On This Day: The second Blackwall tunnel opens to become London's busiest river crossing

August 2: The second Blackwall tunnel opened on this day in 1967 – doubling the traffic that could move beneath the Thames in what is now London’s busiest river crossing.

The new two-lane passageway, which took seven years to dig, was designed to reduce congestion in the original 1897 one – although both are now jammed at peak times.

The second 0.7-mile long tunnel exclusively carries southbound road traffic between Blackwall and the Greenwich peninsula, while vehicles head north on the older one.

A British Pathé newsreel shows Desmond Plummer, the former leader of the later abolished Greater London Council, opening the new tunnel.

Modern drivers, who regularly grind to a halt inside the now grimy passageway, will be astonished by how different it looked and operated back in 1967.

The newly erected, clean concrete walls gave the £7million tunnel a bright feel and the reporter said only 40,000 vehicles per day were expected to use the tunnel.

More than 100,000 cars, motorcycles, buses and lorries now use the crossing each day and during rush hour it takes 19 minutes on average to get from one side to the other.

Although, this is still better than the 45 minutes that commuters typically spent stuck under the Thames in the easternmost crossing in Greater London.

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Ten miles east, the 1980-completed Dartford tunnel, which takes M25 traffic beneath the river from the Essex side to Kent, helped alleviate some of the congestion.

But commuter numbers have continued to rise since then – even after the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge was built at Dartford in a bid to relieve congestion.

The newsreel also showed the sideways brimming with pedestrians, who are now banned from the tunnel, which was bombed by the IRA in 1979.

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There are plans for an alternative roadway to the Blackwall Tunnel, which connects the A2 south of the river with the A12 and is the only major crossing in east London.

Transport for London have suggested opening a crossing at Silvertown, a mile east of Blackwall.

Also, to alleviate traffic using the Woolwich Ferry – which is two miles east and mainly used by taller lorries – another boat crossing at Beckton is being considered.

Boris Johnson scrapped plans to build a Thames Gateway Bridge on the same site as the proposed new ferry by 2013 when he replaced Ken Livingstone as mayor.