Transport for London is hiding the true cost of the Silvertown Tunnel, says Green London Assembly member Caroline Russell.
In a recent London Assembly session Caroline Russell grilled TfL bosses on the project costs, suggesting the publicly-owned body had made the full costs deliberately hard for the public to understand. She said that the cost of constructing and running the tunnel would cost £2.2 billion.
But TfL Silvertown Tunnel spokespeople suggested the full costs of the project were “commercially confidential”. They also refused to comment on a reported £10m pay-out to a firm that had been unsuccessful in bidding to run the project. Caroline Russell said: “When the Silvertown Road Tunnel contract was published TFL removed all detail on costs, and most detail on risk. This is the first time that TfL have been in front of the Assembly to defend the tunnel contract. If Londoners were asked how £2.2bn of investment in transport should be spent, I doubt they would have thought an urban motorway was the answer.”