you “just” need to put up with lots of lorry movements in SE London.
quinlet 12 June 2016 at 21:57
@Alan Griffiths ” what counts as good”
would be the local train to Stratford, every 10 minutes and the DLR Stratford to Lewisham, approx. every 10 minutes in those days.
Trying to hit the right time for a train from Lewisham to Catford every 30 minutes or get a bus = just not reliable enough.
…Particularly as buses south of Lewisham to Catford and beyond can be *achingly* slow in the peak.
@Ed (11/6@13:52): Quite agree on the Thamesmead Tram idea, indeed some of the dual carriage ways have been reduced to single lanes, I imagine 1) there is no need for two, and 2) to discourage boy racers…. Construction could be very, take out one half, dig the other half up for a tram…
@IslandDweller (12/6@12:59): They also use the coaches becasue they are a hell of a lot cheaper and tend to go to locations where there are no trains… Judging by the coaches I see every day, most people must get off at Canary Wharf as they are nearly empty by the time they get to the Tower of London.
@Rich Thomas (13/6@10:29): Or indeed even in a car…. There is a handy little backroad you can use in a car, the B218…. If you add on the B227 from Forest Hill to the A212, then it’s a blindingly fast (relatively speaking) route from the A21 to Deptford. It saves around 30 minutes over taking the sign posted route from Greenwich station…
@Alan Griffiths/Rich Thomas….Which is why *some* of us would like the Bakerloo line extension to go to Hayes ?
Btw, speaking as a SE Londoner who for years has had to put up with choosing between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (aka the Blackwall Tnl and Dartford Crossing…I’m deliberately not including the Woolwich Ferry as an option!) when deciding how to get from Orpington to East London by road, I am firmly in the East London Road Crossing camp.
Yes, building more roads does create more traffic, and I am a strong advocate for public transport wherever possible. But sometimes, there are a few problems which can only be solved by new road construction, I’m afraid. And this is one of them…..
[This is a reminder that personal opinions and preferred travel modes are not in themselves facts that need to be expressed on this site. LBM]
I’d be interested if some kind soul could explain to me in simple terms why extending the Bakerloo to Hayes would have any impact on cross-river traffic downstream of London Bridge. (I can see that extending the Bakerloo to Catford and Lewisham would make a difference to travel between those two places, but Hayes?
Re Angerstein Wharf, it has experienced a couple of freight train derailment recently and the RAIB reports provide much information about the workings of the line (as accident reports often do).
@Ed: I still find the DLR is better line hard to swallow. It would do the same job as LO south of the river but feed into far less to the north. Beckton with nothing, or Barking with many options?
Just to complicate things, comments by a DLR person in the current issue of Modern Railways suggest that an extension of the DLR from Beckton to Barking is something that they are looking at. In principle those wide central reservations in Thamesmead could be used for the supports for an elevated DLR line rather than a tram. The presumed advantage of the DLR would be more frequent service to Barking town centre than the Overground.
@Graham H
“I’d be interested if some kind soul could explain to me……….”
I think the argument was that in choosing how to travel between SELondon and East London, a chain of public transport connections is only as strong as its weakest link. So the frequency of the cross-river (DLR) leg will not draw people out of the Blackwall Tunnel if connections south of Lewisham are only 2tph.
And as has been discussed before, conversion of the Mid Kent Line to Tube standards would have to be all or nothing – the Bakerloo couldn’t only go as far as Catford Bridge.
@timbeau – Or not involve the conversion of the mid-Kent line – which was my underlying point. As TfL’s own plans show, it’s perfectly possible to extend the Bakerloo to Lewisham and beyond and leave Hayes alone..
@Graham H
I think the point was that without conversion of the midKent line to Tube you are unlikely to get more than 2 tph between Lewisham and Catford*
As Alan Griffiths said “Trying to hit the right time [on the DLR, to connect] for a train from Lewisham to Catford every 30 minutes = just not reliable enough.”
*nb – there are 4tph on the branch but half of them omit Lewisham
Re Timbeau,
See LBG timetable discussion under other article discussion moving to 4tph via LEW to CHX.
@ngh
Even 4tph is a potential 15 minute delay, hardly Tube/DLR frequency, and for some users will tip the balance in favour of the “turn up and go” facility that driving affords.
Nevertheless, as you know, a 15m service interval is the TfL planning standard for turn up and go. ( I may have my doubts as to whether that is still as valid now, as it was 40 years ago, but I’ve not seen any recent research to undermine the standard).
15 minutes between trains is twice as good as the service on many lines – don’t knock it!
15 minutes is an arbitrary boundary between “turn up and go” and “look at the timetable”. As it is arbitrary, there will be some people whose behaviour differs: who go for a specific train even though the interval may be 12 minutes, or who don’t bother even when it is 20.
There is another arbitrary boundary (somewhere around 3 minutes in my estimate) between “x minutes is all very well, but ideally it would be even less” and “it need not be any more frequent because I’ve hardly got my breath back from walking to the platform before a train comes”. (This boundary ceases to exist if the crowds are such that one train cannot clear the platform: when this applies then extra frequency is always required, obviously).
@chris Mitch
There are indeed many services that are only 2tph, including the current Lewisham/ Catford service. And a single cancellation gives you a gap of an hour.
But whatever tfl think, for short journeys where the door to station, wait for a train and station to door times are at least as significant as the terminus actually on board the train, even 4tph will not attract people out of their cars
To put my “indifference” point more dramatically: to change from a 4 minute interval to a 2 minute interval requires double the number of trains and drivers, and saves passengers an average of 1 minute. To go from a 30 minute interval to a 15 minute one also requires doubling the number of trains and drivers, but it saves (a smaller number of) passengers 7.5 minutes on average.
As for getting people out of their cars, I agree with timbeau that many other factors (some measurable in minutes, but others in pounds or comfort) confound the issue considerably.
@Graham H…..Re. train frequency and Lewisham to Catford/Haykerloo- others above have largely made the points I wanted to make in response to your earlier comment. Expanding on this further will probably attract the wrath of the moderators, so all I’ll add is:
– The *only*, firm, on-the-table option for increasing train frequencies between Lewisham and Catford at present is Haykerloo (ISTR a figure of 18tph between Lewisham and Catford in the consultation document?). Whether this is desirable or the best way of achieving this is for another thread!
– Absence of evidence doesn’t necessarily imply evidence of absence. Common sense (which might be in short supply at the DfT….who knows??) would suggest that the higher the service frequency, the more attractive the service becomes to potential punters. Whether this is enough to attract people away from other transport modes (such as road via the Blackwall Tnl), or just creates new demand from travellers who were not using the tunnel at all who now can switch jobs etc. thanks to the new more frequent service at their doorstep, is another question entirely. If it’s more the latter than the former, then it is likely to make very little difference to overall cross-river road traffic between SE and E London.
And (to get back on topic!), this is why another road river crossing in East London will still be necessary in the medium-term. The fact that the Woolwich Ferry continues to exist (particularly for overheight vehicles unable to use the Dartford and Blackwall Tnls) when most similar river crossing ferries elsewhere have long since been replaced by bridges (even in places where the estuary is much wider, e.g. the Severn and Humber) says a lot, I think.
Some of the TfL (etc) publicity for these road crossings emphasises “local” traffic.
It should be entirely possible to construct such a bridge that will “not admit” vehicles above a certain size, except for buses (Which would be fitted with a transponder, allowing them to use an oversize “gate”, I think.
Would that be practical politics & engineering, a true “local” road, not allowing HGV’s through?
Would it be “economic” (Whatever that means ) ??
@Malcolm – – “arbitrary” may well be the wrong term to describe a cut-off point that is supposedly based on research although I agree (a) that that 15 minute number is conveniently round (b) even with much higher frequencies (eg <10m intervals) people who are in the know will go for a specific train – used to do it myself even on the Northern Line when I knew there was a Mill Hill starter due from Kennington and (c) the whole question of elasticity of demand to frequency needs more extensive research than it has had hitherto – – I suspect that it's the usual S curve, as with other factors.
More generally, people seem to have not understood my point that it's not Hayes or nothing beyond Lewisham. That is probably a reasonable point at which to leave the argument in a thread about river crossings.
@Malcolm
You raise the point about small time savings which is frequently central to assessment of transport proposals. At present we accept that 10 people saving 1 minute each has the same utility as 1 person saving 10 minutes. This is undoubtedly true in strict theory, but is it actually true in practice?
@Greg
“Some of the TfL (etc) publicity for these road crossings emphasises “local” traffic.
It should be entirely possible to construct such a bridge that will “not admit” vehicles above a certain size, ”
A box girder bridge should do it – ensures maximum clearance underneath too!
http://tranbc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Oyster-River-Bridge.jpg
But part of the problem is that neither Blackwall nor Rotherhithe (height), nor Tower Bridge (weight) can take the largest HGVs, causing more HGV movements throughout east and south east London than would be necessary if a crossing were available that could take them. Maybe local traffic (transponders issued to local residents perhaps) and HGVs only?
Re Greg and Timbeau,
I suspect local will just mean no real road improvement beyond the bridge approaches.
Longer spacing is fine for single journeys, but for a set of changes, even 15 minute spacing could make a 2 change journey times vary by 40 minutes, which makes the car more attractive.
Its not just overheight vehicles that have problems, its chemicals that are banned from tunnels.
Its not just commuters that need the crossings, is the vast number of irregular users needing to get across London. I go from Z6 SE to Z4/5 NE perhaps 4 times a year off-peak, but the Blackwall route avoids the M25 or London Bridge, both good things for TfL I guess. I’d like the crossing at 6pm Saturday as predictable as at 11pm Saturday.
@Mikey C
“Imagine West London with all the bridges removed, it would be a big drag on the local economies. Why shouldn’t a plumber operate on both sides of the river, or an ambulance cross the river to save someone’s life?”
Don’t imagine the Thames is not a significant barrier in west London just because it is narrower. Although there are no stretches as long as Blackwall/Woolwich to Dartford(about 12 miles) there are several stretches of five miles or more with no road crossings , e.g Richmond to Kingston or Hampton Court to Walton – even as close to central London as Chiswick to Putney if you are driving an HGV barred from Hammersmith Bridge. Moreover, many of the crossings are only one lane each way, and/or can only be reached through a congested town centre – the queues to get over Kingston Bridge often stretch right back to Hampton Court.
