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Two letters to the Guardian:
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regarding his environmental legacy I find it impossible to pick apart. This article is linked from those letters:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/27/floods-london-frontline-climate-emergency-defences-trafficIt mentions ULEZ expansion, LTNs and a carbon neutral London in 9 years.
I thought the ULEZ expansion was forced onto him by the government in the run up to the election
to make him unpopular, similar to the increases in ticket prices for public transport in exchange for a bail out.
LTNs have been around for decades and the recent ones seem to get dismantled left and right and I can't tell how much power over them comes from the Mayor or the Councils.
Similar to the Street Space initiative that just has enriched manufacturers of plastic street clutter and in some places like the Greenwich Naval College was used to block public access to open spaces during lockdown. Also not clear how much there is Government, Mayor or Councils.
Small thing but big one for me is the removal of cycling access on Waterloo Bridge.Carbon neural in 9 years is just lol. Unless of course it consists of buying some imaginary emission rights or similar bullshit.
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Small thing but big one for me is the removal of cycling access on Waterloo Bridge.
What do you mean? The last time I rode across it, which admittedly was a while ago, there was no problem.
To be fair to Khan, he has no direct power over modal filtering on local authority streets. He can only dole out funding or possibly withhold it if a borough pursues policies he considers warrant this.
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Call for a demo against the tunnel:
Stop Silvertown Tunnel: mass demo, Sat 26 Feb
We invite you to join us on the Mass Demo against the Silvertown Tunnel: Saturday 26 February in Newham, starting 2pm. Assemble at the Crystal, the London Assembly’s new City Hall, Royal Docks, E16 1ZE.
Please help us grow the demo - we want the broadest coalition, and as many cyclists and cycling organisations as possible:
- Circulate the facebook event
- Spread the word to other London groups if you think they'd be interested - we are sending to the six of you who are most local
- Use the attached graphic on social media. Tag @SilvertownTn on Twitter
- Agree to name your groups as a supporter of the demonstration and let us know
- We are printing flyers and stickers. Let us know if you need some.
► The demonstration comes at the end of a week of action against the tunnel project (20-26 February). We will send out more details soon!
► We are keen to get a big cycling presence during the week too. It would be great if you and other cycling organisations, and cargo bike groups, would like to join together and organise an event highlighting the fact that crossing the river on a bike is so difficult, and impossibe for cargo bikes. If so, please get in touch with us about timing so we can be sure events won't clash.
► A video of our campaign planning meeting on Saturday 22 January is here.
Our campaign is gathering momentum as the tunnel looms closer. Together we can show the Mayor of London (who has the power to cancel), the London Assembly, Transport for London and all Londoners the damage Silvertown Tunnel would cause. Here’s some background info.
Silvertown Tunnel is the UK’s biggest road project now underway: a planned £2.2bn 4-lane tunnel under the Thames, from the O2 in Greenwich Peninsula to Newham. Construction has started but until the giant boring machine starts work in the spring it’s not too late to stop it. The HGV-friendly tunnel would bring increased traffic to deprived areas of E & SE London, pushing congestion back from Blackwall Tunnel to already jammed feeder roads past homes and schools.
Silvertown Tunnel would be a disaster for:
- Health, especially children’s. Both sides of the tunnel already suffer from illegal air pollution. Many schools lie near the tunnel feeder roads. Newham is the UK’s most polluted borough with nearly 100 deaths a year due to dirty air. Other nearby boroughs also suffer, e.g. children in Tower Hamlets have lungs 10% smaller than the norm.
- Social, racial and environmental justice. The areas most affected include some of London’s most deprived and ethnically diverse.
- London’s carbon emission targets - threatening Mayor Sadiq Khan’s goal of a 27% fall in vehicle traffic by 2030.
- Cyclists, pedestrians, cargo bikers, users of electric mobility vehicles - clean, green, active transport in London. None of these will be allowed through the tunnel. Cyclists have no good options to cross the river, cargo bikes none at all.
- It now looks like TfL will have to cut millions from its active transport budget - cycle lanes, healthy streets etc.
- It now looks like TfL will have to cut millions from its active transport budget - cycle lanes, healthy streets etc.
- Transport for London’s ability to restore pre-Covid levels of public transport, let alone continue with new projects to get people out of cars. E.g. DLR extensions to Eltham and Thamesmead and a Bakerloo Line extension to Lewisham.
