Blackwall Tunnel
The
Blackwall Tunnel is the name given to a pair of road
tunnels underneath the
River Thames in east
London, linking the
London Borough of Greenwich with the
London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The southern entrances are just west of the
Millennium Dome on the
Greenwich Peninsula; the northern portal lies just south of the A13 in
Blackwall.
The tunnel crossing is a key link between north and south sides of the river and forms part of a key route into central London from south-east London and
Kent. The southern approach takes traffic from the A2 trunk route (for some years, the section north of the A2 Rochester Way Relief Road was regarded as a
motorway (the A102M); however, this reverted back to being the A102 in September 1999 when the opening of the A12 north of the tunnel prompted a rationalisation of the area's road numbering systems).
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The northern ventilation towers for the new Blackwall tunnel. (February 2006) |
The western tunnel was built at the end of the
19th century, while the other was added some 70 years later.
The older western tunnel, designed by Sir
Alexander Binnie and built by S Pearson & Sons for
London County Council (although originally commissioned by the
Metropolitan Board of Works) at a cost of £1.4 million, was opened by the
Prince of Wales on
22 May 1897. It was then the longest underwater tunnel in the world at 4,410 feet (1,344 m) long. It took six years to construct, using
tunnelling shield and
compressed air techniques (shield pioneer
James Henry Greathead was a consultant; Sir
Joseph Bazalgette was also involved in the original planning of the project), and seven people died in the process. To clear the site in Greenwich, more than 600 houses had to be demolished, including one reputedly once owned by Sir
Walter Raleigh.
Today the western bore is only used for north-bound traffic (and is not accessible to vehicles taller than 4 m). The southern portal features a striking gateway built of red brick. The tunnel itself has several sharp bends. Some suggest these were built so that horses would not bolt once they saw daylight (motor vehicles were rare in 1897), though the bends may also have been created so that the tunnel avoided the foundations of other structures; another theory suggests the bends avoided tunnelling through a
Black Death burial ground. The tunnel carries two lanes of traffic, though higher vehicles need to keep to the left-hand lane so that they do not hit the tunnel's inner lining.
The newer, eastern, tunnel, opened on
2 August 1967, is much wider, usable by vehicles up to 4.72 m and has no sharp corners — very much designed for
20th century road traffic. Its distinctive ventilation towers (right) were designed in 1961-2 by
Terry Farrell when he was working as an architect for the
London County Council. The northern pair stand at
Blackwall, while the southern are now contained within the
Millennium Dome. The towers were Grade II listed in 2000.
The Blackwall Tunnel is a notorious traffic bottleneck. Long tailbacks form in the morning
rush hour on weekdays as traffic heads north from SE London and Kent towards central London. The transport authorities therefore try to increase flows by opening one lane of the eastern tunnel to northbound traffic for two hours; this, of course, means there is only one lane for southbound traffic so the northern approaches quickly become jammed each morning. Unfortunately, the western tunnel is not suitable to operate a similar two-way flow in the evening, so the northern approaches are frequently even more congested in the late afternoon and early evening.
Street maps of London periodically show a third Blackwall Tunnel as proposed for construction, though this does not appear in the latest edition of the London
A-Z.
The nearest alternative crossings are the
Rotherhithe Tunnel three miles (5 km) to the west or the
Woolwich Ferry two miles (3 km) to the east.
The tunnels do not allow pedestrians, but a bus route (
London Buses route 108) operates through the tunnel. When the service is not running, the nearest pedestrian crossings of the river are the
Woolwich foot tunnel adjacent to the Woolwich Ferry (see above) and the
Greenwich foot tunnel about two miles (3 km) to the west. However, there is
Jubilee Line tube service from
North Greenwich tube station (
TfL) to
Canning Town station on the east and
Canary Wharf tube station on the west, and the
Docklands Light Railway also passes underneath the Thames between
Island Gardens at the southernmost point of the
Isle of Dogs, and
Cutty Sark in the centre of
Greenwich.
*
UK Roads Portal (Links to information about the UK road network)
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The ventilation towers (from the Terry Farrell practice's site)