As for public transport, compare the number of rail crossings of the Thames upstream of Zone 1 with those downstream
Upstream:
Grosvenor Bridge (marginal, as Victoria is definitely in Zone 1!) West London Line, District Line (Wimbledon and Richmond branches), SWT (Barnes, Richmond and Kingston – the last two being the only rail crossings in London outside Zone 3)
Total 7
Downstream : Jubilee (3), ELL, DLR (Lewisham and Woolwich branches), with Crossrail to come
Total 7 (not counting the Dangleway or HS1)
Looking again at the possible Silvertown tunnel. If it has any legs then we should hope that it ends up as more than just an additional pair of tubes with some restrictions on what vehicles can use what lanes. The connection to the Lower Lea Crossing on the north side doesn’t look at all promising, especially as the south side connections are apparently to be to the Blackwall Tunnel approaches. Failing to connect directly to the A12 seems to be a way of creating problems rather than avoiding them.
Once built, there would be three decent sized tubes crossing the river in roughly the same position plus an awkward fourth tube that cannot take all traffic. Given an appropriate amount of road knitting (?!?) the new total crossing could possibly operate as a tidal system with two tunnels one way and one the other, with the oldest tunnel used for almost anything except ‘normal’ traffic.
It’s not impossible that the oldest tunnel could be opened up to cyclists. Also, mention has been made above of the number of commuter coaches from Kent crossing here. They should not be dismissed just because they are not trains and not London Buses. They are a valid form of public transport. It could well be appropriate that they be allowed through the oldest tunnel, possibly again with the direction changing morning and evening. Taxis and PHVs might have a valid claim to use it too.
Oh, if only the London box(es) had been built, there’d be somewhere for the traffic to go after crossing the new bridges :O
(I’ll get my coat from the cupboard – it’s way too warm to be needing it otherwise …)
@Fandroid: If the Silvertown tunnel has legs, it’ll be a bridge.
Mine’s on the peg next to Alison’s.
Actually, a Blackwall bridge was on the cards in the early 90s, before a certain large round structure occupied the land where it would have reached the south bank (and maybe before the rules on structures on airport flight paths changed?). This would have resulted in a Dartford-style multi-lane crossing that could have operated in the way you suggest.
The previous incarnation of the East London River Crossing emphasised its local-bridge-for-local-people intentions by charging a lower toll for local residents than for the general public.
Ian J
Define “local resident”?
The Boroughs that include the tunnel entrance, the next adjoining ones, especially since there are borough boundaries very close to both ends, too … (?)
What’s the definition on the Dartcharge
@ Purley Dweller
You get the discount if you live in the Dartford or Thurrock council areas.
If a crossing near Thamesmead had discounts for local people, then presumably ALL the crossings that charge (if tolling is brought in for the Blackwall tunnel as well) would then have to give a residents discount as well?
@GT: The discount area was reduced during the course of the public enquiry as modelling showed there would be too much traffic on the bridge approaches otherwise. From the public enquiry report:
Broadly, the discount area now proposed would include that part of Bexley north of Erith and the A206, the north eastern part of Greenwich, most of Newham, the southernmost part of Redbridge and almost all of Barking & Dagenham. Residents and businesses in those areas would be entitled, upon registration, to reduced tolls…
Tolls would be £3 peak and £2 off-peak for non-locals, £1 at all times for locals.
Will it be the same prices for Blackwall as well. If so that will put off the temptation to use Blackwall instead of Dartford unless the traffic on the M25 is really bad.
Many of the Kent-originating commuter coaches offer pick-ups from areas that are remote from railway stations. The Medway Towns extends up to around four miles to the south of the stations on the Chatham mainline, while settlements on the Isle of Grain are similarly remote from a railhead. Thus overall journey time from home to Canary Wharf is generally less by coach than the three part journey it would be if using mainline rail for the central leg.
Of note is that the market is growing of late, with the 50 or so coaches that used to come in from the Medway Towns and Grain around six years ago now somewhere nearer 60. A much smaller number from Maidstone is now supplanted by routes from Kings Hill (West Malling) and the Tunbridge Wells areas. Attempts from further east (eg Ashford) have failed however.
Further coach commuting could no doubt be encouraged if priority access was created through the Blackwall Tunnel (or on connecting links).
@man of kent
Interesting but perhaps not surprising that Canary Wharf, without easy SE outer commuter rail access except via London Bridge, features significantly in the coach offering. One wonders what the post-Crossrail situation might offer as rail-based competition.
@JR
Current morning peak service from the Medway Towns to Abbey Wood is all but non-existent from 0700 till after 0900, and of the earlier trains, after 0615 the remaining pair start only from Strood. Unless this changes, Medway commuters are still looking at a three part journey to reach Canary Wharf (possibly including newly announced route TL10).
@Man of Kent…..But won’t that change after CR opens by having more trains in the peak stop at Abbey Wood (as has happened to a certain extent at Lewisham and New Cross after the DLR and ELL were extended)?
And even more if the new Ebbsfleet people’s lobbying pays off & CR1 gets extended to Ebbsfleet/Gravesend?
@anonymously
I think you’ve misunderstood. No trains from the Medway Towns, or anywhere else, are passing through Abbey Wood non-stop. But between the 0654 and 0905 departures from Strood, trains from the Medway Towns to Dartford are then routed via Sidcup, not Woolwich. Any passengers for Abbey Wood or Woolwich must change at Gravesend or Dartford. (Indeed, as they run on the fast lines from Hither Green, they omit Lewisham as well)
Strood to Stratford International 28 minutes. Two changes to Canary Wharf.
Annual season Medway to London by Kings Ferry Coach: £2790.
Annual season Strood to London Bridge by train: £3692.
Not cheap these coaches, then!
Add to rail cost £650 for annual bus fare to rail station
In May 1993, I attended an exhibition for a dual two lane bridge at Blackwall following an alignment to the West of the O2. The land stills seems available from looking at Google earth. The bridge would take the through traffic from the A12 (formerly A102)and the tunnels left for local traffic. linking into the existing A102 dual carriageway South of the river.
The Jubilee line tunnels were shown on the plans as proposed so were allowed for.
Nothing ever came of it. I also went to various schemes for a crossing at Beckton over the years but too many vested interests seem to stop anything happening there.
Malcolm, Graham H, Anon 23
The coaches may not be a giveaway, but do represent a realistic trade off between bus into Chatham or Gillingham, South Eastern train (without guarantee of seat) and then an onward journey by DLR/LUL/bus or a walk across London Bridge for the saving of what becomes not an enormous amount of time, depending on your destination. Against this is the offer of a virtually door to door service from the many housing estates that lie to the south of the Medway Towns to Canary Wharf, E1 and EC3.
The fare that Malcolm quotes is from Kings Ferry who, as part of National Express, operate towards the top end of the scale. There are other companies who offer a fare of up to £500 per year less. Many of them offer wi-fi, USB charging points and, depending upon the company, up to three days free trial.
Whilst it is a case of horses for courses the competition of over half a dozen companies fighting for passengers from the Medway Towns, with more from the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells areas works very much in the travellers’ favour.
@James Bunting: & that’s how markets should work.
@James Bunting – thanks for that. Really not much has changed since the deregulation of the commuter coach market back in the late ’80s – the north Kent and the Windsor suburbs were the main niche markets then and they still seem – for obvious reasons – to be the natural coach markets. [At that time,ministers, especially the well known toadeating David Howell, egged on by No 10, expected a rush of coach competition to see off railway commuter services. Knowing this in advance,I commissioned some before and after research; when Howell asked me what had happened as a result of deregulation, I explained that the impact had been confined to a small number of housing estates away from easy access to stations. Howell replied “I don’t want that research,I want research that shows my policy is a success”. That was one of a number of Damascene moments that encouraged me to look for another career…]
While it is interesting to contemplate these folk of Kent (or Kentish folk if they live in Strood) sitting in their posh coaches, the point where we came into the discussion was the dogleg route through the Blackwall tunnel that they take. Obviously to Canary Wharf it is the most direct, to the city it is not, but my experience suggests that even disregarding the Wharf, it is the fastest route to, say, Monument. This may have implications for planned future crossings, inasmuch as such crossings may attract more journeys than simple lines on a map would suggest, by mechanisms like the Kentish dogleg.
A rail season ticket allows travel at any time of day, often by a choice of routes and to a choice of termini, and to any intermediate point on any of those routes. How often do the coaches run?
@timbeau – very much to the point -and a major limitation on the market segment that coaches can serve.
Timbeau’s point is one of many other factors which will be considered by someone choosing their commute. Some of them have been mentioned, and there are doubtless more. The individual commuter will choose the best one for their own circumstances.
The “market” can be skewed by government (or other collective) action. (And the market is not just rail versus coach, other modes are available). Fuel taxes, rail subsidies, road charges are all matters which can influence this market.
But Graham’s point remains, that long distance coaches have always been, and still are, something of a niche market, important to the relatively small number of people for whom they work out well, but unable (for a range of reasons) to make much of a dent in the crowds using the “big” carriers, which remain train and private car.
@timbeau…So in the AM peak between those times, all trains via Woolwich do not commence their journey any further east than Gravesend? Wouldn’t more through trains from the Medway Towns be routed via Woolwich after Abbey Wood CR opens?
I’m intrigued but unsurprised that this commuting coach market exists; I expect house prices are far more affordable the further away you are from London (and a train station, it would seem). I’ve never used the Blackwall Tunnel in the peaks (and have no desire to do so!), but I would imagine it would be chock-a-block at those times, and worse still if overheight vehicles attempting to use the old tunnel bring everything to a juddering halt. Even with the tolls/charge/tax (cross out as applicable depending on your views!), I’m surprised more of these don’t travel via the Dartford Crossing and A13. If this is due to the costs of the Dartford Crossing making such a route commercially unviable, then the earlier comments re. imposing a toll on any new crossings may mean that these coach operators just stick with their existing route!
Anonymously: I doubt if the Dartford Crossing charge makes much of an impact: with an account it is £2.63 per crossing (per coach, not per passenger!) for a 2-axle coach or £5.19 for a three-axle one. I suspect it’s about total journey time: yes the Blackwall tunnel has queues, but so does the A13.
