please empty your brain below

We were all taken for a ride when the thing was built. Yet another gimmick from the comedy Mayor, only no-one's laughing. How long before it closes for good, I wonder?
I'd still like a go on it.
Boris really has committed a huge number of mistakes in office, hasn't he?
I wonder if the 'Full Experience' will be valid with a break of journey ((ie) North to South)or has to start and finish at North Greenwich without disembarking the 'Airline'.
Of course it's a tourist attraction not a serious transport service, we hear you DG.

It's great fun though. My kids absolutely loved it.
Oh Dear. Another political opportunity to bash the Mayor?

It is obviously more of a tourist attraction than a serious transport link - but so what. Most people that have been on it have absolutely loved it.

The sad thing about this sort of critisism is that East London has been run down and kept down for years but when something comes along to enhance it it gets slaughtered. They won'r br satisfied till it is closed and the site is derelict again.

I expect everybody will brandish the Victoria and Albert museum proposals for Stratford a waste of money too!
Did the Victoria and Albert museum have to be part-funded by the public purse like the cable car did? There have been reports that cable car opinion polls also cost Tfl £150,000. If the cable car hadn't cost the public anything to build or run I suspect few people would object.
It's not always the aerial ghost town it's painted as. I had to queue 25 mins when I visited over Christmas. Boarding on the Royal Docks side can take a while as many incoming passengers stay on for the immediate return to Greenwich.
I think the point is, if it's a tourist attraction what on earth is it doing on the tube map as if it were bona fide transport infrastructure? It's on the map because Emirates paid for it to be on the map, which is a worrying vision of things to come.

As is this:
http://glaconservatives.co.uk/campaigns/tfl-sponsorship/
I disagree, DG. The future of the cable car is it becoming a useful part of our public transport system. Once the current numpties finally accept that it absolutely must be integrated into the Travelcard system. That seems as far away as ever.

And Agent Z - I have no problem with a tourist operated cable car across the Thames. What I do have a problem with is it being paid for a) out of my taxes and b) specifically being paid out of the public transport budget!

In its current state, it is certainly not public transport and if TfL and the Mayor don't want it to be public transport (which at the minute they obviously don't) then it should be sold off to the highest bidder.

TfL has better things to be doing that running a tourist cable car service.
@Andrew B: TfL is not 'running the service', it is operated by the construction company that built it (Mace). TfL only has a manager overseeing the operation. Surely by transporting the public, it is public transport ? Arguably when the DLR was built, a 'toy train' shouldn't have been paid for out of taxes or specifically paid for out of the transport budget. No-one would argue that now..... I do agree with you that the EAL should be integrated into London's transport and ticketing system.
Paul - who physically operates the service is irrelevant. The DLR is run by Serco. Tramlink is operated by First Group. That doesn't make them any the less of a TfL service. Ultimately TfL is the owner and operator of the Dangleway, even if it does subcontract the physical operation. It sets the fares, it determines the branding and the operating model. It is, in effect, the operator.

The difference also between the way the DLR's early years and those of Air Line was started, was that the DLR didn't have a focus on tourist operations. Air Line does because, frankly, they're the only people using it.

Air Line has been set up to fail with respect of serving the commuter market (and thus qualify as a public transport operator by all normal definitions) due to its fare structure. There are simply quicker and cheaper options out there, hence why few commuters bother with it. Until the Mayor and TfL finally admit that it's not doing what it was supposed to do - providing a useful crossing of the Thames - it will remain a tourist service, and one that frankly I don't want to be subsidising as a tax payer.
Andrew Bowden

Surely there are lots of what you might call "tourist services/attractions" that a partially or fully funded with taxpayers money.

Isn't that what the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is for?
Agent Z - I have no problem at all with the DCMS subsiding such things.

But if the DCMS built and ran a railway that was supposed to be for tourists, but ended up being mostly run for commuters, I'd be asking exactly the same questions, but in reverse.

It's about budgets. TfL's responsibility is transport. It gets given money for that reason - to run public transport, to keep roads moving etc. It is not given money to run tourist services.

If Air Line's to remain a tourist operation, give it to London and Partners whose job is tourism.
Andrew Bowden

Yes - fair enough give it to the correst department to fund.

But above you stated: "The future of the cable car is it becoming a useful part of our public transport system" ??

If it is a Tourist service and not to be run by TFL it can hardly be argued that it should be charged as per the Oyster rate fares system.
How do the river services fit in to this? They also give discounts to Oyster users (presumably funded by TfL), and tfL runs some of the piers, but they are, I understand, self-financing commercial ventures rather than run under contract to TfL like the DLR, EAL, LO, Tramlink and the buses.
I do believe the future of it is as a useful part of our public transport system.

