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London's £4 billion 'Super Sewer' could disrupt east-west segregated cycle route

Massive construction project could see years of diversions for riders, and may also cause delays in its completion

London’s planned east to west cycle superhighway, dubbed ‘Crossrail for the Bike’ faces disruption for up to three years within 12 months of being opened to cyclists – who may be forced to take detours as a result of works associated with the city’s £4 billion ‘Super Sewer’ project.

According to the London Evening Standard, parts of the cycle route running from Tower Gateway to the Westway, currently open for consultation and due to be completed in 2016, will have to be dug up while works are carried out on the Thames Tideway Tunnel at Blackfriars and close to Embankment Underground station.

Transport for London says that it aims to provide an alternative, safe route for cyclists should detours be required, but depending on the exact locations of the works, it could prove problematic to easily re-route riders – expected to number 3,000 an hour at peak times – particularly at Embankment.

TfL’s managing director for surface transport, Leon Daniels, told the newspaper: “We are working closely with Thames Water to ensure that there is no impact on the superhighway. It is planned that in the event of any closures, a safe, segregated and clearly signed cycle lane will be installed to get cyclists past the works.”

But a spokesman for Thames Tideway Tunnel, which received the green light from the government last week as it was grnated planning consent, suggested that sections of the planned cycle route might even be delayed.

He said: “We are liaising closely with TfL to identify ways of working collaboratively to minimise any impacts that our construction works may have on the Cycle Superhighway. These include the option of a phased approach to the Cycle Superhighway’s construction that integrates with our own plans.”

The project, the scale of which dwarfs that of the £48 million east-west cycle route, will see a 16-mile tunnel be constructed from Acton in west London to Abbey Mills in the east of the capital, linking 34 sewer overflows.

Contractors will need access to certain parts of the roads running along the river to carry out work to connect those to the tunnel, including at Embankment and Blackfriars, which is also where the Cycle Superhighway running along the river intersects with the planned north-south route.

An unidentified source told the Standard’s transport correspondent, Matthew Beard: “They have no idea how they are going to do this or what the effect is. They haven’t started on it.

“These are quite large land reclamation jobs and you have to work on the land-side. In order to do that you need at least one lane but if you do that it takes out the cycle route.

“The idea is that they do the cycle superhighway in 2015 and then in 2016 take it out all again for Thames Water. The concern is you are going to have to pay tens of millions of pounds and you are going to have to take it all out,” he added.

Last week, it emerged that organisations representing some of London’s major employers were seeking to secure an extension to the six-week consultation period over the two Cycle Superhighways and were also demanding more details of the schemes.

Mayor Boris Johnson, who is hoping to stand as a candidate at next year’s general election and will not be seeking re-election as mayor, was also accused of trying to bulldoze the scheme through before he leaves his current position in 2016. It could be that his successor inherits the headache of reconciling the cycle routes with the tunnel works.

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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16 comments

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dafyddp | 10 years ago
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Meeting, 2007: "we need both improve the aging victorian swers and to build safer, mire efficient cycle highways fit for the 21st century. I know, let's do both, but make we just get the order right. We'll sort out the sewer, then build the cycle route on top. While we're at it, let's sort out any super cabling or broad band or whatever, and lay all that down too."
"Nah..."

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CanAmSteve | 10 years ago
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C'mon. It's a Hole-in-the-Road. Only the Czarist-owned Evening Pravda would decide that hole had to be under the cycle lane. It should be under the Bentley Lane  1

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CanAmSteve | 10 years ago
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C'mon. It's a Hole-in-the-Road. Only the Czarist-owned Evening Pravda would decide that hole had to be under the cycle lane. It should be under the Bentley Lane  1

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matthewn5 | 10 years ago
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Why not put it on the north side of the road in the first place, then only traffic would be disrupted by the super sewer. Win-win!

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thereverent | 10 years ago
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The Evening Standard makes it sounds like because of this it's not worth building the bike route. But this only affects a small part of it.
It looks this this has been drafted in as an excuse for the route to try and delay it.

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teaboy | 10 years ago
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Even with the 'superhighway' the Embankment will carry 3 lanes of motor traffic. How about removing the vehicles from one of those to provide a safe, traffic-free bypass?

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Yennings | 10 years ago
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The super sewer is as badly needed as the bike route. It's simply not acceptable to fill the Thames with raw effluent every time there's heavy rain. If this means a few disruptions for us cyclists, so be it unfortunately. See the bigger picture. These are all major infrastructure projects that will ultimately make London a healthier place.

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Pub bike replied to Yennings | 10 years ago
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Yennings wrote:

The super sewer is as badly needed .

Yes if you believe that

"Some of the CSOs on the tidal River Thames discharge over 50 tonnes per second of sewage into the river"

and that

"millions of tonnes of sewage [that] regularly flows into the capital's river and which can now occur after as little as two millimetres of rainfall."

Planning consent or otherwise, both of these seem implausible to say the least, and it is very difficult to measure flows from CSOs, or the actual dilution of the sewage by rainfall.

The tunnel is a very nice way though for Thames Water's overseas investors to avoid increasing the capacity of its treatment works which they would have to do at their own cost versus building a new piece of infrastructure for which they can charge customers additional money.

See http://www.ciwem.org/news/2013/jan/thames-tideway-tunnel-debate.aspx

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jacknorell | 10 years ago
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Why would Thames Water be able to call the shots around this? TfL has the power to ensure Thames Water provides good alternatives during the construction, not the other way around.

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OldRidgeback | 10 years ago
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Well that's a bit shit.

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Leodis | 10 years ago
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Effin hell how much money is spent on London, £15bn on Crossrail then a "cycle crossrail", no wonder so many in Scotland feel disillusioned

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Darren Franks replied to Leodis | 10 years ago
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Let's keep things in proportion here. London (a net contributor to UK GDP) generates more GDP than the whole of Scotland (which is a net beneficiary).

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bikebot replied to Leodis | 10 years ago
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Leodis wrote:

Effin hell how much money is spent on London, £15bn on Crossrail then a "cycle crossrail", no wonder so many in Scotland feel disillusioned

You forgot the £4.2bn super sewer, which as every infrastructure project in London is now being compared to crossrail, must now be described as a sort of "crossrail for poo".

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kie7077 replied to Leodis | 10 years ago
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Leodis wrote:

Effin hell how much money is spent on London, £15bn on Crossrail then a "cycle crossrail", no wonder so many in Scotland feel disillusioned

Silly statement when it is Londoners who will be paying for the sewer upgrade, sewage enters the Thames on average every week now, I'm not convinced this is the best solution but something needs to be done.

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CanAmSteve replied to kie7077 | 10 years ago
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"...sewage enters the Thames on average every week now, I'm not convinced this is the best solution..."

Hey - it's good enough for the local breweries  1

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Yennings replied to CanAmSteve | 10 years ago
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CanAmSteve wrote:

"...sewage enters the Thames on average every week now"

And that, in a nutshell, is why I don't drink London Pride...

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