please empty your brain below

and the reason for this post is?
Please D Davis, if you don't like the posts, you don't have to read them. There is every point to this post, to document the rise, fall, and rise, and fall again of Water Chariots, their prices, also their luck!

Whether you wish to laugh at them, or sympathise with them and their staff, knowledge is power and the Geezer has given us a great deal of knowledge over the summer!
Looks like you could sum the whole thing up with two words from the comment from JM. Lighter off.
The section where you quote the company bleating on about employing locals and ex-service people and using British-built craft had me gritting my teeth - it doesn't make their profiteering, poor service and ridiculous business plan any better. This post should become a reference document for anyone thinking they can get rich quick by fleecing the public.
There's a great London tradition of the Thames Lightermen that survived for hundreds of years, only it was ships that they made lighter, not pockets. There's a lesson there somewhere.
You missed off my favourite DG observation on the whole Water Chariots saga, where you observed that the original timetable was untenable, as it would have required the boats to break the canal speed limit!
There are all sorts of pleasing stories filtering out about the Olympic crowds failing to be gouged.

The biggest shame of all this is that the concept of river commuting has taken another hit. The Thames and its tributaries are a massive asset but they're sadly underused.
I refer you all to the situation that the Croydon Tramlink found itself in, in the early years. It was eventually rescued by TfL.
The point of the post (it seems to me) is to chronicle one of the grubbier sideshows of the Olympics.

A company started a business up which anyone could see was devoted exclusively to gouging tourists/visitors.

Every local knew this was a rip off sqaured. DG warned of it from the word go.

If this admistration follows the usual course of events, it will be local worlers/businesses/tradesmaen etc who not get paid.

Nice post DG.
I enjoyed the contrast in tone between the cheerleading Standard, Wharf and Time Out pieces ('professionals') v DG's questioning ('gentleman blogger').
Dare we hope that Forman & Field made a similar loss on their rip-off entertainment facility?
So who on earth were these people? Who is Peter Coleman? I presume he lost a lot of his own dosh as well as other people's?

Also, the pleasure gardens fiasco looks even worse if it benefitted from large public sector investment.
The reason for this post is purely an 'I told you so' post by DG.
From the earlier "Wharf" article

"Besides, this is no fly-by-night, here-today-gone-tomorrow operation, he[WC's CEO Bill Doughty] said."
Ah - £300,000 of public money. I wondered where the cash came from (apart from the few customers, and it seem unpaid staff and possibly suppliers too).

On paper it sounds quite enticing. I wonder how they would have done if the travel chaos had materialised.
The reason for the post is that some of us are interested in boats and water transport as well as buses, trains and the tube.
Foreman's review in the Saturday Daily Telegraph was probably the most damning of 2012 if not ever. Matthew Norman virtually accused their prices and food as being criminal!
Tangential, but does Mr DG plan a post on why he thinks the predicted transport problems failed to materialise? Has anyone seen such a post anywhere?
I too would love to see a proper 'de-brief' of the transport planning, and how the predicted chaos was so grossly overestimated. Anyone seen anything at all?
I would imagine the £300k was mainly to provide the wharves and make minor navigational improvements which will hopefully be of lasting value. The operators were clear in saying that they funed the operation (or at least their debtors once they went bankrupt).

Bill Doughty who took over the operation is a fairly well known investor who presumably picked up the assetts at less than the original cost, then made some effort to belatedly run an operation which was always doomed to fail.
Usain Boat was a great name, though!

Only thing to smile about in this sad and grubby story
Love the narrowboatworld.com's heading for their previous day's article on this fiasco: "Chariots of Failure".

Well done that sub-ed!
TFL's board papers for the next meeting has a de-brief as Item 6 though it is mainly just numbers and facts rather than an analysis.

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/boardandchiefofficers/papers/1436.aspx

dg writes: Excellent, thanks.

I strongly recommend reading Item 6, which catalogues how much effort went into TfL's Games planning and delivery.

Mr Styles, the speculated transport problems failed to materialise for a very good reason, namely, LOCOG, TFL and others did their jobs properly and planned sufficiently for the passenger and vehicle numbers. Wouldn't require much of an article certainly but due praise ought to be heaped on them as well as all the other agencies, performers, athletes who have rightly attracted so much acclaim since London 2012. It's terribly unfashionable and will stick firmly in the craw of all the half-wit copycat doom-mongers who predicted all sorts of transport armageddon but the traffic and transport planners got almost all of it just about right. They had 5 years or so to plan it all and their time was clearly well spent. As DG has mentioned several times on here TFL were a little economical with the truth in order to get as many people to take their preferred route and a few less fit/able probably walked a bit further than they really needed to. One aspect that will never come to light is just how much planning and research we games attendees put in to our own journeys. With invaluable assistance from DG's articles I put in a little homework on how to get to the Olympic Park, plus attending a test event earlier in the year. All the info was available if only one looked for it. Maybe plenty of others did similar. It shouldn't have been a surprise that it all passed off so successfully but it was very pleasing all the same.
"If this business model survives eighteen months without sinking I'll be amazed." (DG)

