The campaign to extend the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) across the river to Thamesmead has stepped up with two MPs raising the issue.
The Minister for London, and now a prospective candidate for Mayor of London, Paul Scully MP paid a visit to Thamesmead last week to hear about the proposals, while local MP, Abena Oppong-Asare MP has written to the Transport Secretary calling for the railway to be built.
If built, then the DLR extension would run in a new spur off the Beckton branch to a new station near Beckton Riverside and then across the river to Thamesmead.
Local area transport map (c) TfL
The extension is considered essential to enable the construction of around 30,000 homes, mostly in the Thamesmead area, where a large swathe of land has been earmarked for development. The difficulty with building so many homes in Thamesmead is that it has very poor local transport links to the rest of London, meaning that a lot of people won’t want to live there unless transport links are improved.
Although Transport for London (TfL) has funding to carry out feasibility studies and is optimistic that the business case is sound, there’s no funding yet for the railway itself to be built.
Some of the costs would come from the property developer, and likely the councils, but as a transport investment, the bulk would have to be in the form of a loan or grant from the central government.
And there’s an increasing lobbying campaign to secure the funding.
Abena Oppong-Asare, who represents Erith and Thamesmead wrote to the Secretary of State for Transport Mark Harper noting that in the years of campaigning for the rail link she has “only ever heard warm words from an ever-growing cast list of transport ministers”, but that “while we are told the DLR is always on the way, it somehow never arrives.”
She noted that the opportunities for local economic growth are plain to see and the chance to ‘level up’ this part of London is real, and she has urged the Secretary of State to expedite the process to deliver the DLR to Thamesmead.
Meanwhile, the Minister for London, Paul Scully met councillors from Greenwich and Newham councils at Thamesmead last week to talk about the proposed extension.
The two councils, TfL, the Greater London Authority (GLA), Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) and local landowners are working together to campaign for the proposals. The partnership, known as the Thamesmead and Beckton Riverside Public Transport Delivery Board, are asking for the government to help support work on feasibility studies and development of the proposals.
The group were also joined by landowners including Peabody, Abrdn and St William, who detailed the economic benefits new development and improved connectivity would bring for both local residents and businesses. The new homes would be complemented by 55 hectares of open space, shops, leisure and cultural facilities.
A RAILWAY extension, in the South & worse still, London?
Is.t this contrary to the entirely fake “levelling-up” agenda?
Excuse my cynicism
Levelling up is about reducing the gap between poor and rich across the whole UK — and yes, that means impoverished areas of London as well.
Is Thamesmead a floodplain?
Most of London is a flood plain.
I can see that Beckton Riverside makes sense as a DLR extension. I suppose linking Beckton Riverside and Thamesmead helps with the business case, but wouldn’t it be a lot easier and better to extend the Elizabeth line from Abbey Wood to Thamesmead?
That would be horrifically expensive, not to mention, the two schools and many houses you’d have to demolish just to get the surface railway to a point where it can tunnel under the rest of the housing to get to the centre of Thamesmead.
The train can not turn at right angles from Abbey Wood station to reach Thamesmead town centre. Theb provision is in the Act to extend the Elizabeth line in to Kent. The blockage being Bexley council, which tries to view itself as not London. So all schemes stop ot the Royal Greenwich/Bexley border. Search for the proposed Greenwich rapid transit scheme of the late 1990’s.
It needs to be extended into Bexley borough. The MP represents ERITH & Thamesmead, & Erith is in Bexley. To reach Erith it has to go through Belvedere. Bexley is poorly served by TfL, no tubes, only buses, it suffers southeastern trains, which we can not call a service. Belvedere does not even have a night bus route.
Would Bexley support the necessary level of housing development needed to pay for the cost of building the extension and running it?
Say, turn Barnehurst golf course and Hall Place, North Park into urban density housing, and you might be able to get the funding.