But TfL and the Mayor don't. And if they don't, does it matter what I think is its future?
I.m sorry complaining about it being on the tube map, just sounds like political spite. It may be used mostly by tourists, but it does actually transport people places and can be used by anyone.

As a tourist attraction it has different rush hours, which mainly coincide with the weekends, and school holidays, particularly when the weather is warmer.

So far the numbers carried are within TFL's own modeling. If they get a second sponsor once the current one runs out, they will have recouped all the public money put into it.

As the Dome ans Exell ares develop there is no reason not see more people using it.
The main problem, I think, it that it costs a lot of public money for the number of passengers that it carries(tourists or commuters). What else could TfL have done with the money? Kept some more of its ticket offices open, perhaps?

TfL has other services aimed at (or at least disproportionately used by) tourists - the 9H and 15H "heritage" buses and the river services, for example.

Of course, tourism is an important part of the economy, but few claim that these services are important for commuters.
I used it for the first time last Wednesday and very much enjoyed the trip. In terms of fares I then had to pay almost as much to go one stop on the river service from North Greenwich - now that's expensive! It may not be the most sensible investment in the world but it's not a joke (any more than the Docklands Light Railway was ever a toy train; it was at the time a way of getting tracked services started into Docklands when the only viable alternative was a guided busway) and compared with the sums spent on relatively small scale improvements of the Greenwich and Woolwich foot tunnels (work still not completed) the amounts involved are not disproportionate. Of course the foot tunnels are free to use.........
The comparison is surely not with the Dockland Light Railway, which provides a useful service, but with the Barking Park Light Railway, which is fun for children of all ages http://www.bplr.co.uk/

Although of course the cost of the Dangleway (which similarly is great fun, but doesn't form a useful part of the transport infrastructure, and probably (given the existence of through routes serving almost the smae places) really would still not do so were it to be integrated into the fares system) is another matter entirely....
I went on the Dangleway in the summer last year and it was a good part of a day out with friends-from-abroad.

The main problem, as "first-time tourist" to the Royal Docks was the lack of signage from the Dangleway to Royal Dock DLR.

Going TO the Dangleway is easy - you can see the damn thing from miles away.

There are three worthwhile criticisms as far as I can see:

1) It's a fast trip - unlike the London Eye, for example.

2) There's not much to see, compared to, say, The London Eye.

3) It makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER as a transport connection.

Even if you eliminated the 4 minutes walks at each ends of the Dangleway (say with a moving walkway): it would ALWAYS be quicker to change at Canning Town.

According to Google, Royal Victoria DLR to North Greenwich is 12 minutes (every six minutes), 17 minutes (every 5 minutes) by Dangleway.

Unless you SPECIFICALLY need to get from one end of the Dangleway to the other, it's never quicker.
can see alot more on the 9H & 15H buses though ...cheaper and can hop on & off them too!
I think there's a few Boris fans who get overly sensitive on here whenever there's criticism of the mayor and his pet projects.

The mainstream media (and especially the Evening Standard) rarely provide us with any meaningful scrutiny of decisions made by the current mayor. Therefore, blogs like this one carry out a useful role on questioning the value for money on schemes like the cablecar, cycle hire and New Bus for London. Keep up the good work Diamond Geezer.

Back to the cablecar/Dangleway. I've been on it once, enjoyed the novelty but probably won't be in a rush to do so again. Its a fun (but by no means essential) add-on to a tourist itinerary but shouldn't have had money from TfL and should not be promoted as a viable public transport link when it clearly does not serve that purpose.
Surely the "Total Experience" of the cable-car should include plummeting to your death from a great height, screaming and evacuating from all bodily exit points?

The thought of going up on that thing gives me the heebie jeebies.
For the Dangleway to become a useful part of the public transport network, it should provide a link which is not provided otherwise. It would also make sense for it to be in a location with tourist/leisure potential.
Might I suggest that it be relocated downstream to link the two ends of the London Loop? Erith to Rainham (probably near Coldharbour Point) should attract passengers.
I'm a bit confused by Mr Geezer's motives. There seems to be a general hatred for any new development in east London. Why he doesn't up sticks and move west is beyond me. Over the next few years there is going to be massive development around the Royal Docks and North Greenwich. People will need an easy way to go between the two as opposed to going back and forth to Canning Town which is going to be extremely busy. With events at Excel, Canning Town station can be a bit of a nightmare. I work in the area and the upcoming changes are exciting. So, Mr DG, give up on the negativity and look on the bright side.
For me if the dangleway was included in the travelcard price then I would use it! I tried it once when the DLR was off at Royal Victoria and it was useful, much quicker than usual too!
What stopped me from using it every day? The price, why should I have to pay for both a travelcard and then on top of that also buy a special ticket to travel on another form of transport in London.
One final bad thing is the walk to North Greenwich tube from the terminal, it isn't covered so you get soaked in the rain, it's badly signposted, with no clear path to the tube - may have changed since I was last there as there was crowd control barriers in place.
Dg why do you continue to get yourself so het up about this? It will pay itself back in a few years, so is at no cost to Londoners in the long run and the money that was spent up front doesn’t appear to have stopped TfL from doing anything anyway.

