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Olympic Gridlock

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NOT CONTENT with picking our pockets and lying to us about the amount, not content with making absurd promises that will never be kept, not content with putting at risk our priceless park, the people behind the London Olympics are also proposing to close down the rest of Greenwich as well.

Or at least, they’re taking the power to do so. They haven’t yet troubled to tell us how they’ll exercise it.

You may not have heard of the “Olympic Route Network.” I don’t blame you if you haven’t; it’s received mysteriously little press coverage. But you will. The ORN is the network of roads on which the Olympic Delivery Authority will be given the power to ban parking and stopping, restrict traffic, close lanes and indeed shut the roads down in their entirety.

Earlier this month, the Department for Transport launched a consultation document outlining which roads would be part of the ORN. In the borough of Greenwich alone, there are 44. They include:

  • the Blackwall Tunnel.
  • All approaches to the tunnel, including the entire A102 from the Greater London boundary to the tunnel and Blackwall Lane.
  • the whole of Greenwich town centre.
  • the entire length of Romney Road and Trafalgar Road.
  • Creek Road.
  • Deptford Church Street.
  • Blackheath Road, Blackheath Hill, Shooters Hill Road (as far as the old Shooters Hill Police Station) and Charlton Way.
  • Woolwich Road and Woolwich Church Street, between Blackwall Lane in Greenwich and Woolwich town centre.
  • Most of Woolwich town centre.
  • The A205 South Circular from Woolwich to the junction with Shooters Hill Road at the old police station.

As well as all the main roads, dozens of residential side streets in Greenwich will be part of the Olympic Route Network. They include:

  • Crooms Hill.
  • Stockwell Street.
  • Park Vista.
  • Nevada Street.
  • Maze Hill.
  • At GMV, West Parkside, John Harrison Way and Edmund Halley Way.
  • Charlton Park Lane.
  • All the Red Route side roads off the A102.

If you want to park a car, drive, cycle or travel on a bus on any of these streets come 2012, you might not be able to. (The bus routes involved, by the way, are the 47, 51, 53, 54, 89, 96, 99, 108, 129, 161, 177, 178, 180, 188, 199, 202, 244, 286, 291, 386, 422, 469, 472, 486, N1, N47 and N89.)

I say might, because exactly what the ODA will do with its draconian powers is still entirely unstated. Rather worrying, perhaps: if the planned restrictions are to be modest, short-term and benign, they’d surely be happy to tell us that.

If this year’s Games in Beijing are any guide, some roads will be closed entirely and others will have special Olympic vehicle-only lanes, the so-called “Zil lanes” in which only the “Olympic Family” can travel.

Most of Beijing’s main roads are multi-lane expressways – and of course half the traffic was banned every day – but even so, as I saw during the Games, the closure of just one lane caused enormous congestion for the unlucky drivers left with the rest of the road.

The only multi-lane roads in Greenwich’s Olympic Route Network are the Blackwall Tunnel itself, the A102 approach road, Woolwich Church Street, Deptford Church Street and a little bit of Shooters Hill Road. Even closing one lane of these would essentially double most drivers’ journey time, or worse.

And for Greenwich’s remaining single-lane roads, all are badly congested for much, if not most, of the working day. If the idea is to prevent the “Olympic family” from being caught in this congestion, there will be no option but to close these roads.

The final unknown about the Olympic Route Network is exactly how long it will last. Just for the duration of the Games? Oh no. The ODA is being given its powers by the middle of 2009, three years before the Olympics, for a reason – so that some restrictions can come in much earlier.

And even though most restrictions will only happen nearer to the Games, there will, the consultation document admits, be “some trials in summer 2011.” The Olympic period itself is surprisingly long; the document describes the Olympic Route Network as “primarily an operational measure for the 60 days of the Games.” Sixty days? But the Games themselves only last for 15 days.

My best guess is this. Outright road closures are likely to be for several hours at a time, perhaps more than once in the day, over a period of about two weeks. Lane closures, on the multi-lane roads, are likely to be full-time over the same period.

