By rosebell
London’s Silvertown Tunnel, which is 1.4km road tunnel and passes beneath the River Thames to link Silvertown on the north side with Greenwich Peninsular on the south, was opened to traffic on 7 April 2025.
The completion time duration of this project by Riverlinx JV, comprising BAM Nuttall, Ferrovial Construction and SK ecoplant, was five years. As the largest TBM ever to be used in the UK, an 11.91m-diameter Herrenknecht machine was used for oring of these two tunnel.
Through the river rather than using roads, over than 1.86 million tonnes of material were transported to and from the site during construction and this work helped to remove almost 110,000 lorry trips from local roads around the construction site.
With the aim of reducing congestion on the Victorian-built Blackwall Tunnel, which lies to the west of the new crossing, ransport for London (TfL) estimates that this tunnel is due to cut journey times by 20 minutes. Also a bus shuttle service will be provided for cyclists.
Altough the vast majority of the funding for the new tunnel was raised by the consortium through private finance, TfL is going to collect the newly-introduced tolls for both the Silvertown Blackwall tunnels and repay the costs through regular availability payments linked to operational performance.