Anonymously
The Blackwall is blocked N-bound in the AM, S-bound in the PM peaks.
@anonymously
It would be possible to extend some peak hour Woolwich line trains to start back at Gillingham (for example), but there is presumably a reason this is not already done. I would guess one reason would be that Medway services are already pretty full when they get to Dartford, so they can’t readily serve the south Thames-side communities as well and so are routed by the more direct route via Sidcup. Remember as well that in the peaks there are no services over the Charlton – Blackheath link and thus any Woolwich line train has to go via Greenwich, which in turn means it can’t go to Charing Cross!
There is a commercial point as well – SET would lose revenue if Medway passengers bale out at Abbey Wood, Woolwich or Greenwich for TfL services, instead of staying on all the way to Zone 1
It may be worth adding a few further considerations as to why coaches remain something of a niche market. As timbeau rightly points out, they offer relatively few journeys, especially after the end of the peak (which many coach operators seem to think is around 18.30). Yet- as all the evidence show – the evening peak is much more spread out than the morning one. There are good reasons for that – meetings run late, unexpected business crops up, people even wish to remain in Town after work for a drink or a night out. A service that cuts out after 18.00-19.00 is not much use to these people. Add in the usual need for coach travellers to reserve a seat, and the service is useful only for those who have entirely predictable travel patterns. Inevitably, these are staff who tend to be engaged in routine work* and who are probably the most price-sensitive market segment – it is also no coincidence that the coaches have done best in the areas where housing is cheaper.
@anonymously – I don’t often complain about language, but can we avoid the Americanism of “train station”? I realise I’m fighting a losing battle here but ….
*Even if they don’t go to the lengths of one HEO who used to work for me, who downed tools on the dot of 17.00, come what may, to the point where he would stop what he was writing in mid-sentence. He was moved to Ports pretty quickly.
Re Anon and Timbeau,
[A fair amount of overlap with the future service pattern discussion under the Bermondsey diveunder article]
Dartford is a real pinch point with 3 tracks to the West limiting the number of services that can run through Dartford and this has been causing issues since before WW2 (hence the loop Dartford avoiding services). The 4DD trains double deck trains were a proposed solution as was the 1950s platform lengthening programme (carriages were shorter then).
The current proposed solutions are more longer trains (but the 12 car electrification work got completed on the inner areas but the outer areas* have got delayed (till 2019) due to funding issues.)
The medium term solution is to extend CR to Gravesend (including Dartford area rebuild) and divert the semifasts from Gravesend on to Crossrail.
“Remember as well that in the peaks there are no services over the Charlton – Blackheath link and thus any Woolwich line train has to go via Greenwich, which in turn means it can’t go to Charing Cross!”
Completely wrong: There are 2 Gravesend/Gillingham – Charing Cross semi-fast routes:
1. via Dartford, Abbey Wood, Blackheath and Lewisham which ran this morning and will continue to do so after the August timetable changes. (and occasional ones diverted to Cannon Street till August via this route too)
2 . Via Sidcup and all stop east of New Eltham
(Strood /Gravesend semi fast to Cannon Street run via Greenwich and these might get just be converted to Thameslink in 2018 according to the latest proposals”)
*Gravesend – Medway Towns being top of the list delayed.
On Graham’s point of a fixed working day being required to make coaches a plausible option, it may be worth mentioning that an increasing number of workers have caring responsibilities which require them to leave even non-routine work promptly. Admittedly the vagaries of the homebound commute (particularly if it is as far as Medway) may still mess this up, but substitutes (grandparents etc) are more sympathetic to “the train was cancelled” than “the boss couldn’t wrap the meeting up in time”. Requiring unnecessary end-time flexibility from employees is liable to be seen as indirect discrimination, as rather more men than women may be able to comply.
@Malcolm – of course, although in my experience, even those with caring problems have a small amount of flexibility built in to to their schedules, which a coach service doesn’t.
However much these Kent coaches reflect a niche market and a particular sort of customer, they are still providing a public transport service. It seems as if the railways are not currently able to provide what these commuters want, whether it’s a starting point convenient to their homes or a ticket price that suits their budgets.
The only instance of the railway seriously attempting to invest to capture coach traffic is Chiltern’s extension of its services to Oxford. There happened to be an under-used line available, so that made sense. Is there anything in the Medway direction that would allow a similar plan there? I imagine that capacity into London makes things extremely difficult, and lowering fares would only work if the losses from existing commuters were more than balanced by the numbers transferring from coaches.
@ngh
“There are two Gravesend/Gillingham – Charing Cross semi-fast routes:
1. via Dartford, Abbey Wood, Blackheath and Lewisham which ran this morning and will continue to do so after the August timetable changes.”
What are the times of these services? – they don’t show up in the Journey Planner or Table 200 of the GBTT. Journey planner shows no direct trains from Woolwich Arsenal to Charing Cross between 0643 and 0841 (except via Slade Green!). There is an 0654 to Lewisham, which continues to Cannon Street
Both the GBTT and JP show all and services calling at Woolwich between 0700 and 0840 are routed via Lewisham. All peak hour services from east of Gravesend (other than HS1 of course) run via Sidcup.
I don’t call a service which has no arrivals at the London terminus between 0716 and 0919 a peak hour service. (Source:
So as I said, “in the peaks there are no services over the Charlton – Blackheath link and thus [in the absence of any services over that link] any Woolwich line train has to go via Greenwich”.
@Graham H
“@Graham H
“in my experience, even those with caring problems have a small amount of flexibility built in to their schedules”
Not much – I well remember the opprobrium I would earn from being even five minutes late collecting offspring from childminders/ after school clubs. Finely timed desk-to-school in 65 minutes for a 5:50 pickup, but something as minor as a stationary escalator, or the train leaving from platform 1 instead of platform 5, could make the difference between catching the right train and being 15 minutes late.
One of the big advantages of a workplace nursery was that the time-critical segment was much simpler, and under my own control. (And of course the extra “Quality Time” with them on the commute itself)
@fandroid
Apart from the isle of Grain branch and, just possibly, the LCDR branch to Gravesend West (part of which was used as the temporary link to HS1 before St Pancras opened) I can think of no under-used lines in the Medway area which might be used for more commuter services – nor do I think that the SE lines could cope with any more people.
Although Chiltern are extending to Oxford, I suspect most of the market for the new line will be better connections between Oxford and the Wycombe area, plus the park and ride market at Oxford Parkway. Oxford’s main station is much better placed for the City Centre and, at the London end, Paddington is better connected than Marylebone.
As far as I am aware, most coaches from Oxford only go to the West End (or that other big traffic attractor between Staines and Hounslow). For simple reasons of geography, coach travel from Oxford to the Isle of Dogs will never be as attractive as it is from Medway.
@fandroid – it’s a nice question as to whether it’s worth a rail operator’s while to go after the coach market – for the remote estates such as New Ash Green or Dedworth, a connecting bus would be possible, of course, but it would hardly be worthwhile to build major infrastructure (even commuter stations on existing lines that pass the door, as it were, are not cheap). As I say, the market segmentation between coach and rail is probably quite distinct, albeit with some overlap.
@timbeau – although it is unlikely that an employee’s conditioned hours will fit precisely within the interstices of a coach timetable. Perhaps more strategically, in the offices I have worked in, in both public and private sectors, the number of those who were constrained by a caring timetable was small. Whether this was or was not a source of discrimination is not perhaps relevant to the commuting argument.
Re timbeau,
Originally you said “peaks” (0901) then later you changed the goal posts “peak hour” (1123).
The peak hour services in the peak direction were some of the 5/6tph temporarily removed due to the London Bridge works, the services continue to run as previously in the counter peak direction at 2tph including during the peak hour. The evening service from CHX will improve in the August timetable.
According to table 212 of the GBTT, there are 7 trains departing Rochester between 07.30 & just gone 08.00, to a variety of destinations. Excepting those that go to St Pancras, the rest are ridiculously slow:
07.30 – Stratford Unintentional 08.00 (code SFA)
07.40 – VIC 08.42
07.43 – CHX 08.56
07.49 – VIC 08.39 – thus passing the earlier 07.40
07.52 – CST 08.40
07.58 – VIC 09.00
08.02 – SFA 08.30
Not great, is it?
But, where would one put extra services, especially once these reach either Kent House or the Dartford area?
[ Distances are to: Vic – 33.75; CHX – also 33.75; CST – probably 33 to 33.25 miles – work the trundle-rates out for yourselves … ]
And a train to VIC is useless for the City or the Wharf, isn’t it?
What are the loadings to Stratford-in-the-Hole from the Medway, I wonder? And the costs?
Graham says ” the number of those who were constrained by a caring timetable was small”
It may be still small, but my point was really that it is growing, and may be expected to go on growing. This may be one area where the past is not a perfect guide to the future. In a related trend, I think (but cannot prove) that there is also a trend towards rather more firmly fixed working hours related to a move away terms of service which are tacitly agreed towards a rather more formal approach, possibly influenced by legislation.
But this is all going off at a bit of a tangent.
@Greg
and of those trains, the 0743 Charing Cross train goes via Sidcup (as do the 0718 and 0816) and the 0726 and 0752 to Cannon Street are non-stop to London Bridge – presumably via the Chislehurst spurs – neither of which would enable a call at Abbey wood to be added easily.
@ngh
“Originally you said “peaks” then later you changed the goal posts “peak hour” (1123).
Slip of the keyboard – but there is indeed no service in the peak direction for nearly two hours in the middle of the peak
@ngh 1006 “which ran this morning and will continue to do so after the August timetable changes”
@ngh 1216 “The peak hour services in the peak direction were some of the 5/6tph temporarily removed due to the London Bridge works,”
These two statements seem to contradict each other, but I can confirm that table 200 does show that after the end of August a handful of morning peak trains will use the Charlton- Blackheath link, and a few direct trains from Strood or further east will go via Abbey Wood, although all but one of them will be routed via Greenwich, the one exception being the 0712 Gillingham to Charing Cross, calling Abbey Wood at 0803 and Lewisham at 0821)
So, to answer the original question (Anon 0303 yesterday)
“But won’t that change after CR opens by having more trains in the peak stop at Abbey Wood”
All trains through Abbey Wood already call there.
There will be more trains from the Medway Towns to Abbey Wood from August.
