Thames Crossing Proposals

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Bob
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Thames Crossing Proposals

Post by Bob »

Had the Thames Archway tunnel project from Rotherhithe to Limehouse been completed, is it known whether the tunnel would been more suited for railway or car usage?

Additionally while it seems there were on and off plans for a crossing at Gallions Reach to the southern side of the Thames since Ringway 2 or earlier, am interested to know whether there were any proposals to build a direct crossing in place of the Woolwich Ferry linking the A117 with the A2204 (albeit one that does not inconvenience shipping)?
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Re: Thames Crossing Proposals

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Bob wrote:Had the Thames Archway tunnel project from Rotherhithe to Limehouse been completed, is it known whether the tunnel would been more suited for railway or car usage?
The short answer to this question is neither. The Act of Parliament was granted in 1805 long before either railways or cars were in general use. The original plan involved pedestrians and horse drawn traffic although with Richard Trevithick being involved its likely he would have proposed some form of steam traction quite possibly using a stationary engine and cable haulage. The problem for all railways at the time was actually making the rails themselves. This was before the Bessemer and Open Hearth process allowed mass production of steel rail. Most railways used short lengths of cast iron rails mounted on stone blocks. They proved very problematic for steam engines as the weight tended to break the rails. It was the 1820's before I section cast iron rails in cast iron chairs with wooden sleepers made heavy locomotive drawn trains practical. I suspect it would have looked more like an even smaller bore Rotherhithe tunnel than a modern crossing and at best would have used stationary engines at each end of the tunnel with clutch and cable haulage similar to the original Glasgow Metro. Most likely it would have been similar to the Thames tunnel built by Brunel and used mainly by pedestrians.
Bob wrote: Additionally while it seems there were on and off plans for a crossing at Gallions Reach to the southern side of the Thames since Ringway 2 or earlier, am interested to know whether there were any proposals to build a direct crossing in place of the Woolwich Ferry linking the A117 with the A2204 (albeit one that does not inconvenience shipping)?
There has been talk of an east London River Crossing since the 1970's but the only serious proposal I am aware of was the Thames Gateway Bridge downstream from Woolwich near Becton. The problem with all these projects is what do you do with the traffic once it is south of the river ? You need a proper South Circular Road before even thinking about another Thames crossing in my humble opinion.
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Re: Thames Crossing Proposals

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KeithW wrote:
There has been talk of an east London River Crossing since the 1970's but the only serious proposal I am aware of was the Thames Gateway Bridge downstream from Woolwich near Becton. The problem with all these projects is what do you do with the traffic once it is south of the river ? You need a proper South Circular Road before even thinking about another Thames crossing in my humble opinion.
A full proper South Circular isn't needed, what is needed is a decent connection to the A2.

The previous planned 70s/80s route would have gone through Oxleas Wood, so was unacceptable environmentally, but no alternative has been found. The later Thames Gateway bridge proposal stopped on the A2016, so would have filled the area with traffic trying to get to the A2.

It's a shame, as a proper bridge connecting to the A2 would take away much of the traffic going through the Blackwall Tunnel and on the A12 going through Bow.
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Re: Thames Crossing Proposals

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How would the Thames Gateway route through Oxleas Wood have linked to the South Circular / A2 had it been approved, do any maps exist regarding this proposal?

Is a bridge completely out of the question where the Woolwich Ferry crossing is currently located or were such plans actually considered at one point?
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Re: Thames Crossing Proposals

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Bob wrote:How would the Thames Gateway route through Oxleas Wood have linked to the South Circular / A2 had it been approved, do any maps exist regarding this proposal?
Here's something on flickr: http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5143/567 ... 2c18f6.jpg I'm not sure how accurate these proposals are.

There was also an A-Z showing it. I think I've got it at home so I'll try and remember to dig it out. ping me a pm if (when ) I forget.

Here is an earlier one that doesn't but might be of interest to you: https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/ind ... _-_178.jpg

Is a bridge completely out of the question where the Woolwich Ferry crossing is currently located or were such plans actually considered at one point?
It looks like this 1937/8 map shows such a thing: https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/maps/ind ... 56,0.06523,

but these days it is in the wrong place to be considered.
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Re: Thames Crossing Proposals

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c2R wrote:
Bob wrote:How would the Thames Gateway route through Oxleas Wood have linked to the South Circular / A2 had it been approved, do any maps exist regarding this proposal?
Here's something on flickr: http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5143/567 ... 2c18f6.jpg I'm not sure how accurate these proposals are.

There was also an A-Z showing it. I think I've got it at home so I'll try and remember to dig it out. ping me a pm if (when ) I forget.

Here is an earlier one that doesn't but might be of interest to you: https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/ind ... _-_178.jpg

Is a bridge completely out of the question where the Woolwich Ferry crossing is currently located or were such plans actually considered at one point?
It looks like this 1937/8 map shows such a thing: https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/maps/ind ... 56,0.06523,

but these days it is in the wrong place to be considered.
Thanks for the links, when you get a chance can you look through the A-Z showing the scheme?

