A102 road

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UK road A102.svg
A102 road
Direction
Start Clapton
End Kidbrooke
Roads joined UK road A2.svg A2 road
UK road A206.PNG A206 road
UK road A2203.PNG A2203 road
UK road A13.svg A13 road
UK road A12.svg A12 road
UK road A106.svg A106 road
UK road A107.svg A107 road

The A102 is a road that starts in Clapton in the north London Borough of Hackney and ends in Kidbrooke in the south London Borough of Greenwich. The A102 was formerly a continuous route including two motorway sections classified as the A102(M) however, subsequent to the renumbering of part of the route in 1999, the A102 designation belongs only to the section including the Blackwall Tunnel linking the A12 and the A2 and also to the section from Clapton to Hackney Wick.

Contents

[edit] Route

Rush hour on the A102 with the Millennium Dome in the background.

The A102 starts in Clapton at the junction of Lower Clapton Road and Urswick Road. It runs south along Urswick Road and continues east past 16th century Sutton House, East London's oldest house, and into Homerton High Street. It next turns south and runs along Kenworthy Road and then east into Wick Road for a short distance before the road designation ends at the A106 just to the west of the Hackney Wick interchange with the A12.

South of the A12/A13 interchange with the adjacent landmark Ernő Goldfinger designed Balfron Tower, the designation of the Blackwall Tunnel Approach reverts back to the A102 through the Blackwall Tunnels and under the River Thames to Greenwich. The road continues south-east as Blackwall Tunnel Southern Approach with flyovers over Blackwall Lane (A2203) and Woolwich Road (A206) before it heads south and climbs the hill to the Sun-in-the-Sands interchange with Shooters Hill Road (A2/A207) where it ends a short distance to the south of the junction as the road becomes the A2 road which joins from the roundabout above.

[edit] History

Until the late 1960s the A102 terminated at the junction with the A106 (Hackney Wick) and balance of the route described above to the junction with the A107 (via Wick Road, Kenworthy Road, Homerton High Street, Urswick Road, Lower Clapton road) was designated as B category (B112)[citation needed].

The A102 south of Old Ford, the southbound Blackwall Tunnel and the two sections of the A102(M) were all constructed in the mid and late 1960s as part of the East Cross Route which was intended to be the eastern section of the Ringway 1 (also know as the London Motorway Box) an ambitious and controversial Greater London Council plan to surround London with high speed roads - known as the London Ringways which was eventually canceled.

Prior to 1999, the A102 from the A2203 flyover to the A2 was designated as a second section of A102(M) motorway. The A102 continued through this junction passing under the East Cross Route flyover and joined the southbound East Cross Route where it was designated the A102(M) motorway as far as the south side of the grade separated Old Ford interchange. Here the designation reverted to the A102 along the southbound Blackwall Tunnel Northern Approach, under the triple-deck Bow interchange with the A11 and on towards East India Dock Road (A13) and the Blackwall Tunnel. When the A12 extension was opened through Wanstead, Leytonstone and Leyton to meet the north end of the East Cross Route at the Lea Interchange (and prompting the M11 link road protest), the A102(M) and the A102 as far south as the A13 were renumbered A12.

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[edit] External links