New Cable-Car for London - Emirates Airline

[Mike]

Well, I went on it today after work, and all I can say it was well worth the trek across London! Great views across the from Isle of Dogs (Canary Wharf for the non-Londoners amongst you ) and the O2 Arena all the way downstream to the Thames Barrier.

You actually go quite high, and as such it blows about a bit when windy at the highest points, but its all part of the fun

Photos to follow soon (well, when I get home later tonight)

 

[Spark]

Seats look nice too

 

[Sam]

London 2012: Dozens stranded as Thames cable car breaks
Travellers left suspended 300ft above river as cable car system linking Olympic venues breaks down

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 July 2012 16.02 BST

The Emirates air line cable car over the river Thames. Photograph: Scott Heavey/Getty Images
Dozens of travellers were left suspended 300ft above the Thames on Wednesday when a new cable car system linking two Olympic venues broke down.

More than 30 cars, carrying around 60 people, came to a halt due to a technical problem with the Emirates Air Line at 11.45am.

The £45m system, opened last month, links the 02 Arena in Greenwich – where the Olympic basketball and gymnastics are taking place – with the ExCel exhibition centre in London Docklands, which is hosting boxing and a number of other events.

Eventually, the cars moved again and passengers were able to reach the system's terminals after a hold-up of around 30 minutes.

One passenger, Alastair Owens, tweeted: "London Emirates cable car has broken down and we're dangling mid-air over the docks – seem to be evacuating.

"Can see cable cars closest to ground have been evacuated, but we in mid-air are being told nothing. Come on Emirates"

Later he tweeted: "Emirates cable car turned out to be great school holiday mini-adventure – greeted with apologies and water as we landed."

Danny Price, head of Emirates Air Line, said: "The Emirates Air Line is now back up and running after experiencing a technical fault at 11.45am.

"All passengers were safely back in the terminal by 12.18pm and water and first aid was made available to them. We would like to apologise to anyone affected."

Dubai-based airline Emirates is sponsoring the cable car for 10 years in a £35m deal.

First break-down story.

 

[Islander]

Finally got to ride yesterday, what can I say... Stunning! The system seems so clean and neat, and the views are simply sublime.

Just had one problem, and it's not the breakdown (no idea whether that happened before or after I rode): I boarded on the Northern terminal, expecting to do a full circuit, and indeed told a member of staff this. When I got to the South terminal, I exited, queued for the entrance, but realised nothing was moving. Asking a member of staff, I was told that it was a planned 20-30 minute closure for a tall ship to pass, so effectively I was stranded. Of course I wasn't really, as I just took the Jubilee from North Greenwich, but the point stands: I really, really should've been told about this at the North terminal, especially given that I'd made it clear I was making a round trip. Not impressed.

 

[Sam]

I think your marooning highlights an fundamental problem that's my main criticism of the system - it doesn't really go anywhere you'd want to go anyway. Why doesn't it go from the South Bank to Covent Garden, as was originally planned?

 

[DiogoJ42]

Good point Sam. Both Excell and the O2 are both places people will want to get to... but never from one to the other.

 

[Islander]

Well, except during the Olympics. Sam's point stands firm once their over, though...

 

[Sam]

Was in London today, wanted to ride this but didn't due to a 40 minute+ queue in burning hot sun, both ends.

Measured the potential throughput at 2200pph, but they weren't anywhere close to filling the cars.

Bit of a joke really.

Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk 2

 

[RyanY]

Forgot to say that I wen't on this on the day of the opening ceremony for the paralympics and I really enjoyed it.

No queue to get on at all, bought tickets and got straight on. And we got discount becasue of the tube tickets we had, so it worked out at about £2 each, which is really good.

Overall I think this is a great addition to London.

 

[Ian]

I rode this the other day. I have to say, in spite of the large queue outside the building, once through the ticket barriers it was more or less walk on. They were putting around 6 people in each gondola.

One thing I will say is I don't think Doppelmayr quite accounted for the wind at that height. It didn't half rock!

My main complaint though it TfL charging extra on top of the daily rate to use it! So much for only being another transport link, and not being ran as a profit making attraction... ???

 

[Lottie.]

I really want to do this. Hopefully will convince my parents to go next week as they have time off work

 

[Benzin]

Having an Oyster Card means you can walk straight on with no hassle whatsoever... So fab...

But... It's a bit pointless now...

 

[Islander]

One thing I will say is I don't think Doppelmayr quite accounted for the wind at that height. It didn't half rock!

I'm sure they did - after all, they're used to building these systems half way up mountains . To be fair, there's not an awful lot they can do about the rocking...

 

[Ian]

Having an Oyster Card means you can walk straight on with no hassle whatsoever... So fab...

I use Oyster too, and while it does eliminate the queue for "boarding passes" there was still quite a long queue to get to the barriers to touch in. Separate Oyster entrance please!

 

[Islander]

Having an Oyster Card means you can walk straight on with no hassle whatsoever... So fab...

I use Oyster too, and while it does eliminate the queue for "boarding passes" there was still quite a long queue to get to the barriers to touch in. Separate Oyster entrance please!

I think that's quite deliberate though. Like you said, there's no queue once you're through the barriers, and I think that's how they want it - a steady stream of passengers boarding the pods, not queuing right up to the platform but rather outside the station. It mitigates safety issues at the gate lines, stairs/lifts and platforms. Just a shame that it doesn't do much good to the throughput.