But it is unlikely any more can be added after that
Any additional trains from the Medway are likely to take a different route (Sidcup or Chiselhurst) as the Woolwich line generates a lot of local traffic which will not be able to board if the trains are full before they get to Dartford.
SET will not be keen to lose Isle of Dogs commuters to Crossrail – it would get more revenue if they continue to change at London Bridge for Canary Wharf.
Re Timbeau,
In august the service level through London Bridge will still be reduced by 5-6tph vs before the work just the swap from CHX to CST means changes to which services are reduced for the next 18 months. The picture should be better in 2018 again when all the temporary restrictions west of New Cross are removed and more regualr service pattern can resume.
“These two statements seem to contradict each other, but I can confirm…”
The first was talking about “peak” services the second about “peak hour” to reflect your change from peak to peak hour…
Everything I wrote was carefully checked with current and August TTs before commenting.
The basic Gravesend /Medway set up has been:
CST = via Abbey Wood + Greenwich 1B… or 2B.. identifier or via Chislehurst (fast to slow (CST) line swap at Parks Bridge Jn) 1G.. identifier
CHX via Abbey Wood + Lewisham 2A.. identifier or via Sidcup (not via LEW) 1D.. or 2D.. identifier.
I think everyone agrees that better Crossrail access won’t be good for SE revenue!
If they really wanted post 2018 they could slow the via Abbey Wood service to all stops inwards of Abbey Wood as it could be cheaper and quicker than currently for outer passengers to swap to CR at Abbey Wood then fill the train up again at the inner stops! This would then enable more services to run via Abbey Wood as it creates more paths…
@Fandroid/timbeau
‘Apart from the isle of Grain branch and, just possibly, the LCDR branch to Gravesend West….I can think of no under-used lines in the Medway area which might be used for more commuter services – nor do I think that the SE lines could cope with any more people.’
Er, but what about HS1 and Ebbsfleet International (aka Medway Parkway)? Or are the high-speed season tickets and parking charges too high for this to be financially feasible for most people?
timbeau
SET will not be keen to lose Isle of Dogs commuters to Crossrail – it would get more revenue if they continue to change at London Bridge for Canary Wharf.
So, post December 2018 are you expecting fewer trains via Abbey Wood & if SE can wangle it, none at all, other than all-station stoppers, in the AM peak?
Or would DfT step on that, or contrariwise, will TfL be running the SE local services by then – which would, of course, enable SE outer (so to speak) to continue to omit Abbey Wood stoppers?
Um.
@Graham H…lol. Just be thankful I didn’t use ‘Railroad Depot’ ?.
@Malcolm…But at least the A13 gets you a lot closer to Docklands and the City on a near-motorway standard route (albeit heavily speed restricted….but aren’t all radial dual-carriageway roads into London controlled by TfL like that?) without having to worry about running into a logjam where the A2 morphs into the A102, or worse still getting completely stuck if the tunnel is blocked. I have no idea what traffic is generally like on the A13 in the peaks, but I’m fairly confident it is not as bad as the Blackwall Tunnel route.
Traffic lights in Barking
A further issue with coach commuting instead of train/car is that you won’t get a refund for it being delayed/late. Indeed, anyone using a coach will probably have to pay the single/day return price occasionally because there are so few (or even just one) services each day.
Whilst the A13 coming into central London is slightly less awful than the queue for the Blackwall, there are also routine queues to get into the Dartford tunnel. Diverting the coaches via the Dartford crossings is not a panacea. Another reason for the commuter coaches to stick with the Blackwall is that (as they are scheduled operators) they can use bus lanes. At some times they pick up Tunnel Avenue – as used by the 108 bus – which has a “bus only” entry into the Blackwall – this can cut out almost a mile of the queue.
What I find interesting is that – whilst in general commuting by coach into London has a tiny modal share – it is not quite so tiny from the Medway area. Kings Ferry (and others) have a substantial commuter coach network, including multiple park and ride stops (equivalent to station car parks). Why does this niche exist here when it doesn’t exist on other routes into London? There is no equivalent commuter network from Essex, just across the Thames. Is it suppressed demand – diverted from overcrowded trains? Is it the general awfulness of SouthEastern in north Kent? (I suspect they manage to stay out of the headlines most of the time because GoViaThameslink are even less reliable)
@Island Dweller – I think you will find the answers to your question in some of the earlier posts on this thread. I hope you will forgive me if I simply summarise them as being that the coach services have their core base in those areas which are inconveniently remote from/are poorly served by the rail network (or train stations as Anonymously calls them) and which house large numbers of people with fixed working hours.
Island dweller: Any vehicle with more than 9 seats can use bus lanes (including, for instance, some preserved buses which may be registered as a large motor car). Except bus lanes with the word “local” added to the signs – these can only be used by the specific operator(s) mentioned in the relevant byelaws – in London this is typically TfL buses only. Being “a scheduled operator” may help with other regulations, but of itself it makes no difference to bus lane use.
The above is my understanding, but bus lane rules are notoriously subject to interpretation and argument – and internet searches tend to lead into a pit of confusion, special cases and myths. So please would no-one send me their fines to pay if my understanding turns out to be different from that of some particular enforcer!
60 coaches at, say 45 seats per coach, means 2700 passengers per day. Were these all from one or two places it would be a great attraction for a TOC.
As it is, they are spread over/collected from a wide area so I can’t see how rail could even consider this as competition. It’s a completely different market and in London commuter terms a small one.
@GrahamH. Is it that simple? The Medway towns are not remote from rail networks, and I doubt the demographics of the commuting workforce is that different between north Kent and south Essex. But for some reason the coach operators have a niche in Kent (I agree a small one) that doesn’t exit on other commuter corridors.
Might just be historical accident.
@Malcolm. I should have been more precise in what I said about Tunnel Avenue. It’s not a bus lane per se. The exit from that road to the Blackwall tunnel is protected by a “buses only” sign – which I think is much more restrictive than just vehicles with more than 9 seats.
@Island Dweller
A good query about suppressed demand and/or poor linkages.
If you think of the West London equivalent, consider travel abilities before and after the arrival of the Overground at Clapham Junction – before was difficult if destinations were not on the main Southern/SW radials, after, yes a change to undertake, but much easier – albeit (shades of SE) not to/from SW outer trains at Clapham! In the other direction, it’s still poor to useless between the GWML catchments and destinations in south London. Have to wait for OOC, for that to improve.
And certainly doesn’t help nowadays in E/SE London, if you have to change intermediately as well (the Dartford/Gravesend effect as discussed above). A Crossrail to Ebbsfleet/Gravesend might make a real difference.
GH talks of niche catchments, they may well be in total journey time and interchange inconvenience – possibly some season ticket price sensitivity as well if only moderate incomes – some comparable modelling needed on that. Above all a weak rail offer seems to open up the scope for coaches, but in the ca.25 mile band that’s rather hard to find elsewhere! (see the commuting times mapped north of the River from that zone – to Z1 edge – in the HS2 Part 3 article; most of those places have some attractive fast rail runs to Z1).
Back to the main article. The obvious follow-on question is how much the river crossing now or new is/will be used really by Central London or city fringe commuting traffic. Coaches can only be a marginal % or so of the vehicle volume although maybe the passengers equate to 5+% of total travellers?
Generally Central London is accepted as a 80-90% public transport access zone, in terms of modal split, as is Canary Wharf. Therefore the logic is that the cross-river usage is a mix of local travel, or middle/outer London flows – on the Occam’s razor basis that most travel (75% or so) has a 5 mile radius of origin and destination.
In which case, having longer distance public transport using some of that road space isn’t a problem, just that there isn’t enough total road space currently across the river for those putative 5 mile flows ! Of course, as soon as you add capacity in a situation of probable suppressed demand, guess what will happen…
Malcom
Any vehicle with more than 9 seats can use bus lanes (including, for instance, some preserved buses which may be registered as a large motor car)
Are you REALLY SURE about that?
Because my 1996 LWB Land-Rover has 10 passenger seats.
I thought I wasn’t a “Bus” unless I was registred “for hire” so to speak….
Greg,
These things can easily and more helpfully be looked up by yourself rather than querying them. In fact Malcolm is very nearly correct. See page 32 of Know your traffic signs.
Note that a local bus must actually be in service. When I worked on the buses many, many years ago there were notices in the garage then warning drivers NOT to drive in bus lanes unless actually in service because they would be committing an offence and liable to be booked.
Greg: Pedantic recommends looking it up. This has the (implied) proviso that you can recongnize whether a site giving “information” on the matter is authentic, or is just repeating an error from elsewhere. This is not always straightforward. (But the same applies to human sources of information, or printed ones, come to that). I think the “gov.uk” in the link which Pedantic gives is quite a good omen, though, even if not completely infallible.
No, I am not completely sure, which is why I made it clear that I would pay no-one’s fines who relied on my information. But probably your Land-Rover is technically allowed in a bus lane, even though for most other purposes it is not a bus. There are varying definitions of what is a bus for different purposes. But I would not recommend that you actually drive in a bus lane, however entitled you may be in theory, because the hassle of arguing the case against whoever wants to fine you would just not be worth it. Fortunately, as has been mentioned, vehicles entitled to use bus lanes are never obliged to do so.
Using a bus stop is a different matter, and you are pretty certainly not entitled to do that. As is proceeding in a road which says “buses only”, which again has different criteria. Or carrying passengers for reward, which not only requires the vehicle to be a bus, but also requires the operator to be suitably licenced.
A further point about entitlement. Even though an empty bus is allowed in a bus lane, common courtesy would suggest that they should only actually do so when it will make a difference to a real bus service (e.g. they are proceeding empty to the start of said real service). If the bus is empty because it is being moved from one garage to another, or tested, or going to a rally, or whatever, then in my opinion it should stay out of bus lanes, even though it would not be an offence to use them. The same would go for a landrover: the letter of the law might allow it in, but the spirit would suggest not.
(For legal purposes, the words “bus” and “coach” are completely interchangeable, so I understand).
Just to broaden this little diversion a tad, remember, too, that there are bus lanes in London on which taxis, let alone minicabs, are forbidden to travel.
BTW, I find it hard to agree with Malcolm’s last point about empty buses in bus lanes. If the bus lane is less full than the adjacent lane of other traffic, then surely it makes sense for the bus to use the lane to which it is entitled, thereby to free up adjacent carriageway space for other users.
