The government plans to give £23 million towards a fast bus service for Thamesmead ahead of a possible DLR extension to the area.
Yesterday’s announcement was hidden in the paperwork for the autumn statement from Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, and was the only explicit commitment to invest in London’s infrastructure.
“Subject to the business case, the government will also provide funding for a rapid transit bus network in Thamesmead, as part of its vision for a new Docklands 2.0,” the statement said, referring to Michael Gove’s ambitions for areas along the Thames such as Charlton, Silvertown, Beckton and Thamesmead.
Under current plans, the bus transit – a service with its own lanes and priority over normal traffic – would run from Woolwich to Plumstead station, along Eastern Way to Thamesmead town centre, then via Carlyle Road and Harrow Manor Way to Abbey Wood station.
The money would come as part of the £150 million allocation to London from the Brownfield, Infrastructure and Land Fund, which aims to build 65,000 homes across England.
Hunt’s announcement provided some good news for Peabody and Lendlease, the developers hoping to build thousands of new homes at Thamesmead Waterfront, which would be built on the site of retail parks and the remaining former Ministry of Defence land. But without a rail link, the full scheme might not be able to go ahead, while full plans for development on the old Beckton gasworks also hinge on the DLR.
Across the Thames at Barking Riverside, a bus transit service was introduced to serve the first homes on the development, but the rest had to wait until a London Overground extension was approved.
In June, Transport for London said that it hoped to agree funding for an extension by 2025.
The outline business case includes both the bus transit scheme and DLR extension, which it said would take five years to build and cost £1.7 billion.
The document said: “A bus transit would not deliver the transformational impacts of a rail-based intervention but could be built more quickly and at a lower cost, supporting the first stages of new development in advance of a new rail link.”
Plans for a transit scheme in Thamesmead have been around since the late 1990s, when it was envisaged a tram would run from North Greenwich to Abbey Wood. The Greenwich Waterfront Transit scheme was downgraded and eventually scrapped in 2008.
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