SE23 Forum

One of the Forest Hill Society members wrote "I wish we could bury the South Circular".

Well, it could be buried, in a tunnel - through Forest Hill. I imagine a tunnel entrance on the wide section of Lordship Lane as it ascends to Wood Vale, with another entrance/exit perhaps near the Waldram Crescent junction with Stanstead Road.

OK OK I know government wants to spend less not more, but think of the social and economic benefits of a revitalised flourishing pedestrianized town centre!!

There may be EU money available that no-one has applied for, and there is currently unprecedented planning and tunnelling expertise in London following work on
1) Channel Tunnel, 2) Eurostar Stratford to St Pancras, 3) Jubilee Line extension, 4) Crossrail projects, 5) Planning the development of HS2.

Compared to some of these major projects, a road tunnel through Forest Hill shouldn't be too difficult.

Good idea, and in the meantime, we can ban diesel vehicles.
FH must be way over the (no doubt opted out) EU limits for nitrogen oxides. It is colourless and odourless yet is killing far more than the London pea soupers of the 50's - over 23000 a year in the UK.

I think it quite likely that the road approaching the lights causes a massive amount of local pollution due to the volume of traffic plus the constant and repeated hill starts leading up to the lights, but the air quality may not be monitored at that point. I am not sure where the nearest air quality monitoring station is.

Catford is our nearest monitoring station
http://www.londonair.org.uk/london/asp/b...oBulletin=

The figures from 2010 for FH
http://www.londonair.org.uk/london/asp/A...pecies=NO2
(find se23)
show the NO2 levels in FH worst at the London Rd junction and although the colour coding is deliberately confusing, I think I am right in thinking the NO2 levels in micrograms per M^3 are in the 80's - double the EU limit.
Catford has it worse, and we are not at Oxford St levels, but these levels are dangerous. It is crazy that tfl insist on pinning pedestrians in the middle of this invisible smog.

Burying the Rd would help, and all the fumes could then be vented through crates of platinum or something.

I read something recently which impugned the environmental consequences of underground thoroughfares; does anybody know exactly what the negatives are? Because in so many other busy European cities, this seems to be quite a common aspect of modern civic development, and I've always wondered why we don't have more of it here......

A tunnel was proposed many years ago - I think back in the day when the South Circular was the GLC's responsibility - it blighted the property proposed to be affected by the plans for years and then came to nothing.

The South Circular is a bit embarrassing really. It is a patchwork quilt of roads masquerading as an important segment of ring road. I can't think of anything that could be done with it except to put it all in a tunnel. This would be massively costly and so will probably never happen - it is South London after all. Shame though, other major cities elsewhere in the world do fund this sort of thing and reap the benefit.

With the London Mayoral election coming soon, I hoped that we might see commitments to at least do some research into proposals like the one at the top of this thread, but it seems to be the only usual platitudes on offer.