Where bus-related restrictions are monitored by ANPR systems, the monitoring centre needs to be able to identify buses (however defined) in order not to fine them. I believe this is the case for the congestion charge zone (which also allows electric cars, taxis, minicabs and local residents to be registered for zero or reduced rates. I seem to recall a Land Rover owner having mentiomed this – itau even have been Greg!
@Malcolm – but bus and coach *services* are quite different animals in law. As I understand it, the status of bus lanes relates to the *services* that use them, not the type of vehicle. Were it not so, as others have pointed out, any bus lane could be used by any vehicle classified as a bus or coach regardless of its journey purpose. (For example, private hire coaches could then be entitled to use bus lanes).
Oxford would be the other example of a significant commuter coach flow to London, with two operators, season tickets, and more frequent services than the train. They also sell tickets from Hillingdon to central London in competition with the Tube.
@Graham Feakins
Moving the empty bus into the bus lane wouldn’t actually produce any time savings for anyone except the bus driver. The capacity restraint on any section of road is usually the stop line at the set of traffic lights the bus lane leads up to. This usually produces a green light less than 50% of the time so that the capacity across the stop line is less than 50% of the capacity of the link leading up to it. A properly designed bus lane finishes back from the stop line leaving a reservoir of road space open to all traffic which can just be cleared in one cycle of the traffic lights. This means the bus using the bus lane never has to wait for more than one cycle at a red light. The general traffic not using the bus lane is not actually delayed because it has unrestricted access into the reservoir. If the bus lane takes up one lane of a two lane road, the traffic in the remaining lane moves twice as fast to get into the reservoir as it would if both lanes were open for general traffic.
@Graham H: Are you sure? From the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002:
(2) “Bus lane” in the signs referred to in paragraph (1) means a traffic lane reserved for—
(a) motor vehicles constructed or adapted to carry more than 8 passengers (exclusive of the driver);
(b) local buses not so constructed or adapted; and
(c) pedal cycles and taxis where indicated on the sign shown in diagram 958 or 959 and pedal cycles where indicated on the sign shown in diagram 960, 962.2, 963.2 or 1048.1.
The specific provision for buses that can carry fewer than 8 passengers is intriguing.
Ian J
Oxford is also a special case.
Paddington is a LONG way (in inner-London terms) from the main centres of employment & the commuter trains are at the best utterly packed 6-car units.
Three soon-to-be-implemented improvements will shaft the Oxford bus operators (I predict)
1: Chiltern to Marylebone, opening up N Oxford etc to London flows. Dec 2016
2: CR1, meaning Oxford commuters can reach all significant employment areas with one cross-platform interchange (probably @ Reading) May/Dec 2019?
3: Oxford electrification, dependant upon Oxford-station rebuild, so 2020/2021. ……
@Ian J – thank you for that – so Greg’s Land Rover could use a bus lane, then. BTW what are we therefore to make of those bus lane signs that say eg “TfL buses only”? Different sort of bus lane not covered by the Traffic Signs regs?
Any plate on any mandatory traffic sign can ease or further restrict prohibitions so it is not an issue.
By the way, you would probably have to be careful with the number of seats in a vehicle designed for off-road use. It is not the number of seats as such but the number that comply with the regulations for the purposes of declaring it is an “x seater” for Road Traffic Regulations purposes. Drivers have been seriously caught out by that (and so have car dealers when people have argued they were mis-sold a product and demanded their full money back).
@PoP – so everyone is right? The basic mandatory sign is defined in terms of the type of vehicle allowed but that can then be qualified in terms of services, operators or different vehicle types?
Graham H: Yes, everyone is right. The one little snag in the “qualification” category is the word “local”. That means a lot, effectively stipulating that the bus must actually be a bus, and must be operated by one of a (locally defined) small number of operators, and must be in service. Quite a heavy load for one little word. And I don’t know how you find out which operator applies to a specific bus lane. For the vehicle driver, the best rule is probably the orgasm one – if you have to ask then the answer is no.
General private hire vehicles are definitely allowed in “global” bus lanes. They are frequently full of coaches taking pupils to and from school, for instance.
Quinlet’s point about vehicles moving twice as fast, and reservoirs before lights, is quite correct in theory. Sometimes the practice does not quite live up to it, with complications like loading vehicles, and traffic does not anyway behave exactly like an incompressible fluid – it has its own rather strange rules. But seeing a bus lane as a means to “jump the queue” to some extent, means that if a bus in a bus lane moves up six places in the queue, six other vehicles have each been moved back one place. Hence my (perhaps idealistic) idea that vehicles not “really” entitled to be there (according to me) should stay with the other traffic.
PoP says “Any plate on any mandatory traffic sign can ease or further restrict prohibitions”.
I have always wondered whether a second “except …” plate is to be read as being an exception to the first exception, or a further restriction on the original prohibition. For instance a weight restriction, with plates reading “Except for access” and “Except local buses”. Does it mean that local buses over the stipulated weight are not allowed in even if they require access, or does it mean that they are allowed in regardless of whether they require access?
(“Except for access” is another can of worms. Access to what, exactly? Premises in the road with the sign, obviously, but what about other roads to which that road leads?).
@Graham H
“what are we therefore to make of those bus lane signs that say eg “TfL buses only”? ”
I think this is a variant (whether officially sanctioned or not) of the “local” limitation.
As I understand it, a coach is a bus for construction and use purposes, but “stage carriage bus” is a use to which in theory any vehicle may be put – (and have certain exemptions from laws such as provision of seat belts for all).
@Ian J
“The specific provision for buses that can carry fewer than 8 passengers is intriguing.”
Some hail and ride schemes have used very small vehicles, but were technically “stage carriages” buses.
Here is one [in his next comment. LBM]
@Greg
“2. Chiltern to Marylebone, opening up N Oxford etc to London flows. Dec 2016”
October 2015, actually
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/oxford-parkway-new-station-opening-marks-first-major-new-link-with-london-in-100-years-a6708746.html
My first link should have been this one
https://www.flickr.com/photos/28083135@N06/8233775768
(and the sentence immediately before it shouldn’t have been there)
Buses of less than 8 seats? Perhaps that legislation was written to include “Post Buses”, which would typically have had less than 8 seats for passengers. Though I don’t think there are any Post Buses still operating in the UK. Even when they did operate, I doubt any of them ever operated anywhere with bus lanes!
Another one. Cumbria council use to sponsor a once per week local “bus service” between Gosforth and Wasdale Head – operated by the Gosforth village taxi. It’s also fallen by the wayside – victim of budget cuts.
@Malcolm “For legal purposes, the words “bus” and “coach” are completely interchangeable, so I understand”
Isn’t there a distinction that buses can (and do) legally carry standing passengers, whereas on coach services passengers must have a seat? Or is that just a convention rather than a legal distinction?
@Malcolm – 21 June 2016 at 10:13
And I don’t know how you find out which operator applies to a specific bus lane.
For each ‘bus lane there should be a TRO [Traffic Regulation Order] or TMO [Traffic Management Order] creating a ‘bus lane, which should specify the location, times and permitted vehicles.
More on the bus-only entrance to the Blackwall Tunnel from Tunnel Avenue. I clearly have not been paying enough attention. The streetview image shows that it’s protected by a “No Entry – Except buses” sign. Still leaves open the puzzle on how “bus” is defined.
The photo also shows barriers which can block the lane. I use the 108 bus through here from time to time and never seen this barrier actually in use (though that may be poor observation skills!).
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4945801,0.0050123,3a,75y,326.31h,86.49t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sv8gpLyziuQgeWhN6jxeACQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1
John U.K.
Indeed and not just for bus lanes. So you have to presume that the restrictive rule applies to you unless it clearly doesn’t or you know the exact rules as determined by the TRO/TMO. Presumably, if necessary, this could clarify “except for access” but this normally is taken to mean when an alternative practical route is not possible to reach an affected premises.
We also have all the usual complications of which one are exempt for emergency service vehicles and under what circumstances which is one reason why [No Entry] except for … is discouraged except where absolutely necessary.
PoP says (re “except for access”) “when an alternative practical route is not possible to reach an affected premises.”
Quite. That just about covers it. But there are still difficulties when, to reach the premises, one must pass such a sign, but one has a choice of which sign to pass – there is a whole “protected” area. Spirit of the law suggests you should use the access point which is nearest to the premises, but I suspect the letter of the law would let you use any of them. But it can be difficult when you are about a mile from the premises, you see a sign, but you don’t know where the other end is. When this happened to me on one occasion, I stopped and fortunately was able to phone the destination and get advice. Another time I could not, and after squeezing through some very tight gaps, I found that the premises was just past the “end of” sign (i.e. in the permitted region). I was not “caught”.
@Island Dweller
The photo also shows barriers which can block the lane.
Some local bus lanes and access routes are enforced by bollards operated by transponders on the vehicles permitted to use them. Hammersmith Bridge has such a system, to enforce the prohibition on other large vehicles crossing the bridge (there is a separate 7′ width-restricted lane to allow cars through)
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4907474,-0.227758,3a,37.5y,198.12h,84t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s4fCaO1yXVPOjv2PUljbdrw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Buses are of course considerably lighter than other vehicles of the same size, but even so only single deckers are now allowed – and even they are required to only go one at a time – . (Real Routemasters, being made of aluminium, are lighter than most single deckers and were also allowed for many years)
(And for those who think the river is only a barrier in east London, note that there is no other crossing for nearly three miles upstream or downstream
Note the “local” branding on the buses-only sign.
