Article updated August 2026
London has continued to invest heavily in major transport infrastructure: the Elizabeth Line, the Northern Line extension to Battersea Power Station, London Overground extensions including at Barking Riverside, and, since our original piece, the completed Silvertown Tunnel. Back in 2023, our early conclusion was that most of these projects hadn't yet moved the needle much beyond what neighbouring boroughs were already experiencing.
We said at the time that once the Silvertown Tunnel opened, it would be worth revisiting the data. It's now open, the Elizabeth Line has three years of trading behind it rather than one, and there's genuinely new evidence to weigh up. Here's what's changed.
Key Highlights
- The Silvertown Tunnel opened in April 2025 and has measurably eased congestion, with morning peak journey times on approach roads down by up to 70% and cross-river bus use up 160%, though it remains contested on environmental grounds.
- A TfL and Department for Transport evaluation of the Elizabeth Line, published in 2025, found 125,000 new jobs registered within 1km of stations between 2022 and 2023, and 71,000 new homes built within that radius between 2015 and 2024, with 70,500 more in the pipeline.
- Station-level data now shows a real Elizabeth Line effect at specific stops - Woolwich, Abbey Wood, and Ealing Broadway are all outperforming London's overall price trend in 2026 - even though our original borough-wide comparison found the effect was hard to isolate.
- The picture is uneven along the line: some stations, including parts of Ealing and Acton, have grown more slowly than the line's eastern stretch, so "Elizabeth Line effect" isn't a uniform story.
- The Northern Line extension to Battersea has embedded itself into a completed regeneration story, with over £5 billion invested and 2,200+ homes delivered at Battersea Power Station alone.
The Silvertown Tunnel: The Revisit We Promised
This is the one we said we'd come back to. The Silvertown Tunnel opened on 7 April 2025, connecting Newham and Greenwich under the Thames, and the early data is in.
TfL reported that in the weeks after opening, the Silvertown and Blackwall tunnels together carried around 88,000 vehicles a day, down from roughly 100,000 using Blackwall alone beforehand, with about 20,000 of those now using Silvertown. City Hall later reported morning peak journey times on approach roads down by as much as 70%, and a 160% increase in journeys on the new zero-emission cross-river bus routes. TfL also noted some displaced traffic at other river crossings, including the Woolwich Ferry, so it's not a story of congestion disappearing so much as it moving and easing overall.
What we can't yet say with confidence is what this has done to house prices or housing delivery in Newham or Greenwich specifically - that data takes longer to show up than traffic counts, and a road tunnel's effect on residential demand is a different question to its effect on journey times. We'd treat this as an early positive signal on the transport side, not yet proof of a property market impact either way.
The Elizabeth Line: From "Negligible" to Genuinely Visible
Our 2023 conclusion, based on borough-wide comparisons, was that the Elizabeth Line hadn't yet had a measurable impact on Ealing or Greenwich beyond what comparable neighbouring boroughs experienced. With more data and more time, that conclusion needs revising, though the picture is more nuanced than a simple reversal.
A 2025 post-opening evaluation of the Elizabeth Line, led by Arup with academic input from UCL and LSE, found 125,000 new jobs registered within 1km of stations between 2022 and 2023, and 71,000 new homes built within that radius between 2015 and 2024, with a further 70,500 in the pipeline. That's a substantially more positive picture than our original borough-level analysis captured - likely because the effect is concentrated tightly around individual stations rather than spread evenly across whole boroughs.
Station-level price data backs this up, at least for some stops. Recent analysis shows Woolwich seeing annual price growth of 7-8%, Abbey Wood around 6-7%, and Ealing Broadway roughly 9% - all comfortably outperforming a London-wide average that fell over the same period. But this isn't uniform along the line: other analysis of the ten years since the line's construction began shows Acton, Ealing, and Canary Wharf among the slower-growing areas relative to the rest of the route, with the eastern stretch through Newham and Redbridge seeing the sharpest gains - Maryland Station in Newham saw prices more than double.
The honest takeaway: our original "negligible impact" conclusion was probably too broad. The effect is real, but it's concentrated at specific stations rather than spread evenly across the boroughs they sit in - which matters if you're assessing a site near a station versus assessing a borough as a whole.
The Northern Line Extension: From New Infrastructure to Finished Story
The Northern Line extension to Battersea Power Station and Nine Elms wasn't a major focus of our original piece, but it's worth a mention now that the area has matured from a construction site into a completed regeneration story. Over £5 billion has been invested in Battersea Power Station since 2012, delivering more than 2,200 homes and 800,000 sq ft of offices, with further phases of the development still under contract. Property commentary now frames the area less as a speculative opportunity and more as an established, if expensive, part of the London market.
Who's Benefiting Most, Revisited
Our 2023 conclusion was that infrastructure benefits were clearest in historically deprived areas, and that the effect on already-affluent areas like Ealing was harder to isolate. The 2026 picture partly supports this and partly complicates it.
The strongest, clearest gains are still in areas that were genuinely underserved before their stations opened - Newham's eastern stretch of the Elizabeth Line being the standout example. But Ealing Broadway's 9% growth suggests that even relatively affluent, already-well-connected areas can see a real, measurable uplift once enough time has passed - it just takes longer to separate from background market noise than in areas starting from a lower base.
What This Means for Developers
- Don't judge infrastructure impact at the borough level. Our original methodology likely understated the Elizabeth Line's effect because averaging across a whole borough dilutes what's actually a station-specific story.
- Give it time. Three years wasn't enough to see the Elizabeth Line's full impact; the clearest data is only now emerging, more than three years after opening.
- The Silvertown Tunnel's traffic benefits are real but its property market impact is still unproven - treat any early claims about house price effects near the tunnel with caution until more data accumulates.
- Site-level, station-level analysis will consistently tell you more than borough-level averages when assessing infrastructure-driven opportunity.
With LandInsight, you can access financial comparables that show how your site compares to others in the area, helping you make the viability of your developments stack up - plus check whether you're near a station, and how far its measurable effect actually reaches.
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