Why did Sadiq Khan build a giant road tunnel?
Plus: The continuing battle between London's councils and the mayor over who should run London — and more red paint attacks.
The last time a London leader opened a road tunnel under the Thames he proudly cut a ribbon in front of a cheering crowd and heralded its construction as a sign of economic growth that would reduce congestion.
The year was 1967 and Desmond Plummer, the Conservative boss of the Greater London Council, did his best to entertain the media as he operated a bulldozer with a remote control at the opening ceremony of the second Blackwall tunnel.
“The project looks to the future,” declared the clipped tones of the Pathé newsreader, who described with excitement how 40,000 vehicles a day would have a faster link from London to the continent, speaking optimistically of the idea that the UK could soon join a European trading bloc.
Public transport was out of fashion, cars were the future, and London was planning to build a network of motorways across the capital — including one major road through Covent Garden. Plummer even had his name carved in stone above the entrance to the tunnel, where drivers can spot it today while queuing on their way through the notoriously congested crossing that links the Greenwich peninsula to the north of the Thames.
Don’t expect to see Sadiq Khan leading such a big ceremony, with or without a remote-controlled bulldozer, when the new £2bn Silvertown tunnel formally opens on Monday morning.
The mayor, who has put reducing pollution and promoting public transport at the centre of his policy platform, is in the awkward position of being the man who authorised one of London’s biggest road construction projects in a generation. How did Khan end up here — at a time when the city is still waiting to start work on the Bakerloo line extension and Crossrail 2?
Scroll down to read more.
“War between gangsters” continues as the capital’s red paint gangs hit Red Lobster.
After London Centric published its latest update on the triad-linked “red paint” gangs last week, a reader in the comments said that yet another identical attack had taken place on Uxbridge Road, west London, hours earlier.
When our reporter visited the scene they found the Red Lobster restaurant covered in paint, the latest innocent victim caught up in the apparent gang war involving Chinese organised crime groups operating seemingly operating an intimidation campaign across the capital.
CCTV footage from the Red Lobster restaurant caught a man, armed with what appears to be a hammer in his belt, with no face covering and in full view of passing traffic, graffitiing the pavement with the word “brothel” at around 3.30am. The restaurant’s manager told London Centric that he had spoken to the man loitering on an earlier occasion and described him as “Chinese”.
In the aftermath of the attack, a group of women left the flat looking “scared for their lives”, according to multiple accounts by local residents that are supported by CCTV footage reviewed by London Centric.
The Met police took no interest in the case, despite the impact on the women in the property, according to the residents. “They don’t care,” said a Red Lobster worker, as they cleared up the damage to their property, adding that an officer had told him that it was a “war between the area’s gangsters”. Another local shopworker, whose grown-up children live in the targeted apartment block, said that the police told residents they “haven’t got enough manpower” to investigate.
Walthamstow MP Stella Creasy, whose constituents have been affected by many of the red paint attacks, told London Centric she had been contacted by people across the country who have been caught up in similar incidents. She wants ministers and the police to take the issue seriously and not just as an isolated local matter.
Westminster vs Westminster: The battle for the soul of central London.
London Centric’s exclusive about the desire by the capital’s councils to share power with Sadiq Khan started a big debate, including in the article’s comments section.
The Financial Times’ Stephen Bush wrote about why he believes the Greater Manchester-style model won’t work in the capital and described the story as an example of the schism in London’s Labour Party: “The government badly needs to clarify what it thinks about this issue if it wants to get the devolution revolution Keir Starmer talks about.”
(Bush also called this outlet an “excellent newsletter”, so a cheque is in the post.)
It’s fair to say City Hall weren’t exactly enthusiastic about the idea of limiting the mayor’s powers. By coincidence, the following day it was announced that chancellor Rachel Reeves would give Khan the power to overrule London’s councils on licensing issues. The idea is that this will encourage later opening and more alfresco dining in the name of economic growth — essentially prioritising the majority of Londoners’ nights out over the smaller number of Londoners who live near late night venues.
Or, to put it another way, it’s another attempt by the national Westminster government to limit the powers of the local Westminster council over what central London should look and feel like. The big question is which version of this is more democratic.
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Sound of Silvertown: Why did Sadiq Khan give his backing to a giant road tunnel?
By Jim Waterson and Rachel Rees
Sadiq Khan will not be taking part in any major ceremony when the new £2.2bn Silvertown tunnel opens on Monday, according to City Hall sources, although he is expected to be pictured on a zero-emissions bus going through the new crossing.
For a mayor who has made clean air a centrepiece of his time in office it’s perhaps strange to find him presiding over the opening of a giant road tunnel. It’s even more uncomfortable given his pledge to make London a net zero city by 2030, which requires a rapid cut in the miles driven on the capital’s roads. Then there’s the facts that Transport for London has abandoned plans for a nearby cycling bridge from Rotherhithe to Canary Wharf and the mayor backed out of a potential London-wide road charging scheme.
As a result Monday’s lowkey launch of the Silvertown tunnel marks an odd conclusion for a major project that was first proposed during Ken Livingstone’s mayoralty, developed into a firm plan by Boris Johnson, and given the final go-ahead by Khan.
“I completely understand why, on the face of it, the idea of building a road tunnel is anathema to anyone who cares about cleaning up our air,” Khan wrote in ‘Breathe’, his 2023 climate policy memoir. But the 0.9 mile (1.4km) Silvertown tunnel, he asserted in the book, “is part of the solution, not the problem”.
