Can King Charles III live up to Queen Elizabeth II’s infrastructure legacy?

King Charles’ infrastructure legacy is likely to be quite different to that of his mother as the sector is now looking to build fewer energy-intensive projects and focus more on clean transport alternatives. This is an area that King Charles feels passionate about, having made his first speech regarding pollution as far back as 1970 and has spent decades speaking out about issues that harm nature, such as deforestation and sewage dumping, and taking actions to prevent them.

Appropriately, the government has already announced that the England Coast Path will be renamed the King Charles III England Coast Path. It has also announced the establishment of a King’s Series of National Nature Reserves, with five new nature reserves to be declared each year for the next five years. Forestry England is also looking establishing a new woodland on land that it will buy between now and March 2025 and will call these new areas of greenery Coronation Woods.

While these are all positive signs for the environment and appropriate for King Charles, there will still be major infrastructure projects built in the coming decades – and perhaps some might even be named after him. Below we look at some of the most notable pieces of engineering that bear his mother’s name and wonder whether he can expect something similar.

Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, Dartford

Perhaps the biggest and best-known piece of infrastructure named after the UK's former monarch is the QEII bridge, part of the Dartford Crossing. The 2.9km single span cable-stayed bridge was devised as a new connection between Essex and Kent to take the pressure off the overloaded Dartford Tunnels and provide an additional link to the newly opened M25. A consortium known as Cementation Cleveland Dartford Consortium, featuring Kvaerner Construction and Kvaerner Cleveland Bridge, started the £120M construction in summer 1988 and completed in three years. On opening in October 1991, it was briefly the longest single-span bridge in Europe. Today it carries 150,000 vehicles each day.

Now it’s the QEII bridge that’s become congested and another major piece of infrastructure is being devised to alleviate it: the Lower Thames Crossing. It’s the first river crossing east of London since the construction of the QEII – perhaps it could become the King Charles III Crossing? Whether King Charles would want his name associated with such a controversial piece of infrastructure is uncertain, but it is intended to be a pathfinder project for carbon neutral construction, which may appeal.

Queen Elizabeth II Metro Bridge

The Dartford bridge is hardly the only bridge to bear the Queen’s name. In Newcastle, the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge carries the Tyne & Wear Metro over the River Tyne between the city of Newcastle and the town of Gateshead. The 353m bridge was designed by WA Fairhurst & Partners and constructed by Cementation Construction (now part of Skanska) and Cleveland Bridge specifically for the Metro. Work started in 1976 with construction taking place on both banks, before meeting in the middle in the summer of 1978. It was completed in 1980 before being opened by the Queen on 15 November 1981 and Metro services commenced in the city nine days later.

While there are no current plans to build a new bridge across the Tyne for King Charles to get his name on, there are hopes for a £745M extension of the Tyne & Wear Metro called the Washington Metro Loop, part of the wider bid to restore the Leamside line. King Charles could hope to have the whole Loop named in his honour, but that might not be feasible. The Loop features a crossing of the River Wear, so maybe he can have his name stamped on that part. It might take a few trips to the area to ingratiate himself with the public, but with no funding yet provided for the project, he has time.

Queen Elizabeth II Dock

Construction on this small dock (246m by 30m) on the River Mersey commenced in 1949, before the Elizabeth had ascended to the throne. It has four berths, each capable of handling 30,000t ships and has dock gates made of welding steel, each weighing 1,700t. Opening for business in 1954, it was one of the first pieces of infrastructure to be named in the Queen’s honour.

This might be an area where King Charles could well see his name applied, as the government is pushing freeports as a means of driving the nation’s trade and innovation. Last month it was announced that there will be two new freeports in Wales – the Anglesey Freeport and Celtic Freeport. Perhaps either of those could eventually bear his name – he was Prince of Wales for 64 years, after all.

Queen Elizabeth II Reservoir

Work on this 20M litre reservoir in Walton on Thames started in 1936, when Elizabeth just 10 years old, but work was interrupted by the war. It did not recommence until 1957 when engineering firm W & C French took over the job, creating a reservoir with a rolled clay core that extends into the underlying blue London clay. Either side of the core is a fill of mixed clay and gravel and the reservoir walls were conducted by dragging gravel from the floor of the reservoir. It was opened by the Queen in March 1962 and is now owned by Thames Water and underwent some major upgrade work in 2021.

While there have been no new drinking water reservoirs built in the UK for 30 years, King Charles is arriving on the throne at the right time to have one named after him as there are several in the works. The nearest to having shovels in the ground is Portsmouth Water’s Havant Thicket Reservoir, where contractors have just built a trial embankment to inform its design.

