please empty your brain below

I think the cross-river Hilton ferry may be the most expensive transport per mile of journey anywhere in the world. Your £3.90 gets you a journey that's 750 feet long, meaning it costs £27.50 per mile. If air travel cost the same, it would be £95,000 for a one-way ticket from London to New York. Even the Dangleway is cheaper, because the journey is nearly five times as long.
@Mike Scott

Is a cash single (£4.80) for Covent Garden to Leicester Square more per mile?
The lack of hassle will definitely encourage me to travel more often.
oh good, DG, sounds like we've got some interesting trips to read about coming up ... as to "Who'd pay over six quid for a boat ride anyway" I think the answer is plenty of people as long as they view it as a pleasure trip and not an everyday form of transport
Is there a bar on board these services?
Being on the back deck of one of these boats is one of the best ways to see the main sights along the Thames and even at £8 it's a bit of a bargain when people will pay £30 to go to the top of the shard. And you get a bit of transportation thrown in for good measure.

And yes there is a bar serving alcohol onboard.
Is there any further concession to those holding a Freedom Pass ?
sykobee, yes there is (well, on the Thames Clipper services not the Hilton shuttle)
Freedom pass holders appear to lose out.The system cannot deduct money from a freedom pass, and the oyster card cannot be set to charge a discount fare, except for children and travelcard oysters.Perhaps we will still be able to buy a ticket on board. I like the riverboats, wonderful way to travel. At a tangent I tried my freedom pass on the reader at St. Pancras to try to travel to Stratford on the high speed link. No luck, but worth a try.
Freedom Pass holders pay half price...
https://tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-payments/fares/river#on-this-page-2
(which sounds good)
'Who'd pay over six quid for a boat ride anyway?' I would, occasionally, at least I would if any services actually called at Plantation Wharf.
Thanks for the link d.g. I've had a look around the sites, and TFL do an over 60's oyster card. You have to apply online and supply a photograph. That is how Freedom Pass holders will receive a 50 % discount.The roamer ticket seems to have become an online offering only. It's a great day out on the roamer ticket, sunsets on the river are spectacular. Ticketing wise we should now think of the river bus as a tube train. Just one type of ticket, and tap in and tap out to determine the fare payable.
Daily RB6 commuter here. Lots of people pay >£6 to do this every day because it is a thousand times more pleasant than tube or train in peak.

Plantation Wharf is coming pretty soon - pier looks like it's heading to completion.
OK OK, I've changed the very last sentence :)
@Jon Combe
Leicester Sq to Covent Garden is 260 metres (845 feet) platform to platform, so 0.57p per foot

Door to door is about 1000 feet, so 0.48p per foot

The ferry works out at 0.52p per foot.

Mind you, for your £4.80 you also get a ride in a lift and two escalators. The view isn't so interesting though! There probably are clip joints in the area where crossing the threshold will cost you a lot more than ½p a foot though!
Does the oyster fare form part of the daily cap, or are the river boats a stand alone operation?

dg writes: River boats, like the cablecar, are not part of the daily Oyster cap.

Tried to buy an over 60s oystercard, but TFL website will only take years 1952, 1953, 1954 and 1955. TFL we know that you read DGs blogs, can you sort out this glitch.

dg writes: TfL operate a special Londoners-only Oyster card to bridge the gap between age 60 and (currently) 63. Above that age you have to apply for a Freedom Pass instead.
I may have misunderstood... but right now with my Travelcard on my Oyster, I pay £4.75 to go from Embankment to Greenwich (and I do, sometimes, for a treat or just to enjoy the pleasure of living in London / being able to go home by boat).

dg writes: Yup, currently £4.75 (one third off the headline fare of £7.15)

If that's going to go up to £5.30 - then I'll do that less. Because it's already expensive bearing in mind I'm already paying for an annual zones 1-2 travelcard.

dg writes: The headline fare is going up to £8, a much bigger hike than the Oyster fare rise. The Travelcard fare will be two-thirds of £8, i.e. £5.30

Which is stupid given I thought this was one of Boris' goals, to get more people off the tube and onto the river... Presumably the huge drop in East fares is to encourage the millions about to move onto the North Greenwich peninsula to travel to their jobs (which are clearly assumed to be) in Canary Wharf by boat rather than Jubilee Line. Good luck with that, when they're only every 20 minutes and have 3 intermediate stops between North Greenwich and Canary Wharf...
interesting.. what about those with TfL Staff Passes? they currently get free Tube, DLR and BUses. Will this now extend to river services ???
DG - thanks for rectifying my arithmetical blunder earlier - it's been a long day.......
On the freedom pass issue, do the Thames Clippers ticket machines on the piers sell a ticket for freedom pass holders ie half price and then you show the pass and paper ticket as you board?
Disappointing about the lack of contactless card acceptance.

At the moment, they do take them - but it's a case of charging the standard cash fare and then taking your contactless card on the credit card terminal. (It's particularly annoying since Thames Clippers are sponsored by a credit card company, but having one of their cards has no benefit on their boats.)
What about return fares? Can we still get them say from Canary Wharf to Bankside and back? I'm sure they work out cheaper I should look it up really.










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