Was the late-30s Crossing proposal at Woolwich to be a tunnel or a bridge? Understand there are more suitable schemes available today, just find the idea of a Woolwich Ferry operating at a location more suitable for a tunnel / bridge crossing (even a small scale one compared with the Thames Gateway route) to be rather peculiar.
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Re: Thames Crossing Proposals

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Bob wrote: Was the late-30s Crossing proposal at Woolwich to be a tunnel or a bridge? Understand there are more suitable schemes available today, just find the idea of a Woolwich Ferry operating at a location more suitable for a tunnel / bridge crossing (even a small scale one compared with the Thames Gateway route) to be rather peculiar.
Looking at the map I'd suspect a tunnel. the bends on the southern side look to avoid the hill and curve back towards the river to avoid an enormous steep incline.

The problem with building a bridge in the early part of the 20th century would have been the difficulty in doing so - tall ships still needed to get up the Thames, so a low bridge would have been out - it would have either needed to be a high bridge (difficult given the docks and buildings on the flat northern side, or an opening bridge - which given it is quite wide there with strong tides may also have been difficult to construct - particularly given it was before current materials and construction methods were available.
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Re: Thames Crossing Proposals

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c2R wrote:
Bob wrote: Was the late-30s Crossing proposal at Woolwich to be a tunnel or a bridge? Understand there are more suitable schemes available today, just find the idea of a Woolwich Ferry operating at a location more suitable for a tunnel / bridge crossing (even a small scale one compared with the Thames Gateway route) to be rather peculiar.
Looking at the map I'd suspect a tunnel. the bends on the southern side look to avoid the hill and curve back towards the river to avoid an enormous steep incline.

The problem with building a bridge in the early part of the 20th century would have been the difficulty in doing so - tall ships still needed to get up the Thames, so a low bridge would have been out - it would have either needed to be a high bridge (difficult given the docks and buildings on the flat northern side, or an opening bridge - which given it is quite wide there with strong tides may also have been difficult to construct - particularly given it was before current materials and construction methods were available.
Building a bridge would not have been a problem from an engineering point of view. Dorman Long had built a similar size bridge across Sydney Harbour in 1932 using steel made in their own mills in the UK. It would have been a high bridge. The roadway would have to been at high level before the crossing to cross the entrance to the Royal Albert Docks before descending across East Ham Level on the North Bank and Woolwich Arsenal to the south so it would have been a considerable presence in the landscape. That said a bridge on the scale of Sydney Harbour Bridge would provide a massive improvement to the infrastructure of the area. The SHB has 6 lanes for road traffic and a 2 railway lines. Given that Woolwich arsenal was already being run down with production being dispersed to new build Ordnance Factories it could have become a centre of major regeneration as happened with the old docks in the 80's.

The approaches would have been rather similar to those in Sydney I imagine.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@-33.8545 ... authuser=0
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Re: Thames Crossing Proposals

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KeithW wrote: Building a bridge would not have been a problem from an engineering point of view. Dorman Long had built a similar size bridge across Sydney Harbour in 1932 using steel made in their own mills in the UK. It would have been a high bridge. The roadway would have to been at high level before the crossing to cross the entrance to the Royal Albert Docks before descending across East Ham Level on the North Bank and Woolwich Arsenal to the south so it would have been a considerable presence in the landscape. That said a bridge on the scale of Sydney Harbour Bridge would provide a massive improvement to the infrastructure of the area. The SHB has 6 lanes for road traffic and a 2 railway lines. Given that Woolwich arsenal was already being run down with production being dispersed to new build Ordnance Factories it could have become a centre of major regeneration as happened with the old docks in the 80's.

Absolutely it could have been done - I mean, clearly we'd built the Iron Bridge, Forth Rail Bridge and countless other bridges by this point, not to mention those built in New York and other corners of the world. However, I think that it wasn't built at this time answers its own question - the sort of investment required to build a bridge of that size and scale in that location wasn't considered worthwhile, and by the time construction methods were cheaper and an interest in regenerating the docklands area came along, the sort of road improvement considered more desirable was the one then planned.
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Re: Thames Crossing Proposals

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c2R wrote: Absolutely it could have been done - I mean, clearly we'd built the Iron Bridge, Forth Rail Bridge and countless other bridges by this point, not to mention those built in New York and other corners of the world. However, I think that it wasn't built at this time answers its own question - the sort of investment required to build a bridge of that size and scale in that location wasn't considered worthwhile, and by the time construction methods were cheaper and an interest in regenerating the docklands area came along, the sort of road improvement considered more desirable was the one then planned.
More to the point the rise of a newly militarised Germany came along. In !935 the Government had put in place a 5 year program to improve British roads with an emphasis on the Trunk Road network driven at least partly by rapidly rising traffic volumes which rose almost 70% between 1935 and 1939. A 1938 report produced by the County Surveyors society called for a 2000 mile motorway network with high speed roads running from London to Glasgow via Birmingham and Manchester, Newcastle, Portsmouth/Southampton and Cardiff/Swansea as well as a link from Hull to Liverpool. Combined with the proposed London Orbital motorway (Bressey C. & Lutyens E. (1938), Highways Development Survey) this would have given us a motorway network that we didn't achieve until the 1970's.