But some traffic management measures will start almost as soon as the ODA is granted the power to do them – around the middle of 2009. Greater parking and stopping restrictions will follow. Outright and draconian parking and stopping controls will be imposed for, at the very least, the entire 60-day period mentioned in the consultation document. And if you’re a shop dependent on passing trade – hard cheese.

The damage all this will do to the normal life of Greenwich, and the business of everyone not connected with the Olympics, is of course enormous. Another example of how the Games will do precisely the opposite of what the boosters claim.

Sick Transit

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TFL’S plan for a new “Greenwich Waterfront Transit” sounds like it should be rather good. A tram, perhaps? A river service of some kind? Surely a guided busway, at least?

Actually, I’m afraid, it’s complete rubbish. Despite the name, intended to make it seem like something special, it is simply a normal bus service – using normal diesel buses – from North Greenwich Tube station, via Woolwich, to Thamesmead and Abbey Wood. It won’t even give us any more trips – it will simply replace the existing 472 route, at precisely the same frequency.

There’s no doubt that Woolwich and Thamesmead need new transport links. But the only new things this will bring are a short stretch – around half a mile – of bus-only road in Thamesmead and a little diversion away from the existing 472 route to serve the Royal Arsenal development at Woolwich. For the rest of its route, it will run on the same roads as the existing bus routes do now.

In fact, the only thing remotely special about the “Greenwich Waterfront Transit” is the price – an eye-watering £20 million for just over five miles, plus operating costs of around £1 million a year, making it probably the most expensive bus route in the history of the world.

Even one of the claimed benefits of the route, the Royal Arsenal diversion, is being fiercely resisted by some residents. The development’s main thoroughfare, Number One Street, currently an attractive, pedestrianised boulevard leading down from the Arsenal’s main gateway, past the Firepower museum and other heritage buildings, to the river and pier, will be ripped up and turned into part of the bus route.

Jamie Milton, one Royal Arsenal resident, has organised a campaign and a petition against the move: it and another petition currently have around 500 residents’ signatures, a very substantial proportion of the development. “Number One Street is the only full-time pedestrianised area in Woolwich and is home to two listed buildings, the Royal Brass Foundry and the first-ever Royal Military Academy,” he says. “We are understandably up in arms about this.”

TfL says the route along Number One Street was chosen after an “extensive public consultation,” three words to send a shiver down any spine. In fact, says Milton, the consultation, in 2005, attracted just 27 responses from the entire Royal Arsenal development (perhaps not surprising, since it was still being built at the time). Of those 27, just 11 supported the bus route going down Number One Street!

Even our local Labour MP, Nick Raynsford, not known for his opposition to costly vanity schemes (he’s a fervent supporter of the Greenwich Park Olympics) can’t see the point of this one.

“I supported the original transit scheme as it offered the prospect of a convenient and rapid transport system from Thamesmead and Woolwich to North Greenwich,” he says. “However, as the scheme has been progressively watered down to what is now little more than a glorified 472 bus, its benefits have been seriously eroded. Bearing in mind the opposition of many residents in the Royal Arsenal to the current route through the Arsenal, I no longer consider it justifying the substantial costs involved.”

It had been hoped that the GWT would be a candidate for Boris Johnson’s bonfire of the vanity projects, his new transport strategy. Well, some other worthless Greenwich-area extravagances, such as the new £500 million Thames Gateway bridge, were laid to rest when the strategy was published last week. Later, unfunded phases of the GWT have also been canned.

But although there could still be scope for some route changes and cost cutting – no planning application has yet been submitted, and by now it should have been – it is looking like the first phase, the North Greenwich- Thamesmead – Abbey Wood route I describe, will go ahead.

And that’s a shame, because the money that’s being spent on annoying residents in the Arsenal could have paid for five or six new bus routes in places where they actually would be new, and where they actually are wanted.

Tube and DLR Engineering Works This Weekend

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Watch out for longer journey times this Sunday and Monday, as TFL carries out engineering works on the Tube and DLR networks. Replacement buses will be provided services between North Greenwich and Stratford underground stations, as well as replacing DLR services between Canary Wharf and Lewisham.