please empty your brain below
Yes, a real waste of money. I wonder how many tube/rail stations could have been converted to step-free access if it had been built solely by private monies as a tourist attraction as per the London Eye?

The only good thing about it was seeing your term 'dangleway' come into modern English parlance.

I bet TFL will never admit defeat and call it that themselves though.

Doug Robinson | 15.11.24 - 7:14 a.m. | #

I wonder if they'd tell them public how much they'll be saving by opening an hour later, and how much an extra hour would save - or if that's the kind of thing that's exempt from FoI because there's an external contractor involved and it would be commercially sensitive.

martin | 15.11.24 - 7:14 a.m. | #

“It wouldn’t hurt if it wasn’t switched on til 9”.
Unless it’s you using it. Probably a good few minor bus routes and early morning runs don’t pass that CBA. I wouldn’t encourage TFL to go down that road, not that they need encouraging.

David B | 15.11.24 - 7:30 a.m. | #

On saturdays they let people with a parkrun Barcode travel for free, for Victoria Dock parkrun, which starts at 9am.

So, oh … you can no longer use it to get to parkun - only travel back to North Greenwich afterwards.

emma | 15.11.24 - 7:57 a.m. | #

Yes, would be interesting to find out the hourly cost of running it.

dg writes: a recent FoI said operating costs are about £8m a year (suggesting a nominal £1500 an hour).

Adrian | 15.11.24 - 8:07 a.m. | #

The obvious thing is to sell it to a private company and give TFL some much needed capital to invest in more useful services. Why should Sadiq want to save Boris's face?

Tony | 15.11.24 - 8:30 a.m. | #

The TfL document seems to say that the Friday start time is to be 9am just like Saturday.

ian | 15.11.24 - 8:43 a.m. | #

So it does.
I must read more carefully...
(tweaked, thanks)

diamond geezer | Homepage | 15.11.24 - 8:50 a.m. | #

I never knew about the perk for early morning cyclists. If someone living near North Greenwich has a bicycle I could borrow for half an hour early in the morning, that would be great LOL

Mikey C | 15.11.24 - 9:46 a.m. | #

So that makes having an earlier start time on Mon-Thurs irrational.

Still Anon | 15.11.24 - 9:50 a.m. | #

No, Friday is the new weekend!

Brian | 15.11.24 - 9:53 a.m. | #

The cablecar is slightly helpful for attending conferences/trade shows at the Excel (last mile/first mile). And tradeshow workers (i.e. booth/stand personnel) potentially will be most impacted by the later start, but not by much.

Some conferences even "comp" the cablecar trip (been there, done that)

MilesT | 15.11.24 - 11:04 a.m. | #

Just move it to somewhere nice where people actually want to go.

kev | 15.11.24 - 11:59 a.m. | #

Part of the reaason for continuing to pretend it's a transport link could be to do with rules about what TfL can and cannot do. Transport for London, not Amusements for London.

Malcolm of Kent | 15.11.24 - 12:06 p.m. | #

Make the cylists’ bus a doubledecker starting near City Hall, apply a standard TfL fare to people without bikes, put a few seats downstairs for those with mobility issues (everyone else upstairs), then flog the attraction to the highest bidder.

Hopefully, any commercial operator will have the sense to officially name it The London Dangleway.

Michael T | 15.11.24 - 12:25 p.m. | #

Commenters suggesting that TfL should sell it off are forgetting that the cable car covers its costs and makes a small profit. Reducing the operating hours will make that profit bigger.

Sean | 15.11.24 - 12:36 p.m. | #

Are cyclists given a free ticket or are they just waved through? Am wondering how reliable the tfl usage stats are.

Nick | 15.11.24 - 12:49 p.m. | #

Maybe, just maybe, if it had been integrated into the standard TfL fare system, it would have been a useful public transport system. I mean, it seems unlikely, but you never know.

Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 15.11.24 - 2:22 p.m. | #

Would shifting the opening time to 8:30 retain the very light use for those commuters working office hours? They must have some reason to use the service.

I doubt any savings would be anywhere near £1500/hr - if anything, cutting the hours will increase the calculated hourly cost (even if it is a bit less, annually).

Kabson | 15.11.24 - 3:57 p.m. | #

Cycling to the dangleway stations (particularly south of the river) seems neither pleasant nor particularly safe.

The free cyclist thing in the morning is one of the obscure perks of the danglebahn... the other of which is the 10 journey carnet which one can only buy in person at the ticket office. At 1.7 pounds per journey it's a bargain and last a year. Anyone ever bought one? Apparently they are non-transferable, I wonder how that works.

matthieu1221 | 15.11.24 - 10:01 p.m. | #

Today's Reddit London thread is here.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 15.11.24 - 11:34 p.m. | #

The nominal £1,500 an hour is meaningless unless split into incremental and alllocated components. If fixed costs comprise £1,450 and incremental costs £50 the judgement of whether it is is worth it may be different to if there are fixed costs of £1,200 and incremental of £300.

Messiah | 16.11.24 - 7:44 a.m. | #

Thanks Emma for the tip about free travel with showing a parkrun barcode. I used it this morning. Or I would have done if there had been anyone on the barriers and I hadn't just walked straight through the open gates.

Adrian | 16.11.24 - 9:58 a.m. | #

BBC London News has now caught up with this story.

Like me they missed that Friday's start time is being put back two hours.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 16.11.24 - 11:10 p.m. | #

Turns out nobody wants to go from Turd-on-Thames to Cowpat-upon-Thames, apart from four flies every morning.

daveid76 | 16.11.24 - 11:58 p.m. | #

I used the cable car, with my bike, until about a year ago to go to a shared office space in Canning town from Charlton. My work started at 10 so I'd usually rock up at about 9:20 fro my free ride. Somedays, if there was something going on at the Excel there would be a few people using it. Other days it would be practically deserted. Really there are few commuters on it. Going home was more of a pain with broken down lifts in Greenwich (intermitent) and Woolwich (permanent). At least now the Wooolwich ferry has longer running hours.

Alex White | 21.11.24 - 4:27 p.m. | #

TfL have updated the consultation data, counting those who use carnet tickets for the first time. The average number of passengers between 7am and 8am is now apparently 20 (ten in each direction).

It's not the 4 they originally said it was, but it's still pitiful.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 25.11.24 - 10:38 p.m. | #

New opening hours finally introduced on 6th May 2025.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 04.06.25 - 7:53 a.m. | #











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