Please join us. The meeting point is easy to get to - it’s half a mile from Canning Town tube, and only a few yards from Royal Victoria Dock DLR or the Greenwich/Newham cable car across the river from Greenwich. OK, not so easy for cyclists south of the river - one reason we'll be marching!
Bring bikes, banners, costumes, friends - whatever works for your group.
Contact us with any questions or ideas.
Hope to see you there!
All the best
Stop the Silvertown Tunnel CoalitionStop the Silvertown Tunnel Coalition includes community groups, environmentalists, trade unions, political groups and residents of Newham and Greenwich.
My guess would be that the funding for this is ringfenced and not subject to current TfL cuts. I've long had the impression that Khan had massive political pressure applied to him by the Tories to force this one through, but of course I'm only speculating and that may not be the case. If anything should fall now that cuts have to be made, it is obviously this project.
I can't make it on the 26th, but perhaps someone here feels strongly enough about it to go along.
- Circulate the facebook event
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I might take a kid on the tandem, under the pretence of going on the cable car
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I suspect it's partly because of the tunnelling industry needing work, but there must be other factors at play. I charitably assume that his hand was forced, but maybe he genuinely doesn't understand what a profoundly negative development this is and made the decision freely.
Good on plucky campaigners still trying to make the case:
As expected, cyclists won't be able to ride through the tunnel:
It's probably also a stalking horse for the Lower Thames Crossing.
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Two articles, one on construction dust, and the other one claiming the tunnel boring appears to be finished.
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I think Sadiq’s heart is in the right place, he’s correct about East London being neglected through the decades (although I can count two crossings and a ferry rather than the one crossing he referenced) but I’m not sure this will do anything other than move part of a traffic jam from one tunnel to another.
And this argument makes no sense to me;
"And it will be in the Ultra Low Emission Zone, so the air afterwards will be cleaner than it is now - that's a win-win."
How can introducing new traffic to the locale produce cleaner air for the residents?
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Everything that City Hall has pushed out to justify this is total bollocks.
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The problem is that if you remove the traffic jams (which I'm not sure this will even do) then driving becomes more attractive, more people do it, and you get more jams. It's impossible to simply build away congestion. I think Sadiq inherited this project, saw how much it would cost to cancel, imagined the headlines that would cause, and just let it rumble along to completion. Pretty weak Mayoring, IMO. Should have pulled the plug and publicly pinned the huge loss on the Tories.
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The only possible argument about the air quality is probably the current effect of the idling engines stuck either side of Blackwall tunnel
Silvertown tunnel will be exactly the same. Traffic will increase to fill the new capacity, as it always has done, and the average speed of London traffic will remain at around 10 miles an hour: slower than this and people naturally stop driving.
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Pretty certain it's a yes and TFL are currently consulting on a bike bus or boat to get riders across
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It'll be every ten minutes or so, and only have space for half a dozen bikes. Who wants to ride when you might have to wait 20 minutes on a round-trip, even if you don't have to wait for multiple buses because it's busy? And over time the frequency will drop, there'll be outages, and it'll get so shit that nobody ever uses it - look at the bike service on QE2...
The solution was building a walking/cycling bridge but the Mayor scrapped it. He's done a lot of good, but this tunnel is a fucking mess.
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Posted above:
As expected, cyclists won't be able to ride through the tunnel:
It's probably also a stalking horse for the Lower Thames Crossing.
It was always clear that this was a motorway project, hence no cycling. Not that you'd necessarily want to use such a shit road.
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The solution was building a walking/cycling bridge but the Mayor scrapped it. He's done a lot of good, but this tunnel is a fucking mess.
The bridge will happen eventually, as it's a good idea, but it's one of those projects for which a number of opportunities have already been missed, and more undoubtedly will. You know this, but for anyone who doesn't, it was actually a Sustrans idea originally, ahead of the Olympics, which if they had proposed it as a standalone project I think would have got the nod, although obviously there's no telling (and it has to be said that there wasn't a good design around yet).
Livingstone at least had a limited understanding of public transport, but Khan doesn't seem to understand transport at all. Those road-building projects all come from Johnson's time, and it's this annoying thing that once something is in the system, in a plan or a report somewhere, it's hard or impossible to get it out of there again.
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Silvertown Tunnel campaign needs your support
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@FrancisSedgemore
It is maddening that while people are desperately fighting an electric railway on the basis of uncertain CO2 modelling, a supposedly progressive mayor is building this motorway. Seriously considering leaving the party over it, having long believed it's better to be part of a mainstream movement to bring about change.