@Ian J and Graham H
The TSRGD 2002 quoted by Ian above are actual legislation, and say that the default position is that
“(2) “Bus lane” …………. means a traffic lane reserved for—
(a) motor vehicles constructed or adapted to carry more than 8 passengers (exclusive of the driver);
(b) local buses not so constructed or adapted”
(a) covers any vehicle meeting that physical description, whatever it is being used for at the time
(b) covers any vehicle being used as a bus (presumably on a service licenced by the traffic commissioners), however constructed
Signage may add other vehicles – taxis, cycles (motor or otherwise), HGVs, access to premises or left turns, as required. They may also limit access to only one of categories (a) and (b) above (e.g by addition of the word “local”)
Looking at Island Dweller’s picture, I think those barriers are for use when the tunnel itself is closed – there are similar barriers on the main carriageway
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4965832,0.0021195,3a,75y,317.91h,86.9t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sPrvimQFPQSddJafV2-r_hg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Here’s why you shouldn’t try to tailgate authorised vehicles over the bollards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCSsope5vOA
timbeau says “b) covers any vehicle being used as a bus (presumably on a service licenced by the traffic commissioners), however constructed”
That would be a commonsense understanding. However, for that to be the meaning, the wording of (b) (which you quote: “local buses not so constructed or adapted”) would have had to have had the words “whether or” added in front of the “not”. (Please do not attempt to parse “would have had to have had” on an empty stomach).
For clarification:
“Local Bus” on a road sign is defined as “a public service vehicle used for the provision of a local service not being an excursion or tour” in the newly-updated 2016 version of the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions (basically a PSV on a registered local bus route, or in London, a TfL service or one operating under a London Service Permit). Local does not therefore mean one from the immediate vicinity.
“Bus”, in the same regulations, is broadly as described by Malcolm@2216, though for the purposes of the PSV Accessibility Regulations (which conforms with a definition in Council Directive 70/156/EEC) a bus can carry both seated and standing passengers.
“Coach”, from PSVAR, is a vehicle that cannot carry standing passengers. (i.e. Island Dweller @1121 was correct).
(There is another definition of coach, in respect of a vehicle that needs to have a speed limiter, but I can’t remember which piece of legislation sets these rules).
So as long as commuter coaches are registered as local bus services or running under an LSP (which is needed to stop on the street in the GLA area), they can use both “bus” and “local bus” lanes, but not “Tfl buses only” restrictions.
IslandDweller asks “Or is that just a convention rather than a legal distinction?”.
Sort of. Any bus/coach can carry as many standing passengers as are specified on a notice inside. Typically vehicles specifying zero would be what are commonly called coaches, but also smallish minibuses, and there may be others.
(I think the word “coach” in North America conjures up stagecoaches only).
@Malcolm
“However, for that to be the meaning, the wording of (b) (which you quote: “local buses not so constructed or adapted”) would have had to have had the words “whether or” added in front of the “not”.”
You are, of course, right. It is the other way round. Vehicles which qualify both by construction and use are covered by para (a), not by para (b)
@MoK
I understand the question of speed limiters and tachographs is not a separate definition but that certain categories of “bus”, essentially those used on stage work, do not need such apparatus.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/drivers-hours-passenger-vehicles/1-eu-and-aetr-rules-on-drivers-hours
Basically a route of up to 50km, with a timetable and frequent stops, and regsisterd with the Traffic Commissioners, is exempt.
@Malcolm
The official carrying capacity of a bus is determined by its tare weight – the gross vehicle weight of a two axle bus must not exceed 18 tonnes. Subtract the tare weight and divide by 68kg (pre 2010 the regulations said 65kg) tells you the number of people the vehicle is allowed to carry. Subtract the number of seats (and the conductor, if
there is one) to give the maximum standing capacity.
https://www.boriswatch.co.uk/2012/10/05/q-whats-big-fat-and-eats-money-a-the-new-bus-for-london/
These rules lead to the counter-intuitive result that the “short” 10.1m Routemaster will be legally permitted to carry more passengers than the standard “long” (11.3m) one because, being shorter, it is also lighter.
http://clondoner92.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/revealed-short-new-routemaster-is.html
@ Malcolm
“I think the word “coach” in North America conjures up stagecoaches only”
There is also “coach class”
Surely the issue about commuter coaches (kent / oxford) as well as trains stopping or not at Abbey Wood is about the “market” and how it responds changes? Clearly there is a niche market for North Kent / Medway commuting patterns that cannot be met by local buses / “kiss and ride” / trains working in combination. I suspect that the huge overcrowding on South Eastern services, relatively poor performance and a historic “ugh” type feeling towards rail commuting from Kent is what has helped sustain the market. Remember that the dire days of LT&S into Fenchurch St allowed a very frequent and well used X1 express coach service to be run – at one point between Southend and Reading with interworking between Reading Transport and Southend Transport. When the rail services eventually improved and got away from their “misery” tag then the coach service was killed off.
I think anyone expecting the Oxford coach services to die in the next few years is living in cloud cuckoo land. There are several markets served by those coaches that rail has not been able to tackle for years – a huge tourist market, a massive student travel market, a sizeable commuter market. I’ve used the Oxford Tube and it was extremely pleasant and comfortable. I understand peak workings offer breakfast and newspapers. You don’t get that rattling along in a Class 166. Stagecoach and Go Ahead have enough experience in that market to know how to keep it going. They refresh / replace their vehicles regularly. Almost all coaches are accessible for wheelchair passengers, there are attractive fares, high frequencies, 24 hour services and clever stop locations such as near to Westfield at Shepherds Bush. I’m sorry but the TOCs will have to pull off a miracle never seen before to compete with all of that. BR and the TOCs have had 30+ years to kill off the Oxford coaches and haven’t managed it yet. Last time I got a train to Oxford I was shocked to see a not very nice DMU turn up – a complete let down to the HST I’d used a few years before. Sorry Greg but I don’t see a few wires and newish EMUs making much difference.
Turning to Abbey Wood I think we will see extremely quickly how passenger journeys change – provided Crossrail services are reliable in those crucial first few months. If they are then Abbey Wood will see massive demand – I’d not be astonished to see Commuter coaches drop people there for onward connections. Whoever is running the service through Abbey Wood – and who knows what that service will be given the prospect of stopping services being devolved – will have a considerable challenge on their hands to react to changing passenger demands. For all the cries and “written in blood” demands from Kent politicians about “no changes” to stopping patterns / frequencies / fares they may well find themselves out of phase with what their constituents decide to do / demand when faced with a better choice of services.
timbeau: Lots of interesting stuff there. I think the 50 km limit on tacho-free buses is the cause of the fairly common “perhaps-type” route splits which we see many of in Kent – for instance Dover to Eastbourne, timetabled as a through route, but has two different route numbers, but through fares, and the notation “passengers may be required to change buses at (in this case) Lydd”. In my small sample of trips on this route, on 50% of the journeys we did change, and on the other one we all rode straight through. Seems like a bit of a fiddle to me, in several senses of the word.
WW
Sorry Greg but I don’t see a few wires and newish EMUs making much difference.
But I do – the units will be new & hopefully reliable & faster & not crowded & going through to the City & the Wharf ….
We shall have to wait & see, won’t we?
My model is the one you quote, about decent LTS services killing the Southend coaches
As for Abbey Wood, I think some coach services will continue (quite possibly going to Abbey Wood), until CR1 is extended to Gravesend ….
Come to that, & reverting to our original topic (!) how much relief to the existing river-crossings will CR1 make in general?
timbeau: with regard to the standing passengers being governed by weight, I am led to suppose that for coaches with luggage space, some adjustment would be made, in theory, depending on the volume of this space. But in any case the calculation you mention will give an upper limit to the standing capacity, but there must be also other considerations, or else 3-axle coaches (or short 2-axle ones) would end up with some standing passengers allowed, whereas I don’t think they ever do.
The 50km limit explains the through connections symbol on long distance stagecoach services where it says connections are guaranteed and Ousden gers stay on the vehicle. I had always assumed it was a crew change point but the fact that they are quite close together is down to the 30 mile rule. Some of the Devon services have 3 or 4 legs.
That would be passengers stay on the vehicle!
@ Malcolm
I don’t think coaches (as distinct from stage carriage services – buses) are allowed to carry more passengers than there are seats.
Greg
Crossrail won’t be going to Oxford, so a change at Paddington will still be necessary. And I’m not sure what rolling stock is now earmarked for Oxford, but I think it’s hand-me-downs from Thameslink.
@ Greg – I don’t think the LT&S line is comparable with London – Oxford. Frequencies aren’t comparable. We know the GWML is chock full of trains with little prospect of much frequency enhancement from places like Oxford. I don’t see Oxford commuters switching to Crossrail at Reading. OK some class 387s might well be a step up from class 165s but they’re not a HST. They also don’t match the comfort of the double deck coaches on the Oxford Tube. I also don’t see fares being competitive with coaches because they’ll have to be hiked to “fund” the electrification and other investment on the GWML – we all know the government’s mantra about this. We also have to get through umpteen years worth of disruption to actually get the line to Oxford electrified and is there any agreement on a revised station design yet? Oxford’s vocal and educated electorate strikes again! None of that makes the immediate prospect for rail very rosy because we know what long term disruption does to usage levels.
We’ll see what Chiltern can do but isn’t their service also just Class 168s albeit in slightly better shape than FGW’s trains?
I shall stop now because we have divergent views and we’re quite a long way from east london river crossings!
Timbeau says “I don’t think coaches (as distinct from stage carriage services – buses) are allowed to carry more passengers than there are seats.”
Here we are back in the confusion between coach/bus as type of vehicle (little if any difference legally) and coachServices/busServices which do indeed have very different rules. But there are some (generally small) operators who use a standard-looking coach on a stage carriage service, either regularly (in between private hires) or when their “bus” is broken. I can see they might want to allow standing passengers on these, but I think they would only be able to do this if the “coach” was approved for n (not zero) standing passengers.
(I have quite a few times travelled standing in a coach on a private hire to my employer who provided, at that time, free rides to/from work. But I am fairly sure the tolerance of standing was a bit of private helpfulness by the drivers, who did not know, or pretended not to know, the rules. Not saying where or when, but it was a long time ago).
@Malcolm 1029
There is no legal definition of the term “access”, so any restriction which is qualified as ‘except for access’ is totally devoid of meaning, legally. “Access” can be for any reason including ‘because I wanted to go there’. In particular, for restrictions such as weight limits ‘except for access’, these were (and are) solely to assuage local public opinion without having any practical impact whatsoever. Those councils actually wanting to make a difference would use ‘except for loading’, instead, as “loading” does have a legal definition.
quinlet: When there is no legal definition of a word, magistrates and judges are expected to invent one, based on the notion of “what parliament intended”. Agreed this is unsatisfactory, but it means that a law using such a word is not totally vacuous. I would expect repeated use of a road as a cut-through by vehicles outside the weight limit to be prosecuted (and defences of ‘I wanted to go there’ to be rejected). I do agree though that some (maybe many) such signs are mainly put up as a something (as in “something must be done about…”).
