Black wall tunnel

Black wall tunnel

The Blackwall Tunnel is a pair of road tunnels underneath the River Thames in east London, England, linking the London Borough of Tower Hamlets with the Royal Borough of Greenwich, and part of the A102 road. The northern portal lies just south of the East India Dock Road (A13) in Blackwall; the southern entrances are just south of The O₂ on the Greenwich Peninsula. The road is managed by Transport for London (TfL).

The tunnel was originally opened as a single bore in 1897 by the then Prince of Wales, as a major transport project to improve commerce and trade in London’s East End, and supported a mix of foot, cycle, horse-drawn and vehicular traffic. By the 1930s, capacity was becoming inadequate, and consequently a second bore opened in 1967, handling southbound traffic while the earlier 19th century tunnel handles northbound.

The northern approach takes traffic from the A12 and the southern approach takes traffic from the A2, making the tunnel crossing a key link for both local and longer-distance traffic between the north and south sides of the river. It forms part of a key route into Central London from South East London and Kent and was the easternmost all-day crossing for vehicles before the opening of the Dartford Tunnel in 1963.

It remains the easternmost free fixed road crossing of the Thames, and regularly suffers congestion, to the extent that tidal flow schemes were in place from 1978 until controversially removed in 2007. Given the very high traffic volumes at the crossing (and the height restrictions of the Victorian bore) the crossing is being supplemented by the Silvertown Tunnel, currently under construction. When the Silvertown Tunnel is completed in 2025, both it and the Blackwall Tunnels will be tolled