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Transport for London (TfL) has been talking about extending the DLR to Thamesmead since before London Fields became overrun with TikTokkers.
First floated way back in the 2010s, London Mayor Sadiq Khan recently confirmed that the DLR extension was part of his ambitious 10-year plan for TfL.
Now Bexley Council has said that the DLR needs to be extended even further than Thamesmead, to Belvedere in southeast London. Bexley Council leader Baroness O’Neill urged residents to tell TfL they needed the line to be extended further after a recent public consultation.
The current plan is expected to see the DLR branch off at Gallions Reach, travelling via Beckton Riverside and then under the Thames to Thamesmead. Bexley Council has proposed extending this same branch further southeast to Belvedere. While a new station at Thamesmead is being designed with the potential for an extension, Belvedere isn’t part of the current plans.
In its public response to the consultation, Bexley Council called TfL’s decision to terminate the DLR in Thamesmead ‘a major missed opportunity to unlock significantly more housing and employment growth in the area’.
The council said: ‘Belvedere offers a much more logical terminus, comprising an existing transport interchange, at the centre of a large cluster of development sites and on the doorstep of a one of the largest but least connected industrial areas in London.’
However the costs of extending further haven’t been calculated. Bexley Council would need to find property developers to build flats around the potential Belvedere station to fund the line.
Bexley councillor Anthony Okereke recently signed off £200,000 to be spent on the extension to Thamesmead. It was predicted two years ago that the whole project could cost up to £1.7 billion.
The current consultation is the final stage before TfL applies to the government for a Transport and Works Act Order (TWAO), which grants TfL the legal powers to build the railway, however the full funding has not been agreed yet. If approved, construction is expected to start in 2028 with the first trains arriving in the early 2030s.
The DLR could soon run overnight on weekends.
Everything we know about the Bakerloo extension so far.
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