Cycle campaigning

Oliver - a comparison with Crossrail is useful, but only if one looks at the differences in scale, logistics and costs as well as the similarities between the two projects. Until TfL starts discussing the engineering and logistical detail of a subterranean ring road, there is little we can do other than ridicule the idea and expose the political issues for what they are.

As you’ve said in your LCC Issues forum discussion, the project will [would] have a long lead-in time, if it ever happens at all. The cost is also likely to be considerably greater than the currently quoted £30bn. In the end will be many multiples of the Crossrail bill.

Another comparison with Crossrail is that it will most likely be enshrined in future plans by means of an Act of Parliament. This means that it will be almost impossible to remove from the future unless a different-thinking government swiftly repeals such an Act. This is unlikely, as the big parties in principle all subscribe to the 'growth, growth, growth' agenda.

Of course the cost will be great, but what will all those tunnellers do when Crossrail is finished? They've invested in all that equipment and will have to be kept busy.

Also, it's not a railway, but a motorway--and it is far more likely for investment to be directed towards motorway-building than railway construction.

Another factor that is making it not unlikely is the ridiculously vast development volume directed at tower blocks in Central London in the next few years.

Already the predict-and-provide argument at the Roads Task Force was that the new tall buildings in Central London could not be serviced effectively if motor traffic capacity along the Inner Ring Road was reduced in any way, i.e. the particular kind of motor traffic that needed to be facilitated was merely service traffic.

Obviously, another reason for wanting to build the underground motorway is also to make London even more of a playground for the 'rich', but if all the world's major developers demand that their heavy investment in Central London be easily reachable by car, then that's what will be done. Government is going through a mind-bogglingly unjust phase, after all, and so much public money has already been misappropriated that this would hardly be too surprising.

You also need to consider that this can be built in multiple stages. Some of them are more likely than others, and even one of them would be quite destructive. Note that in the article it explicitly singled out Earl's Court as a bottleneck. Well, there's quite a lot of space there to play around with the kind of tunnel entrances such a project would need.

So, I maintain that we shouldn't take this lightly and that we shouldn't attempt to ridicule the idea, but to oppose it effectively. This means building opposition in the population, which will be harder to do for tunnels than for surface roads, but not impossible, and ensuring that not only these plans, but the whole sorry tradition of London road-building plans, which this is attempting to revive, is finally consigned to the dustiest bin of history. It is not a sound strategy to manage 'growth' and the past repeating itself.

I know we don't really disagree, but it is very important to realise that this isn't just pie-in-the-sky, unfortunately. The Silvertown Tunnel is already treated as a done deal inside TfL, for instance, which just a few years ago nobody would have considered possible.