This had to be scaled back by the need to assign increasing amounts of money to rearm the RAF, RN and Army and ceased completely in 1939 leaving some roads incomplete for over a decade. After the war the economy was so run down there was little money available for transport and most of what was available was funnelled into nationalise not only the railways but road haulage and bus companies as well. Whatever you may think of British Railways the formation of the nationalised Road Haulage business was not a great success. By 1948 even the labour government was disinclined to seriously defend it and what funds were available were poured into the Railway Modernisation Program.

The bottom line is that it was the mid 1950's before serious cash became available for improving the road infrastructure. The Thamesmead crossing idea sat on the back burner into the late 1990's but the lack of a proper South Circular Road meant it was never a serious proposition.
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Re: Thames Crossing Proposals

Post by Bob »

Fascinating info, it is interesting how the run up to war and the aftermath affected not only the development of roads, but also the rail and motor industries.

Apparently there were even plans at one point for a Thames Crossing linking the Isle of Dogs with Depford in the 1943-1944 Abercrombie plan as part of the B Ring Road, seems it was around that time when a crossing linking Gallions Reach and Thamesmead started to appear as well.
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Re: Thames Crossing Proposals

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Bob wrote:
Thanks for the links, when you get a chance can you look through the A-Z showing the scheme?

Image
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Re: Thames Crossing Proposals

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and here's another from the archives:

Image
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Re: Thames Crossing Proposals

Post by Bob »

Thanks c2R
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Re: Thames Crossing Proposals

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I don’t think this has been mentioned anywhere else - the current Woolwich ferry fleet was retired last week and there is a gap in the service as the new vessels come in:

https://londonist.com/london/transport/ ... ch-ferries

The new ferries were designed in Norway and built in Poland:

https://www.maritimejournal.com/news101 ... placements

I’m not sure I’d fancy bringing them from Poland myself - what are the sea-keeping qualities of these vessels that are designed to spend their operating life in the sheltered conditions of the Thames on trips of just a few hundred yards?

One interesting point - the new ferries are hybrids, which seems to be very common on new short-range ferries these days.
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Re: Thames Crossing Proposals

Post by ROAD ROVER »

Yes, there are no ferry services now until the new year.
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Re: Thames Crossing Proposals

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Another thing I noticed - there appear to be only two of the new ferries, compared with three in the old fleet.

That presumably means less/no redundancy, although the new ferries will presumably be more reliable, at least in the early period of their lives, once any teething troubles are out of the way.
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Re: Thames Crossing Proposals

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roadtester wrote: Tue Oct 09, 2018 03:37 I don’t think this has been mentioned anywhere else - the current Woolwich ferry fleet was retired last week and there is a gap in the service as the new vessels come in:

https://londonist.com/london/transport/ ... ch-ferries

The new ferries were designed in Norway and built in Poland:

https://www.maritimejournal.com/news101 ... placements
Thanks for the update, I hadn't realised there would be a gap in service, although I suppose it is to be expected if the piers are to be modified and berthing trials will need to be conduced.

I'll miss the older ferries, with their creaky wooden decks, but I'm not convinced they'll live on anywhere. They're of a design that requires piers, rather than being able to push up against a slipway and so wouldn't serve as larger replacements for any of the Irish river crossing routes; and similarly, Norway and much of continental Europe are looking for cleaner vessels, not 55 year old high mileage English cast-offs!
I’m not sure I’d fancy bringing them from Poland myself - what are the sea-keeping qualities of these vessels that are designed to spend their operating life in the sheltered conditions of the Thames on trips of just a few hundred yards?
Sometimes smaller ferries are carried on larger boats for long open-sea distances; although these may be a bit big for that. They could also presumably be towed by something larger.
One interesting point - the new ferries are hybrids, which seems to be very common on new short-range ferries these days.
Yes, so's the new Queen Victoria of Wight on the Portsmouth to Fishbourne route. A no brainer really for short sea crossings given the populated ares where nitrogen and sulpher emmissions are a problem
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Re: Thames Crossing Proposals

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From MarineTraffic, it looks like Ben Woollacott is currently performing sea trials in Gdansk: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/de ... WOOLLACOTT while Vera Lynn is moored: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/de ... ERA%20LYNN
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Re: Thames Crossing Proposals

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c2R wrote: Tue Oct 09, 2018 09:06 From MarineTraffic, it looks like Ben Woollacott is currently performing sea trials in Gdansk: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/de ... WOOLLACOTT while Vera Lynn is moored: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/de ... ERA%20LYNN
Interesting - handsome looking vessels, to my inexpert eye at least!
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