The funicular railway to the top of Montmartre in Paris is run by RATP, the Parisian TfL equivalent, and no-one bats an eyelid. Does it serve any purpose other than giving tourists a way to the top that doesn’t include being sold tat by North Africans? No, but there it is, on the RATP map and everything.

Also, I can’t help but think that your love of Metroland and your hatred of the Emirates Airline either show how short-sighted you are, or just betray the real reason you don’t like it which seems to be that it was backed by Boris. When the Metropolitan Railway started, they had several trains an hour to halts in the middle of fields. Madness. They transported air from one village green to another and back again at an impressive service frequency. After several years though, those areas started to build up, and now they are just another part of the sprawl from Charing Cross to Amersham. So we should either be pleased that there were no bloggers around at the time to point out the absurdity, or we should be pleased that TfL don’t seem to care what you think.

TfL could certainly help themselves – both the funicular in Paris and the Metropolitan Railway were part of integrated ticketing systems – but why, when the cable car can cope with it, should TfL shut themselves off from a revenue stream by focussing only on one type of customer or another?
@ Chris - If we are going to be accurate about things then we must say that TfL only does what the Mayor sets out. The Mayor wanted the cable car as a nice "trinket" alongside the 2012 Games. It really has no viable *transport* purpose but TfL had to build it and be lumbered with running it (via a contractor) until another Mayor comes along and possibly changes policy.

It is not remotely unusual for funiculars to be operated by the relevant transport authority. Funiculars are railways and do serve a purpose - to get people up steep hills / cliffs quickly without recourse to using lots of road vehicles over longer routes. Most (all?) of these funiculars were build in response to a genuine demand for travel between two places and that is why they still exist. The Dangleway covers a link that was already provided effectively by public transport. It is not marketed as if it is public transport. It is marketed as a tourist attraction.

I strongly suspect that TfL do not allow Travelcard / Freedom Pass acceptance because to do so would dilute whatever revenue they do earn on the Dangelway. It is extremely unlikely that the per passenger contribution from any "pooled" revenue would match that from each people paying a separate fare. This would delay the prospect of the thing ever recouping its capital outlay. There is a European bank loan to be paid off IIRC.

I think that once the Dangleway has "paid for itself" that TfL may well suggest to the Mayor that widening ticket acceptance be considered. Alternatively Boris might change his mind or his successor may change policy. I doubt we'll see much change before 2016.

I think it should never have been built and when it becomes affordable to do so it should be dismantled and got rid of. I'd advocate a sale if I thought anyone would buy it. No savvy operator of "attractions" is going to be remotely interested given the parlous usage numbers and propensity for the thing to be halted when there is anything more than a strong breeze blowing down the Thames.
PC - you say 'parlous' visitor numbers, however 10,000 trips in the lowest week is I guess the sort of numbers that many more isolated cable cars would kill for.

The more relevant question is what is the breakeven point in trips per week for the cable car, and what is the return on the nominal capital tied up (which in reality is likely to reflect the amount that could be realised by selling it).
TfL's original business case foresaw 2 million passengers in 2013, rising to 2.6 million by 2021.

2013's target equates to 40000 passengers a week... a number exceeded during only 12 weeks of last year.
@ Messiah - I think DG has provided the salient response. Ridership is below (TfL's modest) target. This year's usage trend is below that for last year. If any other mode was performing so badly - a tube line or a bus route - then someone would be asking questions about reducing costs or getting revenue up. This is not apparent with the Dangleway.

I accept the Dangleway has its supporters - fair enough. I'm just not one of them when other modes are having aspects of their service quality removed (ticket office closures, no cash sales on buses) or else are not able to expand to meet demand (bus services across London). There is money tied up in services which deliver marginal if any benefit yet other more beneficial expenditure is prevented. This is not how things are supposed to be done under TfL's remit. Unfortunately the Mayor has instructed TfL to waste money but, hey, that's within his powers and the rest of us live with the consequences.
I'm using it for some short term commuting at the moment. Must get one of those 10-er tickets instead of relying on Oyster.










TridentScan | Privacy Policy