In west London you're spoiled for choice for ways to cross the river Thames.
But in east London, the Thames is your wet nemesis.
Your only options to cross are
Queue for ages for the Blackwall Tunnel
Go the huge long way around and pay the toll for the Dartford Crossing
Or get seasick on the so slow it's literally never worth it Woolwich Ferry.
This gives poor east London quite the disadvantage.
Despite the very short distance as the crow flies
if you live here it's very unlikely you go to work or
school or do your shopping or visit friends here
unless you're a crow.
Greater London effectively operates like a Pacman
with a wakka-wakka wide gap between these isolated communities.
So how did London end up so unfairly asymmetrical?
In other words, why is west London better than east London?
Dun dun dun dun...
Basically there are three reasons why it's easier to build bridges in west london than east london.
One. Geography.
In the west, the river Thames is a narrow squiggly trickle where bridge building is easy.
But by the time it gets to London Bridge, it becomes a wide majestic estuary
with massive tides and marshy floodplains.
Lest we forget, the Romans built London Bridge where they did
specifically because it was the widest place they could build it.
Two. Shipping.
In the late 19th century, when London did most of its growing
it was the biggest shipping port in the world
making bridge building east of the ports practically impossible.
The literally only bridge in east...ish London, Tower Bridge,
was an incredible feat of construction
so impressive it merited its own episode.
Its elaborate brute force engineering and massive cost were justified by its iconic location -
a huge gateway to the heart of London for those arriving by boat.
If they wanted to build any more bridges in east London,
every one of them would have to be bigger or more complicated than Tower Bridge.
And that wasn't going to happen, because...
Three. No demand.
Historically, east London has always been poorer and more sparsely populated than west London
with no rich people to pay tolls and no important people to complain.
So not only was it more effort to build crossings here, it wasn't worth the effort.
However, that all started to change at the end of the 19th century.
In the decades since the disastrous Thames Tunnel
the Victorians had learnt some lessons and had become rather good at digging.
Having figured out how to build miles of railways underground
all they had to do was exactly the same thing under the river.
So at the end of the 19th century, using the same technology as the Tube,
London got its very first road tunnels. One at Blackwall, and one at Rotherhithe.
With demand... (cough)...
With demand still rising, and east London's population still growing
these should... (cough)...
should have been the start of a tunnel revolution
spreading eastwards along the Thames throughout the...
(cough) throughout the 20th century.
(cough cough)
So why didn't that happen?
It's a story that's been told so many times I'm getting bored of it now.
Basically... the War.
First the First World War, and second the Second World War
put a stop to all big public projects.
And when the wars were over, the money had run out
and it never really came back.
And so the 20th century saw pretty much no new river crossings in London.
Apart from the Greenwich and Woolwich foot tunnels,
which don't really count because they're just foot tunnels...
Chiswick and Twickenham bridges, both part of the same road opened on the same day in 1933...
a second Blackwall tunnel, which doesn't really count because it's just a widening of the first...
and the Dartford Tunnel, which became two Dartford Tunnels
which became too Dartford Tunnels and the QEII bridge
which also doesn't really count because it's in Not London.
London found itself frozen in this asymmetrical state for more than a century.
This asymmetry gives the river a completely
different character depending which side of london you're on.
In the west, the river brings prosperity and flats
with views and gastropubs and university boat races.
But in the east the river brings eeuuuuuuuuurgh.
By the end of the 20th century, the shipping industry that prevented
any crossings being built here in the first place
had all but disappeared leaving behind a string of post-industrial literal dead ends
largely untouched by regeneration or your thoughts.
The exception that proves the rule is Canary Wharf
which since the 80s has seen a rebirth as a business district full of [BEEP].
Has no one ever thought to try to do anything to fix this?
Yes they have. Ages ago.
In the 1970s, plans were afoot for a long-awaited pill to close Pacman's mouth:
The boringly named The East London River Crossing.
By this time, technology had moved on
and bridges had once again overtaken tunnels
as the more cost-effective way to get cars across a river.
The bridge formed part of the notorious plans for new motorways in London called Ringways... Ehhh!
On the north side, the roads were more than ready for the arrival of the new bridge.
You can clearly see on satellite view how the North Circular Road gapes expectantly open wide
ready to send and receive cross river traffic.
But on the south side, it's not clear at all where the traffic was meant to go.
The new bridge would have necessitated the construction of a huge eight-lane motorway
bulldozing hundreds of households out of the way.
The people of Plumstead were understandably unhappy when the bridge got approval in 1985.
But their bacon was rescued by an unlikely saviour.
Two years later in 1987, the Government accidentally built an international airport
right next door to the site of the new bridge
which added a maximum height restriction on top
of the already restrictive minimum height restriction.
With the bridge needing a complete redesign,
that meant going through the approval process all over again.
And this time it failed, and all thoughts of a crossing here were abandoned in 1993.
But not for long.
In 2004, the Mayor of London Ken Livingston proposed an upgrade...
or downgrade depending how you look at it...
on the same site.
The slightly betterly named Thames Gateway Bridge.
Ken's bridge was going to be a local bridge for local people.
There would be just four lanes instead of eight
two of which would be bus lanes
which had the potential of being turned into an extension for the DLR.
You can see on satellite view that Ken's bridge got quite far in the planning stages too.
Just north of Galleon's Reach, there's a wide concrete flyover that stops mid-air
where the connection to his new bridge was going to be.
Environmentally speaking, it was a massive improvement on the monster from the 70s
but there was a major flaw in Ken's concept.
A local bridge for local people was a very naive and completely impossible thing to enforce.
I'm feeding this one, go away!
Ken's bridge could only have been "local" if it were one of many crossings in east London
so that travellers had lots of options just like how it is in west London.
