Maxson Goh explores London’s Silvertown cycle shuttle, a free bus route ferrying cyclists through the new Silvertown Tunnel
On 7 April 2025, London unveiled one of its most ambitious infrastructure projects in recent memory: the Silvertown Tunnel. After four years of construction, the new link between the Greenwich Peninsula and the Royal Docks opened to traffic, aiming to ease congestion at the neighbouring Blackwall Tunnel. The new crossing features twin two-lane tunnels for both directions, with the left lane prioritised for heavy vehicles and buses and the right reserved for cars and other small vehicles. But there’s one group notably left out of this new passage beneath the Thames: cyclists. So excluded were they that just weeks after the ribbon was cut, around a thousand cyclists staged a ‘mass trespass’ ride through the tunnel in protest.
Transport for London’s (TfL’s) solution to the cycling ban was to launch a new dedicated bus service in tandem with the tunnel’s opening to carry cyclists and their bicycles across the tunnel. The Silvertown cycle shuttle or SCS as it says on the bus, is operated under a three-year contract by Stagecoach London at just under £2 million for the first year.
Cyclists can use the shuttle free for at least its first year of operation, and it operates at a frequency of five buses per hour, or every 12 minutes. The service is provided between 0630 and 2130hrs, seven days a week except Christmas Day. A single bus can take eight standard cycles, or four standard and one non-standard. Quirky, I thought. Perhaps that is something that would interest CBW readers… well, the editor evidently thought so as well, as before I knew it, I had booked another train ticket to the Capital. There was only one problem: I needed a bicycle to board the shuttle. Early plans included ‘borrowing’ a Santander Cycle or pleading with the driver, but thanks to the teams at Stagecoach London and TfL, all was sorted in short notice… no bicycle abductions necessary!
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