GLC/TD/C/36/003

Dover Radial Route (Shooters Hill Tunnel Scheme): Report on Proposals Compiled by Denis Roberts, with plans

Date range	1964
Location	London Metropolitan Archives (see all files stored here)
Catalogue	See entry
File base	Fond GLC, subfond TD/C

Context

This is a plastic-bound report with the full title "Dover Radial Route (Shooters Hill Tunnel Scheme): M.2-M.1 Connection". That makes it sound very interesting indeed, but it also looks decidedly home-made, with a stencilled title, so this evidently wasn't a published report with wide circulation. It turns out that this isn't an official report at all - it's a submission from a member of the public who opposed the official plan for the Dover Radial Route and wanted to make a case for an alternative. It comes complete with some very neat maps which have been hand-shaded with coloured pencil. In this case, he was concerned that building an improvement to the A2 which simply ran in towards London and ended at New Cross would fail to serve traffic heading over the Thames, or attempting to transit London from the north and west. What he couldn't have known when he wrote his report is that the LCC, and later the GLC, had plans for a whole network of motorways that would serve those needs, of which the Dover Radial Route was just a part, and that the DRR wasn't supposed to fix that problem in isolation.

The author has evidently drawn together whatever facts he could find about the DRR proposals, and schemes to upgrade the A2 further outside London, which must have been hard to come by. As a result he sometimes reaches a false conclusion, such as the various schemes having the aim of extending the M2 all the way to New Cross. He refers to the DRR proposals as "M2" throughout, and also gives that number to his own proposal.

The gist of his idea is that the DRR as proposed should be built, but west of Shooters Hill should only be a spur towards Central London. At Shooters Hill the mainline of the M2 (as he calls it) should then branch off north-west, crossing the Thames on a suspension bridge and then the Royal Docks on a second suspension bridge, before following the line of the Northern Outfall Sewer and the Lea Valley to reach the vicinity of Waltham Cross. It would then turn west along roughly the line of the modern M25 to reach South Mimms and then follow the A6 to the M1. A tunnel under Shooters Hill is included, hence the title of the item in the archive's catalogue.

People with camera copies

Chris Marshall has a partial copy.