London’s Silvertown Tunnel opens to traffic today.
The 1.4km road tunnel passes under the River Thames to connect Silvertown on the north side with Greenwich Peninsular on the south.
Riverlinx JV, comprising BAM Nuttall, Ferrovial Construction and SK ecoplant, completed the project in five years. The two tunnel drives were carried out using an 11.91m-diameter Herrenknecht machine – the largest TBM ever to be used in the UK.
During construction, more than 1.86 million tonnes of material were transported to and from the site via the river rather than using roads. That helped to remove around 110,000 lorry trips from local roads around the construction site.
The aim of the tunnel is to ease congestion on the Victorian-built Blackwall Tunnel, which lies to the west of the new crossing. Transport for London (TfL) estimates it will cut journey times by 20 minutes.
A bus shuttle service will be provided for cyclists.
The vast majority of the funding for the new tunnel was raised by the consortium through private finance. TfL will collect the newly-introduced tolls for both the Silvertown Blackwall tunnels and repay the costs through regular availability payments linked to operational performance.