 

[DiogoJ42]

Or... you could get the tube. With no queue. For less.

 

[Jem8472]

Well we went on the cable cars yesterday.

We turned up at about 9:15 and there was no queue.

We were strait on with our Oyster cards nice and easy.
They move quickly, apparently they have two speeds one for rush hour and another slower speed for tourists.

It was great fun, it was only me and Carla in the gondola and there was plenty of free space but I can see how they will become a bit tight when they crush people in.

I have got some photos and videos of our flight. I will put them online at some point.

Well I have put the photos on Faffbook but I will link here for people that are not my friends.

Making people wave!


So another edit by me
Sorry for the boring chatter by me and Carla
[youtube]http://youtu.be/Pg75SA-zDxo[/youtube]

Take off on the Emirates airline
[youtube]http://youtu.be/876GaxTfAOw[/youtube]

 

[Sam]

The queue was to board, not buy tickets.

I had an Oyster card - the queue was still 40 minutes due to their poor loading.

 

[Ian]

The queue was to board, not buy tickets.

I had an Oyster card - the queue was still 40 minutes due to their poor loading.

This is what we had too, though we only waited around 20 minutes. I found however that once through the ticket barriers the queue moved much faster. After touching in the cable car itself was more or less walk on. I think we waited around 2 minutes on the platform. If that.

 

[Sam]

Interesting Guardian article about the Airline.

Boris Johnson has run London like a twee nostalgia theme park
The mayor's failed cable car scheme shows how he's prioritised corporate showpieces over much-needed urban development

When Boris Johnson eventually stops being mayor of London, whether en route to becoming Tory leader or prime minister, what built legacy will he leave to the capital? He'll point, no doubt, to the likes of the "Boris bikes", the London Overground extensions, the Olympic village or the Shard. This would be dishonest, as each of these for better or worse were Livingstone-era projects he happened to inherit.

In terms of real built things, he can only really point to two large-scale structures which owe their existence to his rule. The ArcelorMittal Orbit, the egregious sculpture/observation tower that looks over much of east London; and the Emirates Air Line, a cable car also in the east of the city. What links the two is a peculiar form of overbearing whimsy and equally overbearing sponsorship. That corporate cash was supposed to obviate the need for actual public investment and public control, free money that would mean no unpleasant taxes. So why has Johnson asked the European Union for £8m to bail out his cable car?

The cable car, Air Line or "dangleway", as some have more appropriately called it, is ostensibly more useful than Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond's hot pink entrail in Stratford. It was certainly sold as such. It was built on the almost complete New Labour tabula rasa of the Greenwich peninsula, next to the ex-Millennium Dome-now-O2, the Canary Wharf commuterville of the Millennium Village, and a hangar that once housed the David Beckham football academy.

This post-industrial area was once earmarked in the late 1990s as a mini-ecotown with a nature reserve and its own tube stop, a sustainable, car-curbing model for the future. It has long since become a mess of car parks, retail parks and US-style enormodome exurban entertainment. The cable car was to connect this with the not entirely dissimilar landscape on the other side of the Thames, at the former Royal Docks, a space marked by hundreds of luxury flats and the ExCel exhibition centre.

In theory, maybe, this could have been sold as a return to the development's original principles. Rather than driving through the hellish congestion of the nearby Blackwall Tunnel, south-east London commuters could get to work at Canary Wharf or ExCel via a "state-of-the-art" cable car, and get an incredible view into the bargain.

Accordingly, it was treated as a piece of public transport infrastructure rather than a piece of theme park whimsy like the public walkway over the O2 that opened at the same time. It was even added to the tube map. However, there was one overwhelming problem with the idea. The Jubilee line, just next door, could take you on exactly the same journey – North Greenwich to Canning Town – in two minutes. For half as much money.

Had Johnson or any of his team lived in southeast London, they would have been aware of this obvious fact. So, although it was used by tourists during the Olympics, it has since lost money at an astonishing rate – £50,000 a week, in fact. It's estimated that only around 16 people regularly use it to commute. Despite part of the money being put up by the United Arab Emirates' national airline (who got a mention on every tube map in London for their pains), it was still a total financial failure, hence the begging to the EU.

What is especially telling about the dangleway and its ignominious failure is that southeast London has long been in need of real infrastructure and investment. DLR and Overground extensions have made up some ground, but mostly southeast Londoners rely (like the rest of the country, but unlike those north of the river) on a massively unreliable and slow train network. River crossings are especially tricky. Among the first things cancelled by Johnson on coming to office were the Thames Gateway bridge, a DLR extension to Dagenham and a cross-river tram. Such things were evidently utopian – by now, the big infrastructural idea, depressingly supported by Labour councils, is an extension of the Blackwall Tunnel.

Worthless as it may be as an alleged piece of public transport, the dangleway is more useful as an image of the sort of London the mayor has created. The GLA under Livingstone was a tragedy, a worthy attempt at a 21st-century GLC that became a paradise for developers and financiers. But since 2008, London has been run as a twee austerity nostalgia theme park, with an almost ostentatiously negligent attention to the city's problems. Worst of all, it doesn't even work on its own terms, as we now find a mayor addicted to allegedly cheap, corporate-sponsored stunts suddenly, if unsurprisingly, turning to public money to bail them out.