A planned transit bus system for Thamesmead is not expected to be completed until 2029, it has emerged, a day after Transport for London announced plans for a new Superloop bus through the area.
The government awarded £23 million to TfL in 2023 to develop the system between Woolwich, Thamesmead and Abbey Wood, similar to the East London Transit network that serves the Barking Riverside development across the river from Thamesmead.
Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative chancellor, awarded TfL the cash as part of the government’s “vision for a Docklands 2.0”, referring to the Tories’ ambitions to develop areas along the Thames such as Charlton, Silvertown and Beckton. The cash had to be spent by April 2026.
But an update going before a TfL committee meeting this week reveals that the deadline has been extended to 2029 – but warns that the Labour government could still take the money back. Work on the scheme has also been delayed by the cyber attack on TfL’s systems.
The transit system is aimed to serve thousands of planned new homes at Thamesmead Waterfront, which would be built by Peabody and Lendlease on the site of retail parks and the remaining former Ministry of Defence land.
Ultimately, 15,000 homes could be built there, but the full project is unlikely to go ahead without a planned DLR extension from Gallions Reach, which would need government funding.
The transit was designed to enable work to go ahead on the first 1,500 homes, in the same way that the East London Transit bus was introduced to help get Barking Riverside started before a London Overground extension arrived in the area.
A paper to go before TfL’s programmes and investment committee on Wednesday said the delay would help it design a more ambitious scheme. It needs to complete a feasibility study before Homes England, a government agency, gives it the full funding.
“A condition of this funding was that it had to be spent by the end of financial year 2025/26. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has now agreed a programme extension to 2029,” the paper says.
“Feasibility design progressed last year, but delays were encountered due to the cyber security incident in September 2024. Access to key systems such as Computer Aided Design was limited, which put additional pressure on an already challenging programme, and is now due to complete in early 2025. The deadline extension is allowing more time to revisit the scope of the scheme and to deliver a more ambitious proposition.”
A public consultation on the bus priority measures is expected later this year. Plans for the transit service have been around in some shape since the Greenwich Waterfront Transit scheme of the 1990s and 2000s, meaning the scheme will have taken three decades to deliver.
The delay to the scheme means that passengers will see the new Superloop SL11 bus introduced before the transit scheme is finished.
TfL revealed full details of the bus on Monday. It will replace the existing 472 service later this year or early next year. The route, between North Greenwich and Abbey Wood, will serve much of the same area as the bus transit scheme.
Other Superloop services, such as the SL3 which already serves Thamesmead, have been additions to the network or renumbering of existing limited-stop services; the SL11 is the first to replace a conventional service.
The limited-stop bus will miss out on several stops, particularly in Charlton and Woolwich, meaning it is likely to be cheaper for TfL to run than the existing 472 as it will require fewer buses. In Woolwich town centre, it would only serve the stops outside the Elizabeth Line station.
An equalities impact assessment said that only 31 per cent of existing 472 passengers would benefit from the faster bus, with 62 per cent needing to take an alternative service or walk a greater distance to an SL11 stop.
A consultation into the Superloop bus is running at haveyoursay.tfl.gov.uk/sl11-superloop until April 13.
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