But with east London so far behind, the Thames Gateway Bridge on its own
would unavoidably have drawn cars and lorries from all over London
congesting and polluting the narrow residential streets of Plumstead
which in many ways is worse than building a motorway through it.
The Thames Gateway Bridge was indeed designed to be
joined later by the Belvedere Bridge and Silvertown Tunnel
but the locals knew that these complementary crossings wouldn't
realistically have come to the rescue for decades
if they ever came at all.
For that reason, the Thames Gateway Bridge was viewed as a cause of congestion.
And for that reason, it had almost no support politically or locally.
And for that reason, when the next Mayor of London Boris Johnson came along,
he took the popular and simple decision to scrap it.
It was a rather odd move for Boris, a man so famously fond of bridges.
Perhaps he just didn't like it because it wasn't his idea.
It's harder than ever to get big projects like
bridges funded by the government and or approved by the locals.
That's why all the bridges built this century have been quite a pedestrian affair.
So far we've had the Millennium Bridge
which, when first opened, struggled to take the weight of pedestrians
and the Emirates Air Line
an expensive, over-branded cable car slash tourist non-attraction
connecting nowhere to nowhere else
inexplicably featured on the Tube Map despite a grand total of regular users of four.
A few more pedestrian-only bridges have also been planned and not built...
at Canary Wharf
Wandsworth
Pimlico
and most high-profile of all the profoundly unnecessary Garden Bridge
intended more for private parties and selfies than for travel
which cost 53 million pounds just to cancel.
But these are tourist attractions at best and vanity projects at worst
And they're all in central London.
They do nothing to address the fundamental pacmanity of Greater London
and are quite insulting to east Londoners.
So now, 15 years after the Thames Gateway Bridge was cancelled
what's been put on the table to address this?
The worst crossing ever proposed.
Right next door to the Blackwall tunnel, but at a jaunty angle
is the very controversially proposed Silvertown tunnel.
iIt's a very odd choice of location, given that it's one of the few parts
of east London that already has lots of river crossings
and it's an even odder choice of mode.
The Silvertown tunnel is for motor traffic only
with no pedestrians, cyclists or trains allowed.
Its purpose is to reduce traffic in the Blackwall Tunnel
which we really should have learnt by now in real life
will encourage more car journeys than before
and create more congestion in the whole Blackwall area.
Public opinion is more anti-car than ever
which is why there's a massive campaign against the Silvertown Tunnel.
And as for whether it'll ever be built? I dunno.
It's a paradox. East London desperately needs connections
but east London desperately also needs not to be ruined by pollution and congestion.
So what on earth could be the solution?
There's actually a rather brilliant one.
The two as yet unconnected east Londons are
a great opportunity to create ambitious new non-car crossings
for rail, trams, cycling and walking.
Ignoring today's demand for new roads
and instead providing for journeys that don't exist yet
may seem daft, and will certainly cause frustration for the first few years.
But when the only option to cross is a clean, green, sustainable one,
people will take the clean, green, sustainable one in their thousands
and the positive effect will spread well beyond the banks of this river.
For proof of how brilliantly this phenomenon works
Come with me now to west London...
In 2019, nasty cracks were found in the pedestals of Hammersmith Bridge
and the local council abruptly closed it to all traffic after 132 years of service.
Understandably many local drivers complained saying it would cause traffic jams
and it did at first
but then, an interesting thing happened.
When Hammersmith Bridge reopened in 2021,
it assumed a new role as a quiet, pleasant and safe pedestrian and cycle bridge
which has encouraged more journeys by foot and by bike
reducing car journeys and traffic not just in Hammersmith but across west London.
What Hammersmith shows us is that what we choose to build
or indeed choose to don't build
affects how we choose or don't choose to travel.
And that's the way round it should be.
The tide is shifting, pun massively intended, in the right direction:
Away from cars.
The proposed Lower Thames Crossing,
a scheme to fight cars with cars to try to take traffic out of the Dartford Tunnel
has been roundly rejected by locals.
There's actually been rather a lot of progress for trains lately.
No fewer than seven new rail crossings have appeared across the Thames in the last 25 years
and there are even more proposed for the future.
There's a potential rail link to Thamesmead from the DLR, or Overground
but probably not both.
There's the Ken-Ex Tram
a planned tram network around the riverside
commuter towns in Kent and Essex linked by a tunnel
which is too far outside London to be taken seriously
and of course the Elizabeth line is going to open... ooh tomorrow!
Well, it took three videos, but that's pretty much the whole history of the river Thames
and how Londoners have crossed it from the Romans to the present day.
I find it fascinating how much London's relationship
with its river has changed over its long history.
It's actually quite sad to think that what started out as a major highway and the lifeblood of London
saturated with boats of all different shapes and sizes
now spends most of its time sitting uselessly empty -
a physical and mental barrier between north and south London.
But will this trend, like so many others in London's
evolving infrastructure, shift back the other way?
Are there ways we could put our river to better use?
The Thames Clippers are starting to transform from an expensive novelty
tourist attraction into a reliable commuter service.
Maybe they have a future as a no-nonsense integrated part of the city's transport network
like how it is in Sydney
or Brisbane
or Copenhagen
or San Francisco
or Zurich
or Hong Kong
or Amsterdam.
Or maybe they'll go completely the other way and drain the river Thames and turn it into a park.
It's not that far fetched an idea.
It's exactly what they did to the river Turia in Valencia in 1969
making the city safer from flooding
and opening up acres of new green space.
What future technologies lie ahead in the next thousand years
that could see our river once again becoming a major useful highway?
The answer is coming in part four.
You know, I remember the first time my grandfather gave me Surfshark VPN.
In those days it came in a paper wrapper and had this horrible bitter taste.
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