Strand Underpass - London, UK
N 51° 30.612 W 000° 07.089
30U E 699973 N 5710501
The Strand underpass is a tunnel that takes a single lane of traffic north, from the north west end of Waterloo Bridge to Kingsway just north of Aldwych. The co-ordinates used are for the "opening" stone at Waterloo Bridge.
Waymark Code: WMQDDH
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 02/09/2016
Views: 4
The "opening" stone is built into a wall on the north east side of Waterloo Bridge at the entrance to the Riverside Terrace at Somerset House. It is inscribed:
Strand Underpass
London County Council
The Underpass
was opened on 21st January 1964
by the Right Hon
Lord Morrison of Lambeth
The actual entrance to the tunnel is in the centre of the road and there is nowhere near it where the stone could have been better placed. The exit from the underpass is also in the centre of a road at approximate position 51° 30.888'N; 000° 07.115'W.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica website tells us about Herbert Morrison MP:
Herbert Stanley Morrison, Baron Morrison, (born Jan. 3, 1888, London—died March 6, 1965, Sidcup, Kent, Eng.), British Labour statesman who played a leading role in London local government for 25 years and was a prominent member of the coalition government in World War II and of the postwar Labour governments.
From about 1905 Morrison was constantly engaged in socialist politics, and in December 1914 he became part-time secretary of the newly formed London Labour Party. He became mayor of the London borough of Hackney in November 1919 and in March 1922 was elected to the London county council for East Woolwich. He was member of Parliament for South Hackney from 1923 to 1924 during Ramsay MacDonald’s first government and regained his seat in 1929. As minister of transport in the second MacDonald government, he was responsible for the Road Traffic Act of 1930 and the London Passenger Transport Act of 1931. Morrison again lost his parliamentary seat in 1931 but won it back in 1935 and became the dominant influence in turning the Labour Party away from its post-1931 extremism toward a pragmatic reformism.
On the formation of Winston Churchill’s coalition government in May 1940, Morrison became minister of supply. The following October he became home secretary and minister of home security. He held these offices until 1945, also serving in the war cabinet from 1942. In the 1945 general election he organized the Labour Party’s victory. Lord president of the council, deputy prime minister, and leader of the House of Commons in Clement Attlee’s governments, he was highly successful in carrying through a heavy legislative program. He became foreign secretary in March 1951 but was less successful in that post, which he held until his party lost office five months later. When Attlee retired from the leadership of the Labour Party in December 1955, Morrison, who had been deputy leader since 1951, was a candidate but was defeated by Hugh Gaitskell. He retired from the House of Commons in 1959 and was created a life peer.
Wikipedia has an article about the Strand Underpass that tells us:
The Strand Underpass (sometimes incorrectly called the Kingsway Underpass) is a vehicle tunnel in central London connecting Waterloo Bridge to Kingsway near Holborn.
The underpass is built within part of the former Kingsway tramway subway, which was 20 ft (6.6 m) wide and allowed bi-directional flow because of the fixed rails and relatively narrow width of the trams. The new underpass was built by John Mowlem & Co and opened on 21 January 1964. It is only 17 ft (6.25 m) wide, and consequently normally one-way northbound because of the side clearances required. The headroom is only 12 ft 6 in (3.75 m) due to the tunnel having to pass beneath the bridge abutment by a 1:12 gradient. An electronic 'eye' alerts drivers of tall vehicles and diverts them to an 'escape route' to the left of the entrance. However, high vehicles do still try to go through and so get stuck occasionally.
The underpass is a concrete box within the former tram subway, with the road surface at the original track level. At the northern end of the underpass the road rises to the surface on a new carriageway supported by metal pillars. This passes through the site of the former Aldwych tramway station: because of the greater width requirement, 27 trees and some pavement were removed for it to be constructed.
The tunnel is used by the 521 bus route northbound. In 2012, the direction of traffic in the tunnel was temporarily reversed, so that it was in use by southbound traffic. This was to facilitate easier traffic flow during the 2012 Summer Olympics.