Thamesmead DLR plan: TfL award £42 million contract
A £42 million contract has been awarded by TfL to Amey for an early scoping exercise covering the DLR extension to north Thamesmead.
It will cover a review of the programme and any risks, early work definition and survey scoping.
The extension is set to split from the Beckton branch to a new station at Beckton Riverside then head under the Thames to a station in north Thamesmead, located where KFC currently sits at Cannon Retail Park.
Elizabeth line access
The awarding of an initial £42 million compares starkly with money allocated to improve access for Thamesmead residents to the Elizabeth line .
£23 million was awarded for a Bus Rapid Transit scheme which was set to start in 2026. It’s now delayed until 2029 and the “rapid” part is gone. It’s been rebranded with some elements dropped or paused.
There’s no new bus stop outside a near-2,000 homes development being built as part of the Thamesmead Housing Zone, while the pinch point at Harrow Manorway near Abbey Wood station has no plan for improvement.
That pinch point is encountered by thousands of people a day on buses heading to Abbey Wood station from Thamesmead, Belvedere and Erith. Bus lanes exist to the north but lanes drop from two to one for a stretch near the station where the bus lane disappears, leaving public transport users in long queues.
This spot and no plan to remedy the issue says much about how existing Thamesmead residents – and a fair few forthcoming ones – who want to reach the Elizabeth line are very much second class citizens when it comes to funding compared to the DLR.
To typify that, TfL recently cut buses from 800 new homes in south Thamesmead heading to Abbey Wood Elizabeth line station.
Bus plans
So what will the £23 million provide? Very little of note. Some reworked kerbs on Western Way in Thamesmead and slight changes to roundabouts is about the sum total of physical changes.
Nothing substantive that’ll have much impact on access to the nearby Elizabeth line from much of Thamesmead.
That’s despite the Elizabeth line (and other services such as Thameslink and Southeastern Metro in Woolwich and Abbey Wood) offering far more destinations, faster journeys and at higher frequencies than the DLR will.
Abbey Wood station, for example, offers around 20 trains to London across the three services and that number is set to increase.
Thamesmead’s DLR will also be even less frequent than initially planned as TfL have dropped a proposed turnback.
Future funds
With much more money set to be allocated to the DLR – which only heads to the north of Thamesmead ensuring most of the town still requires a bus to reach it – it’ll become ever starker how poor links to the Elizabeth line are and how little planned improvements are proposed on that front.
Unless people live within pretty close proximity of the new station it’s difficult to understand why anyone in Thamesmead, either existing resident of forthcoming at some plots, wouldn’t just use the Elizabeth line instead so how about some substantive improvements to make that easier?
Oh, and the plan is that Peabody will build many new homes around the DLR station. They cannot even manage to do that on acres of vacant land they own round Abbey Wood station seconds from the Elizabeth line after nearly 15 years in charge.
With Peabody and TfL calling the shots in Thamesmead a huge deal of potential is being squandered to build homes and improve access to the Elizabeth line, while the DLR takes almost all attention.