Loading does have a legal definition (which happens to include unloading!), but it does not include (for instance) taking an empty vehicle onto your own property, keeping it there overnight, and driving off in the morning, which would strike me as a “good” form of access.
@WW
Chiltern also operate some trains with Class 68 locos and mk 3 coaches (similar to HST coaches)
@Malcolm
That depends. If there is a weight restriction ‘except for access’ I would presume that this is to reduce the number of vehicles above that weight to the absolute minimum needed, usually, for environmental reasons. (If there was a structural need there would be no exceptions). If there are environmental reasons to limit heavy vehicles I would expect that taking an empty vehicle onto your own property and then driving it off again the next day, also empty, would not be welcome.
There are, of course, other ways of achieving the same end which might allow access to an operating base, if that is what is needed. In Windsor, for example, they use a permit restriction and then only give permits to the vehicles based at the contentious location.
Timbeau
Or Reading or Ealing Bdy ….. (?)
Oxford
Is not going to be sorted until both electrified & station rebuilt
RE Malcolm, Greg, Timbeau, Island Dweller and others. As the owner of a preserved 1959 coach (Malcolm: taxation class is Historic Vehicle rather than Large Motor Car) my experience is that bus lanes in particular are a minefield. Malcolm is right (20 June 2016 at 22:06) that generally any vehicle with more than 9 seats can use bus lanes, including Greg’s LWB LR. Beware, however, of local variations – it is up to the local council what the relevant Order may say. When I took my PCV test out of Yeading both my instructor and the examiner made sure that I stayed out of the ‘bus and taxi only’ lanes, despite driving a 52 seater because here the requirement was that the bus had to be operating a scheduled service so a private hire coach would be similarly banned.
To go off on a further tangent, my reading of the current licensing regulations – https://www.gov.uk/old-driving-licence-categories – is that to drive Greg’s LR you would need a D1 licence rather than a normal car licence as the vehicle has more than 8 seats plus the driver – unless you have Grandfather Rights, dependent on when you took your test.
Littlejohn
I passed my test in 1963
But, because I’m over 70 I now have to jump through regulatory hoops about eyesight & health, every 3 years, because I’m driving a “bus”.
LWB Land-Rovers in particular seem to exist in a class of their own & definitely confuse almost all the regulation-setters
Greg,
You are lucky – I have to renew my PCV and LGV licences every year. Strictly I don’t need my PCV licence to drive my coach but I think it is the responsible thing to do to make sure I still meet the PCV standards. It’s an irritating expense though on top of all the other costs of preservation.
Well the geography of Oxford is unique. The rivers and certain preserved fields make for a stretched out town with long fingers of development. While Oxfords station is reasonably central many of it’s residential neighbourhoods are a long way from it and central Oxford is aggressively traffic controlled making cross town movements ‘interesting’. Chilterns new service is all about accessing the North Oxford market and it’s surrounding commuter towns and suburbs, with a nice new station at a big park and ride site miles from the traffic hell of the bypass and the town centre. For people on the North Side of town it will be quicker to get the slightly slower train to Marylebone than deal central Oxford.
The coach services also have a geographic advantage on the South Eastern side of Oxford, which is it’s most populated quarter and contains many hospitals , research centres and the business parks. The Oxford tube also has a rather swish little waiting room at one of park and ride sites in SE Oxford as well, where several local bus routes interchange as well. Along with the other reasons already mentioned mean their is a good chance them surviving whatever is done to the train service.
@rational plan
“Well the geography of Oxford is unique. The rivers …….make for a stretched out town with long fingers of development.”
Indeed access across the river can be a problem in Oxford as it is in London – but although it is the same river I think we have strayed quite a way off-topic.
@timbeau
I believe rational plan’s point is more that the river and road geography of Oxford goes a long way to explain why the Oxford Tube coach service to London is so popular despite the frequent and high capacity rail services from several rail stations in Oxford. Which follows the line of discussion about coach travel to and from London.
LBM @ 1744
“despite the frequent and high capacity rail services from several rail stations in Oxford”
There are only two stations that serve the city – Oxford (GWR), on the west side and Oxford Parkway (Chiltern) on the north side. The general offering from both is two per hour. There are two companies offering a coach service, Oxford Bus Co (X90) and Oxford Tube. Between them they offer 129 departures per day Monday to Friday. As WW points out above, their offer includes free wifi and charging points.
Whilst some may switch to rail as and when improvements arrive, the city centre to city centre coach offer is more attractive to the majority of their customers. Oxford X90 will even pick you up in Trafalgar Square after an evening out in London.
Although a different market to the Medway commuter coaches discussed above the future of both seems unlikely to be supplanted by rail.
@Greg 0856
Oxford commuters are unlikely to want to change at Reading to what will, after all, be a stopping service with standee accommodation and no toilets. And most Oxford services don’t call at Ealing Broadway.
Timbeau 22 June 2016 at 22:36
“And most Oxford services don’t call at Ealing Broadway.”
That could change once electrification and Elizabeth Line are open. Especially during evenings and weekends.
Lord Dawlish’s “private hire coaches could then be entitled to use bus lanes” – they already are! I used to drive a minibus for local elderly groups and could quite happily and legally use bus lanes *except* for the ones which had the word “local” on them (even though I was often more ‘local’ than TfL ones, it actually means “fare-charging stage buses of the current area”). And whilst bus and coach may be different in law (presumably about stage-to-stage and end-to-end?) they are still multi-occupancy vehicles, so entitled to use the lanes.Nominally yes, you are required to be “in service” to use it, meaning with pax on board, but I’ve never seen it enforced.
My car, however, is not entitled to use a bus lane, hence why I once got fined 🙁
btw, re Hammersmith Bridge, I recall regularly having to exit a bus on the south side to walk across and get back on it on the north side.
Although I’d never want to commute by coach I understand there are daily services to/from Dunstable via the A5. Given it has no rail services this probably makes sense.
I’ve also discovered (the hard way) that private cars are not able to ‘unload’ or ‘load’.
I have always found it bemusing that the Oxford coach services are so well patronised (friends of mine living there would rarely, if ever, get the train into London, preferring the coach services) and are able to compete successfully with the rail alternative. The reasons stated in the above comments are all true, but I would also point out that the A40 Westway helps as well in this regard by providing a segregated, relatively direct route between the main A40 radial (which ISTR is exclusively dual carriageway within the London area from the end of the M40) and the very edge of the central area. Also (despite its higher speed), the railway takes a more meandering route roughly following the line of the River Thames compared to the relatively direct M40 corridor, which probably doesn’t help.
Compare and contrast with the situation in Cambridge (a very similar market to Oxford in terms of tourist/student/commuter travel), where the NEx coach service is only able to compete on price and its more convenient drop-off/pick-up point in the heart of the city (Cambridge’s railway station is notorious for its location well away from the city centre), but not much else. Having used it once, I can state that it is *considerably* slower than the fast train to KX (not helped by the awkward dog leg of a route it takes at the end of the M11), and I think it might be less frequent than the Oxford equivalents as well.
Hammersmith Bridge got severely bent out of shape by a *hugely* overweight lorry at some point in the early 80s and was pedestrian only at one point; they later brought back single decker buses IIRC. I was living in Barnes at the time, commuting to Holborn.
Months of disruption to a secondary river crossing and horrid congestion in Hammersmith particularly.
Oxford: bus v train: I’ve converted to bus on grounds of cost, convenience and comfort. A40/M40 is segregated dual from East Acton to the Headington roundabout. Timing from East Acton to Marble Arch horribly variable, so not for the time-poor.
@AlisonW
Private cars are, indeed, allowed to load and unload, but the definition is slightly different. The full legal decisions can be found here:
http://www.londontribunals.gov.uk/eat/key-cases?field_subjects_value=Loading%2FUnloading+exemptions&combine=
but, in brief, to qualify for the loading/unloading exemption you have to show that the vehicle was necessary for the activity taking place. For a private individual that usually means that a load has to be more than one person can reasonably carry in one trip. For commercial operations the use of a vehicle may be necessary for commercial reasons even if the load is smaller. Loading and unloading includes time for checking and for taking the load (or picking it up) from a reasonable location, not just on the kerb side, but it doesn’t include things like payment for goods (so shopping is out, but collecting pre-paid shopping may be in).
As a result of the way parking tickets are fought over, the details of the law have become ferociously complicated, but the ‘key cases’ page of the London Tribunals website is a good reference.
@Old Buccaneer – wasn’t the IRA bomb a reason for Hammersmith Bridge closure as well? (The 2000 bomb, not the 1939 bomb…)
@Reynolds 953: might well have been but Hammersmith Bridge wasn’t on my daily commute in 2000. I was thinking of 1984.
I recall that the 1984 closure was the result of two over-weight lorries crossing in quick succession, unfortunately spaced by a resonant frequency of the bridge, resulting in the cables passing over the south tower getting dislodged from their bearings
I presume leading my shuffling mother from a loading bay to her optician appointment before moving the car elsewhere counts too. I certainly couldn’t carry her!
To return to river crossings, the problems aren’t just at peak with able-bodied commuters able to divert to public transport. The Blackwall Tunnel gets blocked on Saturday too, with cars full of children, plants, luggage, the disabled and grannies. There are lots of journeys where the 2 sides of the river aren’t identical, ‘cos of where people live, and you’d not want to increase the distrust of those “Narf/Sawf of the River”
@John B
No, sadly your mother doesn’t count as ‘goods’. But if she is disabled she is allowed as much time as needed to get out of the car but only to a reasonably safe place.
Looks like traffic pressures are starting to affect those Kent commuter coach services.
http://www.busandcoach.com/news/articles/2016/chalkwell-scales-back-commuter-services-because-of-london-traffic-issues/
Interesting comment about TfL’s attitude towards commuter coaches!
@Walthamstow Writer
Some of that could be described as PR spin. Some sources suggest that Chalkwell has failed to update its offering, and this seems to be underlined in that having introduced one coach from Maidstone, Kings Ferry is adding a second from next week (www.thekingsferry.co.uk/commuter-services/maidstone-london).
So perhaps more market competition than an inherent problem with coach operation.
