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New Cable-Car for London - Emirates Airline

Sam said:
I think that's just trying to pick up a few bob of extra trade from commuters. I think to suggest that a massive, beautifully sculptured cable-car across the River Thames isn't mostly for tourists/leisure purposes is a tad naive.
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Please don't call me naive Sam, I really don't appreciate it ;)

My point was that, in terms of pricing, they're really making a lot of cheap options available for commuters - pricing wise, they're aiming far more at commuters than tourists, and that's unsurprising, because tourists will ride whatever the price (within reason). If they want to ride it, they'll ride it. If they're a tourist in London, cost isn't (in many cases) going to be a primary concern.

The system as a whole is aimed at tourists and commuters, moreso the former. The pricing structure, however, is geared more towards commuters, because it needs to be - it's very easy to price commuters out of the picture, but much harder to do with tourists.
 
They'll still get a far higher proportion of tourist or leisure passengers than commuters though, that's my point. Like you said, tourists are much easier to attract with whatever pricing structure you like, whereas commuters and curious Londoners will need convincing that it's worth it.
 
Are we expecting any irritating audio promoting Emirates Airlines in the gondolas? I know a certain Theme Park in Staffordshire does something like this. ;)
 
I'm not so sure many commuters will use it. Most of us Londoners prefer life below the surface. Even walking at street level feels unnatural! :p

But seriously, £100 a minute?
 
It is a good idea and makes it easier and quicker for people to get across the river but £8.60 for a return is a bit steep and £4.30 but at lest it will reduce the co2 in the air and that if people live over on the other side of the river and have to get to the O2 arena the can use the cable car.
 
BBC News said:
Thames cable car opens for passengers

The new Thames cable car, spanning the river in east London, is set to open to the public later.

The Emirates Air Line, which links the O2 Arena in Greenwich with the ExCel exhibition centre at the Royal Docks, will open at 12:00 BST.

The service can carry up to 2,500 people an hour.

A single adult fare on the pay-as-you-go Oyster card will cost £3.20 while the cash fare will be £4.30, Transport for London (TfL) said.

The service will operate through the week from 07:00 BST until 21:00.

The gates will open an hour later on Saturdays while the service will run from 09:00 on Sundays.

CABLE CAR FARES

Adult single fare - £3.20
Child single fare - £1.60
Round trip - £6.40
Frequent traveller - £16
Passengers will also be able to make a non-stop round trip on the cable car, with views of the City, Canary Wharf, the Thames Barrier and the Olympic Park, at a cost of £6.40 with Oyster.

The Dubai-based airline Emirates is sponsoring the cable car for 10 years at a cost of £36m.

The total cost of the project is about £60m, £45m of which went towards building it, TfL said.

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, called it a "stunning addition to London's transport network" and a "must-see destination in its own right".

He continued: "We said we could deliver this travel link in quick time, and today we have shown that this city is capable of attracting serious investment to deliver world class infrastructure.

"As the world's eyes focus on our city, I can think of no better message to send out across the globe."
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Apparently it's already been soft-opened for an hour or two now.

From Twitter:

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What's amazing is that you look on Twitter and see the amount of negative reaction there is to this, along the usual Daily Mail-esque lines of "my taxes are being spent on this nonsense?!"

You don't seem to get that in other European countries. In other countries, they see spending of a relatively small amount of public money on beautiful, amazing or useful projects as a good thing. Especially when that project should pay for itself eventually out of fares from foreign tourists. British people are relentlessly negative whenever public money is used to try and do anything cool, or different, or exciting. See also: The Olympics.
 
I adore that view next to the O2 Arena, there's something about that shouts "RETRO!" whenever I look at it what with Canary Wharf's big old buildings in the background. Would love to actually ride the cable cars though, it's essentially a new credit for us ;) [/is not a credit whore]
 
The O2 (the Dome), retro?? It only opened in 2000, goddamit!

So tempted to pop into London after work today... so, so tempted, but it's a bad idea...
 
According to my calculations, at full operational capacity the cablecar would pay for itself within 715 days - excluding maintenance costs and staff salaries. In general, its lifetime of decades means that it will pay for itself within 5 years at most.
 
Islander said:
The O2 (the Dome), retro?? It only opened in 2000, goddamit!
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Oh I'm not saying it is retro! I'm just saying that by the way the photo has been taken (Which looks very Instagram-y) with the cable car at hand it does look it :p
 
I do have to wonder what happened a month or so ago for them to be so cagey about whether or not they'd open in time for the Olympics, when they've seemingly done so without being at all close to the wire.

Either something big happened, threatening to add a substantial delay to the project, or they genuinely were just covering their rear ends in case of potential problems.
 
Is it just me or do those gondolas look a little...old and small? I would have though gondolas like those on the Towers Skyride would have suited London better?
 
Sam said:
What's amazing is that you look on Twitter and see the amount of negative reaction there is to this, along the usual Daily Mail-esque lines of "my taxes are being spent on this nonsense?!"

You don't seem to get that in other European countries. In other countries, they see spending of a relatively small amount of public money on beautiful, amazing or useful projects as a good thing. Especially when that project should pay for itself eventually out of fares from foreign tourists. British people are relentlessly negative whenever public money is used to try and do anything cool, or different, or exciting. See also: The Olympics.
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It's not fair to put Olympskepitcs in the same category as Daily Mail progress haters. The Cable-cars as a permanent edition will make a financial return greater then it's cost (and pretty quickly too), where as the huge expenses of hosting the for one summer only Olympic Games, are very very unlikely to cover themselves let alone make any significant profit.

The Cable Cars are a good investment but the Olympics is a bad one.
 
Not everything has to be abut money though, we shouldn't always bemoan some tax money going on bringing an international sporting event to the country. It has helped regenerate a whole area of London and bring some extra tourism in as well as just having a nice event for people to come together for.

The Olympics have cost us money but i don't think it's a bad thing, and i don't even like sport.
 
Well, you have a point about not having everything be about money, but it does seem to be a bit of a smack in the face of people barely getting by to see a multi-million pound, one time only, sideshow.

I think much of the sporting based culture in our country is financially supported and therefore safe. So if you wanted to usefully use some of the 9.3 billion pounds for purely cultural (and not profit orientated) purposes, then they should spread that investment wide through small theatre/art/entertainment projects which would not otherwise be funded and are taking a huge hits from government cuts. This would also be more likely to create permanent jobs across the whole country, as a number of those projects become independent businesses.

I also somewhat question the whole 'regeneration' spin. I think we would all agree that regeneration should help the residents already living in the effected areas, right? But what will happen is wealthier people are going to buy out these houses which were built as part of the 'regeneration' and as a result, the residents will be pushed out of their own community. Within a generation or two, that area of London will be a middle class wonderland, where as the original inhabitants of the area will still be in the same situation as before, but this time in another area of London.

Anyway I've driven this way off of topic... Perhaps this little discussion should be moved to the Olympics thread?
 
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