Spot on!
Generally spaeaking, referring back to previous DG posts, most businesses based on the geographical vicinity of the Games were unsuccessful. Why? Because the Olympic Park itself provided plenty of entertainment, and people with £60 tickets wanted to make the most of it.
Seriously, after an exhausting day of commuting, games-attending, park-walking, who would possibly opt for some dodgy backlot?
About the water chariots: I have read all the quoted posts about them, but I still don't know where the boarding point was.
The operation was never run by Mr Doughty as you suggest he was just one of the investors. Operations were run by
this bloke http://www.linkedin.com/pub/marcus-c-thomlinson-mlia-dip-afc/1b/138/314
Doughty was named as CEO in the 31st July article in The Wharf linked to by DG - whether that was correct I know not.
@WaterChariots1 started following me on Twitter today. They're not dead yet.
Great post as ever, DG. Really been enjoying your Olympic updates, and I'm already at the point where I'm re-reading them for the nostalgia of it all.
I can't speak for any other Olympic Park attendees, but I planned my journey to avoid the crowds. I did so by taking the Overground to Hackney Wick and walking to the Victoria Gate, which is one of the very options the transport planners tried to pretend didn't exist. Effectively as a direct result of them being so terrified that if they mentioned this route as a good way into the Park then more spectators would use it than it could cope with, it was almost completely silent and consequently a very good way into the Park.

I don't think that really counts as an intended consequence.

See also IanVisits' account of a lecture about the Tube's Olympic performance here.
[Disclaimer - I work with a company that did a similar service]

I believe there was also a small issue at the start of the Olympics where they turned out to not have the necessary licence(s) for carrying people on the river..
Note to self...if ever I plan to set up a ill-thought-out and overpriced business idea in London I must make sure I don't do it roughly half way between DG's house and IanVisits' house.

Perhaps that's why all the ill-thought-out and overpriced business ideas in London are usually in the West!
I should read the TfL board reports more often. TfL is going to have to BUY the NBFL! This means if they don't work or something better comes along, we are stuck with them (as opposed to the bendy buses which simply went off lease). It also means TfL will have LESS money to spend on other transport projects.

Has anyone seen a business case for this?
In this narrowboatworld article they say that the boats themselves are ring-fenced in a 3rd company:

http://www.whichnarrowboat.co.uk/index.php/news-flash/4831-now-its-three-chariots

Doesn't that make the whole thing sound even more like a deliberate scam? Ie get a load of money for a business that has no chance, avoid paying staff or delivering service to customers, then when it goes bust prevent creditors getting their hands on the most valuable assets - the boats.
"Doughty was named as CEO..."

Some backwater boat firm needs a CEO? Is that job title inflation at its very best?
@James: I'm not in business, but ring-fencing the assets by putting them in a third company sounds like good business practice to me. Totally unfair to the creditors of course, but surely a common arrangement in a dog-eat-dog world.
And while it's possible that Narrowboat World are right about this, they don't have a great reputation for accuracy.
I was down on the Canal at Old Ford Lock on Saturday and the Water Bus Service appears to be up and running, there were two ex Water Chariot boats at this location and both were nearly full with passengers, one coming down from Tottenham Hale direction and one waiting to enter the lock from Limehouse direction, although the Water Chariots name on the side of the boats had been painted out the original boat identification numbers on the rear of the boat hidden underneath the lifebelts was still very visible ie one of them was WC10, it would be nice to think that someone has managed to save this service and is operating it at a reasonable fare.
DG - Until your summary information and comment I didn't realise just how closely you'd followed this story. So congratulations on a well-written, thorough and factual account of the Water Chariot saga. Thanks as well as to people who added thoughtful & informed comments.

I have a small piece of the jigsaw. As a ward councillor for Tottenham Hale I asked Haringey:
* About the use by the company of the waterbus stop at Ferry Lane and who owns it.
* Whether any public subsidy was paid to Water Chariots by Haringey Council or by other bodies.
* Any subsidy paid for jobs. (Peter Coleman, managing director of Water Chariots, told the Tottenham Journal about "100 vacancies available for Haringey’s unemployed youth to work on the boats when the route opened for business.")

I got the following reply.
"Haringey has not granted any funds or commissioned any services from Water Chariots. We have since been informed that the company may have gone into receivership, and has therefore ceased taking bookings. Haringey does not know if Water Chariots received any public subsidy from another authority."
"The Council provided some grant monies from the Council Growth Fund to British Waterways in order to contribute to the cost of delivering:
1. A redesigned waterside centre at Stonebridge Lock; and
2. Waterside infrastructure at Tottenham Lock to facilitate the development of a water taxi service (but not specifically one by Water Chariots) along with other measures including:
· Increasing disabled access
· Increasing access by the general public to the waterside at Tottenham Lock
· Carrying out environmental improvements
· Increasing mooring opportunities
· Undertaking a feasibility study into the use and demand for a cycle hub in the area."

"The company was given a licence to operate on the water by British Waterways now the Canal & River Trust."
Interesting feedback from the council, courtesy Alan. (The visitor centre at Stonebridge lock was built quite a number of years ago.)

I was surprised to see one of the larger WC boats come up the river to Tottenham Hale this last Sunday (7th October, about 5.30pm), with just a coxswain aboard. It moored at the pontoon downstream of the lock. I don't know how long it stayed around for, but it was gone an hour later.










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