Three ways to drive across the river here, and the one that will not take a double-decker
A free ferry that takes the tallest thing we run, and a motorway tunnel four kilometres west that takes a 53-seater one way, both ways, and a 70-seat decker in only one of them. Which of those you use decides more journeys out of this town than anything else on this page.
Every town has a constraint that shapes how vehicles move through it. In Croydon it is the tram track in the carriageway. In Wimbledon it is a fortnight in summer. In Woolwich it is the Thames, and unusually the constraint is not that the river is hard to cross. It is that the crossings disagree with each other about what a large vehicle is.
The free one, which takes the biggest vehicles
The Woolwich Ferry runs from a pier about seven hundred metres from the town centre. Transport for London operates it, and TfL is unambiguous on the two points that matter to a coach operator. First: “The ferry is free.” Second, the vehicle limits — maximum height 4.7 m and maximum width 3.5 m. A 49–53 seat touring coach stands about 3.9 metres and is 2.55 metres wide; the 70-seat double-decker is about 4.4. Both board with room to spare, and the decker is the only vehicle for which that is worth saying.
Since May 2024 the service has run a two-vessel timetable seven days a week, roughly 05:00 to 21:00, every fifteen minutes. Vehicles displaying Hazchem plates and anything on the Dangerous Goods List are refused. Dense fog stops the boats. Very high tides can too, though TfL says the service is not usually affected by tidal conditions.
The fast one, which only half does
About four and a half kilometres west, the Blackwall Tunnel carries the A102 under the river. It has two bores of very different ages, and TfL publishes a different height limit for each:
| Crossing | Max height | A 3.9 m coach? | A 4.4 m decker? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Woolwich Ferry | 4.7 m (15′6″) | Yes — and free | Yes — and free |
| Blackwall Tunnel, southbound | 4.72 m (15′6″) | Yes | Yes |
| Blackwall Tunnel, northbound | 4.0 m (13′0″) | Yes, by about 10 cm | No |
| Rotherhithe Tunnel | 2.0 m, 2 tonnes | No — not even a minibus | No |
| Woolwich foot tunnel | Pedestrians only | No | No |
Read that table again, because the asymmetry is the point, and it is a decker problem rather than a coach problem. The northbound bore is the original, opened in 1897, and it is signed at four metres. A 70-seat double-decker cannot go north through it and must come back by the ferry, Silvertown or the A2. A 53-seater does fit — but by ten centimetres against our planning figure, which is why we treat the northbound bore as a decision rather than a default. London Buses settled the same argument long ago: route 108 has run single-deck through the Blackwall Tunnel since 1968 for exactly this reason. A driver who plans a round trip on the assumption that a tunnel works both ways has planned half a journey.
The Rotherhithe Tunnel is worse and less well known: two metres and two tonnes, which excludes a minibus, a Transit and most vans. It is a Victorian tunnel doing a modern job badly, and it is not a Woolwich option at all.
The new one, which is free for us and not for you
The Silvertown Tunnel opened on 7 April 2025, linking Silvertown to the Greenwich Peninsula alongside Blackwall. It is a charged crossing: a user charge applies at both Silvertown and Blackwall between 06:00 and 22:00, seven days a week, and the crossings are free overnight. TfL has said the charges rise from 21 September 2026.
But buses, coaches and vehicles with nine or more seats registered with the DVLA are exempt from the charge. So are Blue Badge holders, TfL-licensed taxis and recovery vehicles. For a 16-seat minibus or a 53-seat coach, Silvertown and Blackwall are free at any hour of the day. The tunnel also carries a proper bus service through it — the Superloop SL4 and an extended route 129 — which is a fair signal that it is built for large vehicles in a way the 1897 bore was not.
What that means when you book
Four things follow from all of the above, and they are the reason we ask which side of the river your day ends on before we quote.
A minibus has every option. At roughly 2.6 metres it clears the ferry, both Blackwall bores and Silvertown, and it is exempt from the tunnel charge if it is registered as nine seats or more. A full coach has every option too, on the numbers, though we route it round the 1897 bore rather than through it. A double-decker has three: the ferry, Silvertown, and Blackwall southbound only. An evening job needs planning, because the ferry stops around nine and a group that crossed on it at four in the afternoon is coming home through a tunnel. And a ferry-based plan needs slack, because a fifteen-minute service with a queue in front of it is not a fifteen-minute crossing.
None of this is exotic knowledge. It is signed, published and free to read. It is simply that an operator quoting Woolwich from thirty miles away has usually never had to know it, and will find out on your day rather than before it.