The “problem” that needs fixing is the two existing parallel Blackwall tunnels. They form the most easterly fixed road crossing on the Thames within the boundaries of Greater London. Like much of London’s transport infrastructure, they were built in a different era and are now overloaded, with lengthy queues at peak time.
The first Blackwall tunnel, opened in 1897, was originally for pedestrians and horse-drawn vehicles, leading to the mythical claim that it has sharp bends to stop the animals bolting at the sight of light. Even with the addition of a second tunnel in 1967 (the ventilation tower of which gives the O2 Arena a distinctive circular gap in its roof) Transport for London says that the twin crossings simply cannot cope with the transport needs of the capital. Large lorries, breakdowns and collisions force the tunnels to close over 700 times a year, according to TfL estimates.
The mayor’s argument is that Silvertown’s four lanes of traffic will mean “faster, more reliable journey times” and transform lives and economic prospects for people in the east of the city. This will, the argument goes, improve air quality by reducing the number of stationary vehicles belching out fumes on the existing Blackwall tunnel approach roads. The expectation is that cross-river journey times will be reduced by 20 minutes at peak periods, while also providing a relief route when other crossings are closed.
The implicit case is that, in an imperfect world, there are going to need to be compromises that involve prioritising economic growth. In 2016, during his first mayoral election campaign, Khan made noises about reconsidering the case for the crossing and suggested a toll road could be considered “tax on east and south east Londoners”. Yet once in office he quickly acquiesced following briefings from TfL.
Khan has said he ordered a series of significant changes to make the tunnel greener after inheriting the project from Johnson, such as reserving a lane for buses and introducing an “innovative free cycle-shuttle service” because bicycles are banned from the new crossing.
The tunnel’s opponents argue that the bus lane and cycle service are greenwashing. The number of bus services expected to use the special lane has been cut substantially since the early planning stage amid doubts over the level of demand, the bus lane will be shared with heavy goods vehicles, and the cycle shuttle cannot carry the growing fleet of cargo bikes that increasingly carry out home deliveries in the capital.
Dominic Leggett, a campaigner with the Stop the Silvertown Tunnel Coalition, said that the tunnel will create “a lot more congestion, a lot more traffic, a lot more pollution, and no more transit reliability”. He described the economic and environmental case for the crossing as “essentially a fiction”.
His argument is that road projects just create more traffic through the principle of induced demand. This is the concept that when a vehicle journey becomes easier and faster it simply encourages more people to drive and the old level of congestion returns.
There is also the issue that existing Blackwall tunnel commuters will find themselves charged tolls from Monday onwards, ending more than a century of free crossings. Fees will be charged for the Blackwall and Silvertown crossings in both directions between 6am and 10pm. A car journey will cost £4 in rush hour, while lorries will be charged up to £10. Discounts have been introduced for some local residents, businesses, and charities but take-up has been very low.
Leggett insisted the need to introduce the tolls indicated Silvertown would not fulfil its stated objectives: “They’re trying to sell this tunnel as something that reduces traffic, reduces congestion, reduces pollution, but at the same time they’re having to introduce a toll to control it.”
Part of the reason that the tunnel has been built while other TfL projects continue to linger on the drawing board is that it has been financed using private funds, with investors from around the world putting up the money in return for healthy returns over the next 25 years. By contrast, public transport projects such as the Bakerloo line extension and Crossrail 2 are expected to rely on substantial funding from central government, which is harder to obtain.
Karin Tearle, another campaigner against the new tunnel, claimed that Silvertown’s ability to carry larger lorries which are restricted in the Blackwall tunnel would “add to already high levels of pollution” in the local area. A particular complaint is that there will be no tolls after 10pm, leading to the suggestion that TfL is incentivising HGVs to pass through the capital in the middle of the night.
A spokesperson for haulage trade association Logistics UK insisted HGV movements through central London are already heavily restricted when people are asleep. Chris Yarsley said it is consumer desire for home deliveries that results in goods vehicles criss-crossing the capital’s roads, with no other option available in the majority of cases: “Freight logistics are generally serving a demand from private consumers and there is no public transport alternative.”
Regardless, Khan’s opponents smell a political weakness when it comes to Silvertown. Caroline Russell, the leader of the Greens in the London Assembly, called it a “project that nobody in London has shown any real enthusiasm for”.
On Monday the mayor will be watching to see if Londoners embrace the new crossing — or will perhaps be hoping that voters forget about it altogether.
"His argument is that road projects just create more traffic through the principle of induced demand. This is the concept that when a vehicle journey becomes easier and faster it simply encourages more people to drive and the old level of congestion returns."
The problem with this idea is that you could also use it to justify demolishing the existing tunnels. All the traffic that goes through it is just induced demand after all.
More seriously, cars and roads have negative externalities - if you build and build and build, the negatives start to outweigh the positives (like allowing people to travel). Shouting "induced demand!" whenever anyone tries to build a road doesn't tell you if you're anywhere near the point at which that happens. Given how hard it is to build infrastructure in the UK, how much the population has grown, and that there are notoriously few crossings in East London, it's fairly likely that the positives of Silvertown outweigh the negatives.
That said, I do sympathise with people who live nearby
‘Caroline Russell, the leader of the Greens in the London Assembly, called it a “project that nobody in London has shown any real enthusiasm for”. ‘
I know plenty of people who live in London who are enthusiastic about the new tunnel. It’s needed.