Do I assume that the promised future article in this series about River Crossings will deal with the Mayor’s announcement today about a range of amended / new proposals for crossing the river in East London? Better to ask if there is an embargo before posting any links.
I see I am already too late.
By when?
Just briefly re-opening the discussion – re the small niche of Kent commuter coaches. Well, the niche has just got smaller. It used to be two operators – Kings Ferry and Chalkwell. Chalkwell are pulling out of the market entirely this month, leaving only Kings Ferry.
Chalkwell are not publicly saying why they’ve withdrawn (at least, not as far as I’ve seen). They have been in quite a few social media arguments recently about the behaviour of their commuter coach drivers. Specifically (1) coaches using Castle Baynard St to avoid queues on Upper Thames Street (to the vocal fury of some cyclists on that route) – Castle Baynard St does not have any bus stops and is legally part of the cycle superhighway – it is banned to motor traffic “except for access” (that sign being one of the “minefields” discussed earlier in this thread) and (2) perceived “rat running” (reported by Wapping residents groups) when Chalkwell coaches used narrow streets in Wapping to avoid queues on The Highway.
Re Islanddweller,
Redwing Coaches still operate from various stops in Gravesham to London
@Island Dweller
I guess you mean Narrow Street in Wapping, rather than, generically, narrow streets.
@Quinlet: Narrow Street is in Limehouse, he does mean the “narrow streets” of Wapping… During the construction of the cycle superhighway this was particularly bad, Gernet St, Wapping Lane and Wapping High Street are OK for the 100 bus and the D3, but not the coaches…
@SouthernHeights. Yes, precisely.
I stand corrected
Interesting little complication in the Silvertown Tunnel construction. The Secretary of State’s Planning Act decision had been due, however the DfT have published a written statement today reporting the decision is being delayed by a further month:
Will be interesting to see how the air pollution requirements affect this & future road/tunnel schemes. Would any scheme that increased traffic go against the pollution plan or would schemes try and show that improved traffic flow reduces pollution (well, at least until induced demand catches up)?
I used to commute from rural Essex to Bermondsey, more or less in the rush hour.
Heaven help me. I recall one wonderful day when an Italian artic got jammed in the Northbound Rotherhithe (Sir Leslie Plummer used to live in this village, and did the Lord of the Manor thing with knobs on) and Tower Bridge went up for some tall ships thing. Everything went solid both north and south of the River and no body moved much for three and half hours, more in some areas. I kid you not. Get on with it fellers!, you’ve been far too long dithering.
@ J Stafford-Baker
So the Silvertown Tunnel will provide some resilience for the very limited number of occasions when an HGV gets stuck in Rotherhithe Tunnel at a time when Tower Bridge is open. The cost of this will be to import extra congestion onto the Limehouse Link Tunnel and all the roads around Canning Town every single day. The traffic that fills the extra cross river capacity has got to go somewhere! Hope you think it’s worth it.
But on the other hand, this is to paid for by tolling both crossings. Fees could be adjusted to control traffic levels. Capacity is rather limited in Woolwich, a few weeks of gridlock there would soon teach people not to bother for looking at a free crossing there.
The HGV stuck in the Rotherhithe tunnel angle is a complete red herring. The Rotherhithe has had a 2metre width restriction for many years – Lorries are physically unable to get in now. The implementation of the strict width restriction is one of the reasons the bus service through that tunnel stopped.
Yes and that restriction has been in place for ages now…
The last bus running through the tunnel was the 395 operated using a Mercedes Sprinter, that could get through the width restriction (but only just). It was cancelled at the end of April 2006.
Does anyone know yet when tolls begin on the Blackwall to pay for the construction of the Silvertown?
https://www.constructionenquirer.com/2019/05/30/preferred-bidder-confirmed-for-1bn-silvertown-tunnel/
London transport chiefs have today announced that the Silvertown Tunnel will open in 2025, as it names the consortium picked to build the £1bn road.
The initial tolling period is 25 years (?) but it also mentions TfL paying the operator. Is TfL collecting the tolls not the consortium?
Looking at the background over past decade with consultations.
There is also a potential to manage diverted flows by ammending the 1885 Act for the FREE Woolwich Ferry.
“There would certainly be no tolling on the Blackwall Tunnel before the proposed Silvertown Crossing was completed.”
– MICHELE DIX, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF PLANNING, TFL (2012)
‘The tunnel will be funded under the private finance initiative (PFI), where an operator will build and maintain the tunnel and be paid back through tolls, the suggested charge is £2 for cars, £2.50 for two-axle goods vehicles and £5 for Heavy Goods Vehicles. The toll could vary depending on the direction of travel, the time of day, and the day of the week.’ (2011)
‘The tolls are projected to be around £3 in peak hours and £1 off-peak for cars with 50% discounts to residents of three boroughs.’ (2017)
‘Tolls will be matched with the tolls on the crossing at Dartford.
The “Bus” Lane will be for HGVs height restricted at Blackwall.’ (Roads.org)
Is it not now PFI so a straight loan with TfL as the collector?
From an email TfL sent out yesterday, it still sounds like the now rather discredited PFI…
“As you responded to our consultation, I am writing to inform you that the Riverlinx consortium, comprising of Aberdeen Standard Investments, BAM PPP PGGM, Cintra, Macquarie Capital and SK Engineering & Construction, has been nominated as the preferred bidder to the build the Silvertown Tunnel….
…Following an extensive tender process, the Riverlinx consortium have now been nominated as preferred bidder to complete detailed design and build the Silvertown Tunnel. The project will be procured through a Design, Build, Finance and Maintain contract, with payments by TfL starting only once the tunnel is open and available for use. TfL will also be able to reduce payments should the tunnel not meet certain key standards, such as availability for use by traffic and physical condition.
Throughout the summer, the consortium will work to confirm financial arrangements with lenders in respect to the project and set up the supply chain. Only once these are all agreed will TfL award them the contract for the project.”
it would certainly make sense for TfL to receive the toll income and then pay the operator, rather than the operator receiving the toll income. With the former, TfL can determine the tolls in the context of the overall transport strategy and needs for London. However, with the latter, the operator would tend towards a tolling regime designed to maximise revenue, whatever the other impacts. Having said that, if TfL were genuinely interested in the Silvertown Tunnel and its place within the context of London’s transport strategy then they probably wouldn’t have been building it in the first place.
@Mikey C and others – what distinguishes a PFI scheme from a conventional DBFM contract is the risks being transferred. In the case of the tunnel, any operational risks and any revenue risks remain with TfL. It would also seem that the asset being created here never leaves TfL control. It wouldn’t therefore qualify as a PFI scheme – important for its classification as public expenditure.
Scrapping the Rotherhithe Crossing seems sensible for £600m. Having the world’s longest and tallest vertical lift bridge is a recipe for ‘stuck’ photo ops. The assessment is now for the Thames Clippers that can call at opposite piers for the pedestrians and cyclists.
Assuming they bother to run the service.
The cyclists crossing service at Dartford is reported to be in a sorry state, with infrequent operating hours.
To expand on Alex comment. Thames Clippers have partnered with Beckett Rankine to propose a new design of ferry, specifically designed so that cyclists can ride on / off. Some similar designs exist in Amsterdam. This ferry would require new landing stages, especially on the Rotherhithe side where currently access to the existing ferry means walking through the Hilton/Doubletree hotel.
There are a few photos of the proposed ferry design circulating on Twitter but capturing the image and posting it here has defeated me – sorry.
@Bob
According to the official website the cycle crossing service at Dartford runs every day, on demand, 19 hours a day.
https://www.gov.uk/dartford-crossing-bike
@IslandDweller
The ferry design (£30m) has been given an award
https://beckettrankine.com/rotherhithe-ferry-wins-nce100-impact-in-transport-award/
“Three all electric cycle-on cycle-off ferries using the river current to charge the ferry operating between dedicated berths with a novel auto-docking system to provide quick and safe mooring without ropes.”
The same company is involved with the Thames Barrier bridge
https://beckettrankine.com/thames-barrier-bridge/
Consultancy seems lucrative – Heidi Alexander said ongoing costs of around £800,000 per month were going into planning the lift bridge.
@Timbeau / Bob – 60-90 minute meal breaks for the shuttle driver require pre-planning
3am to 9am
10:30am to 2pm
3pm to 9pm
10:30pm to 2am
There’s no service outside these times.
SEE ALSO
Diamond Geezer on this very subject a little closer in, between Rotherhithe & Canary Wharf
@IslandDweller – those photos of the cycle ferry design (floating greenhouse) are now appearing in print
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/exclusive-first-look-rotherhithe-ferry-replace-shelved-600m-bridge-25-06-2019/
Perhaps they could copy this dutch design:
https://twitter.com/Philippe_Peray/status/1143393164918755329
https://853.london/2019/11/07/sadiq-khan-admits-20m-woolwich-ferry-vessels-arent-good-enough/
A pretty dismal service much of the time since the new ferries entered service, for one reason or another. And the new docking system is still very slow
One major mistake ( I think ) was that someone, or some official body, tried to be too clever.
The previous services always had three boats – two in service & one a “spare” usually under maintenance … a very good idea for such a time-critical & intensive service.
Presumably under the mantra of : “These are electric & modern & we won’t need old-fashioned spares” … someone was sold minus one pup, if you see what I mean ….
Is there any more background info on this part : “there are basic problems in how they dock on to one side of the river compared to the other”
I had not noticed any different provision or difficulty.
A tfl press release today about the proposed new ferry.
https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2020/march/tfl-starts-design-work-for-turn-up-and-go-ferry-between-rotherhithe-and-canary-wharf
I don’t today’s document tells us much beyond what was in the 2019 press release.
This isn’t the first press release to be slightly economical with the actualite, or perhaps just creative. The document references the new Hackney to Isle of Dogs cycle improvements, but doesn’t mention that those improvements end north of where the proposed pier would be – it’s proved politically impossible to agree how to improve cycle provision at the ghastly Westferry Circus junction.
The release also mentions that the ferry would cope with cargo bikes and bikes adapted for those of reduced mobility. However, Canary Wharf group have installed metal chicanes on the river path on their estate. These chicanes block any user of a cargo bike or one adapted for person of reduced mobility. So they’ll be able to cross the river on the new ferry, then be stuck….