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Re the Greenwich Foot Tunnel.
“Today, it is mainly used by tourists and leisure walkers”
Having lived a few minutes from the tunnel for over two decades, I’m not sure what statistics there are behind that assertion. I’ve never seen a survey or census to provide any hard data. My other half has used the tunnel every weekday as part of his commute for at least a decade, so if a survey was ever carried out, I think I’d be aware of it. You can’t tell from appearances whether a person on a bike is out for leisure or going to work – as many shower and change on arrival at the workplace.
Certainly at weekends the tunnel is full of visitors but on (pre covid) weekday rush hours it was full of commuters. There are (or were, when office workers actually went to an office) large numbers of folk who cycle from across south London to Canary Wharf via the foot tunnel.
Indeed – at the start of the covid crisis Greenwich Council (who manage the tunnel) closed it totally, but were persuaded to reopen it on weekdays, as the closure was preventing essential workers getting to their places of work. The (unfunded) proposal to build a bridge from Rotherhithe to Canary Wharf is predicated – partly – because the foot tunnel was so busy on weekday rush hours.
As an aside, the lifts fail all too frequently, and it’s not unusual for the council to take weeks to organise a repair. If a traffic light fails, it’ll be fixed same day, yet Greenwich Council never seem to put any urgency into lift repairs. Another example of pedestrian and cyclists being much lower down the pecking order of the Council traffic engineers…. Failure of the lifts makes the tunnel inaccessible to those with push chairs or users of wheelchairs, so it’s also an equal access issue.
Islanddweller,
I will hold my hand up to that one; it’s based on my personal (and admittedly limited) experiences of using the tunnel. I’m always happy to be corrected or clarified; at least when it’s done as knowledgeably and politely as this! If you’d like to copy and paste your comment onto the actual The Beauty of Transport article I would be absolutely delighted to be shown to be wrong in my perception. I’m really glad the Greenwich Foot Tunnel at least still has good commuter usage.
I wonder if the Woolwich Foot Tunnel does too? It’s always been eerily quiet whenever I’ve used it.