Heathrow Terminal 2 – The Queen’s Terminal

Heathrow’s new Terminal 2 was built on the site of the Queen's Building, an office building that was opened by her Majesty in 1955, so it was only right that her name was preserved in the new development. Following the demolition of that building in 2009, construction was carried out between 2010 and 2014 by HETCo, a joint venture between Ferrovial and Laing O’Rourke, working from a design by Luis Vidal and Architects. The £2.3bn terminal was opened by the Queen on 23 June 2014.

Whether or not King Charles would want to have a terminal named after him is uncertain. On the one hand, he presents himself as a green champion, so should be against aviation due to its toxic emissions, but on the other it was reported last summer he took over 20 private flights in the space of the previous year to avoid road traffic. While there are no plans for a brand new terminal anywhere currently, Bristol Airport is planning to expand its capacity from 10M annual passengers to 12M, so there might be a new wing there that needs a name – or perhaps, if Heathrow finally gets permission to build its third runway, it could bear his title.

The Jubilee Line

Although it doesn’t bear her name, the London Underground’s silver line was named in honour of the Queen having spent 25 years on the throne – although it didn’t open until 1979, two years after that anniversary, and the ribbon was actually cut by King Charles in his then role of Prince of Wales. Perhaps the Queen didn’t show up because it was mostly repurposed buildings, track and stations, some going back as far as the 1860s. The only brand new part of the line, which ran from Stanmore to Charing Cross, was 4km of twin tunnels between Baker Street and Kings Cross.

It was only during the 1990s that the modern eastern section of the Jubilee line that we know now was added. With engineering firms including Mott MacDonald (London Bridge), Arup (Canary Wharf, Stratford), McAlpine (North Greenwich), WSP (Canning Town) and many more working on the project, construction started in 1993 and an additional 11 stations opened on the line in 1999.

While there’s unlikely to be a new London Underground line added soon, there are plans for extending the London Overground westward in what is currently known as the West London Orbital. Overground lines currently don’t have individual names, but perhaps this one could buck convention in honour of our new monarch. Or perhaps King Charles will have to wait to reach his jubilee before he is afforded this honour – though he’ll be pushing 99 years old by then.

Golden Jubilee Bridges

These two cable-stayed footbridges flank the Hungerford Bridge across the River Thames in central London and were named to honour the Queen’s 50^th anniversary of being on the throne in 2002. The concept design was won by architects Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands and WSP, while the detailed design was carried out by Gifford (now Ramboll). It was a difficult engineering feat as the railway line on the Hungerford Bridge had to remain running during the works, and the Bakerloo line tunnels under the Thames are very close beneath the riverbed. Preliminary works had to be halted at a certain point as London Underground was unhappy with the risks associated with the support structure on the north side being built within 15m of the tube line. It was redesigned to move the structure out of the riverbed and onto the north embankment.

The 300m-long decks were raised by incremental launching, with each 50m section being pulled across the river using a 250m steel truss weighing 300t. This was repeated until the decks spanned the river, supported by temporary steel and concrete piers. The 25t pylons that now hold it up were raised over the next two weeks, and then the decks were jacked up to connected by cable stays.  The concrete deck was then lowered into its final position and the temporary piers and supports dismantled.

There is currently another Thames crossing being constructed in a very constricted environment, namely the Silvertown Tunnel. Whether King Charles would want to have it named in his honour when it enters operation in 2025 remains to be seen – although it does have some green credentials in the fact that it will allow London buses to cross the river in east London, creating new public transport networks. However, King Charles’ name might be more suited to a new section of the Thames Path – similar to the new Dukes Meadows Bridge that has recently been added to it in Chiswick.

The Elizabeth line

The newest and perhaps most celebrated infrastructure achievement named after Queen Elizabeth II is London’s flashy new railway once known as Crossrail. It took 13 years to construct, from 2009 to 2022, and the final price is somewhere in the region of £20bn, but it is undeniably an engineering feat. Stretching to 118km in its full length, which extends from Reading to Shenfield, it features 42km of new tunnels under central London and has 10 brand new state-of-the-art stations. To pull off the job, pretty much every Tier 1 contractor was involved in some part of the project.

Despite the numerous delays and cost overruns, its opening was momentous enough that Queen Elizabeth herself made a trip down to the new Elizabeth line Paddington station in the final months of her life, when her public appearances were few and far between. She didn’t take a ride though, as the 140km/h speed might have been too much for at that point, but she did unveil a commemorative plaque that records her connection with railways. It is good fortune that the eventual opening of the Elizabeth line coincided with her Platinum Jubilee for spending 70 years on the throne – one wonders if, had it been delivered on time and opened in 2018, it might have had a different name entirely.

Today, although Transport for London’s current financial situation won’t allow it, there is still hope that Crossrail 2 will one day be built, travelling from Surrey in the south west, through central London, and out north eastwards into Hertfordshire. It would be just as big a project as the first Crossrail, but perhaps this could bear King Charles’ name – if timed right, it might be done in time for his jubilee in 25 years.

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