Over two millenia ago, at the furthest downstream location that a bridge could be built across the River Thames, London was born. In many ways the river is the very reason for London’s existence. The city grew around that first London Bridge and in return the Thames served as London’s highway for centuries, critical to the city – and indeed Britain’s – prosperity.
In its heyday in the 19th century, the area now known as Canary Wharf was the busiest port in the world. Indeed, the Thames remains Britain’s second largest port and is the busiest inland waterway in the UK, keeping London and the South East supplied with food, fuel and finished goods. The Thames thus still plays a vital role in Londoners’ lives, albeit one that has become increasingly unseen. As a 1937 description of London stated: “London neglects its river and hides its port… [the Thames] might be London’s ‘Grand Canal’, but it is almost inaccessible”.
That use of the word ‘inaccessible’ is perhaps rather apt. In recent times the Thames has come to be seen increasingly as a barrier to transport in London, not as its highway. Its role as London’s main road overtaken by increasingly efficient land-based options such as trains, trams and buses throughout the twentieth century. To the point that by the 1970’s the Thames was no longer really a viable passenger transport route, merely an aquatic platform for tourist cruises and floating parties.
The role of the River in London life arguably reached a nadir in September 2009. In that year Transport for London (TfL) took the Thames off the Tube map. It was ordered back on by the Mayor after a public outcry, but at the time the message was clear, a marker of how irrelevant the River had seemingly become.
That disappearance and re-appearance, however, also marks the symbolic change of the flow in the fortunes of the Thames as a transport artery. For a number of entities were beginning to realise the passenger role that Mother Thames could still play.
In this, the first of a series of river transport articles, covering recent developments and plans for both passengers and freight, we look at the role played by river buses in the Thames’ renaissance. A form of water traffic that we first encountered in 2010 in Mwmbwls’ A Tale of two Cities – Could London learn from Brisbane?, river buses have launched a modest revolution in the five years since. In that time London’s river passenger numbers have nearly doubled, and we pick up the ropes now to explore their history in London and look at what failed (quite often) and what was learnt, laying the foundations for the ‘Thames Clippers’ to become the unheralded success as river buses that they are today.
History of twentieth century river services
Since the end of Queen Victoria’s reign there have been least 11 different river bus services, from a fleet of 29 large steamers, to hovercraft and even Russian-built hydrofoils. All but one ended after less than two years due to depressions, wars or new technology (such as automobiles). All were also hampered by a lack of integration with London’s faster, more popular and much larger Tube and train networks.
The previous RiverBus service (not to be confused with the current “River Bus” service) was established in 1987 by Olympia and York (O&Y), then developer and owner of Canary Wharf, who actively promoted it to bring high end workers from the Chelsea Harbour luxury residences development and London Bridge to their offices. The ten or so fast catamarans used had 62 spacious seats and ran at 15-20 minute headways. Ridership grew slowly as firms moved into Canary Wharf, and the service attracted a Business Expansion Scheme grant in 1988 when it was renamed ThamesLine. By the end of 1988, however, tenant numbers at Canary Wharf did not match the forecasts. Despite financial support from the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) and an Enterprise Allowance grant of £500,000 from the Departments of Transport and of the Environment to run the service for four years, soon the ThamesLine company was in financial difficulty.
Docklands rescue
Rescue eventually came from a consortium of four Docklands property developers, who saw that the service was an asset to Canary Wharf and Chelsea Harbour. They also realised that it had strong links to the mainline railway stations at Charing Cross and Waterloo. At the time Docklands was still perceived as difficult to access – the DLR line had teething problems and limited service, there was no Underground connection yet at Bank, and the Docklands highways were still under construction. The Developers saw that a rebranded ‘RiverBus’ could be marketed as the answer.
By 1992 the RiverBus service carried 750,000 passengers a year. London City Airport had also become a sponsor, with the airport service popular with airlines based there and served from North Woolwich pier.
The 1992 recession evaporated ridership, however, and put several of the developers out of business. RiverBus repeatedly sought financing from London Regional Transport (LRT), as London Transport had been renamed, but was consistently refused. RiverBus management also attempted to join the Travelcard scheme and to make through-ticketing travel possible, but London Transport was advised that RiverBus could not participate in Travelcard since it would involve public sector grant for LT being passed onto the private sector RiverBus operation.
Olympia & York funding problems
RiverBus increasingly attracted tourists as well, so services were expanded to St Katharine Docks and Greenwich, but in spite of a dramatic growth in passenger numbers, RiverBus still depended on a substantial subsidy from Canary Wharf developers Olympia & York.
The service expanded up river but this was not profitable, and with Olympia & York now experiencing major financial problems of their own, the developer’s ability to subsidise services looked to be in jeopardy. In response to this plans were made to expand services further with new vessels, in the hope of making additional revenue to keep the company (quite literally) afloat. Just as importantly, the need to integrate river services with other modes of transport was recognised, so that they were available to Travelcard users and would be visible on the Tube and rail maps carried by every tourist and transport passenger and to be found on every Tube train.
These plans came to nothing. When Olympia & York went into Administration shortly afterwards the banks quickly reduced the RiverBus subsidy. At the same time continuous improvements were being made to the DLR, and the Docklands highways opened in May 1993. Both of these leeched away RiverBus passengers. Despite receiving funding from local government, the private sector and individual benefactors, RiverBus finally went into receivership in August 1993, with losses of £2.5m in its final year. In February 1994 the company was beached and the fleet of catamarans was disposed of.
The RiverBus post-mortem
In hindsight, RiverBus was a good idea, just one that was slightly before its time for a number of reasons:
- The pier at Canary Wharf was much less convenient than the current Thames Clippers pier
- The 62 seat boats were too small to make the most of peak-hour demand
- The inability to arrange usage of Westminster Pier, critical to capturing the off-peak tourist trade, also compromised revenue.
- Tourist demand is seasonal and weather-related, generating insufficient revenue off peak
- Fares were roughly double the DLR’s prices.
- Most importantly, the Docklands had not yet reached critical mass. Canary Wharf tower was still mostly empty and construction had not progressed far on surrounding buildings.
Original Canary Wharf Pier for RiverBus services. Courtesy Darryl Chamberlain, 853Blog
There were also some more general issues. Lack of London Transport and stable, longer term government support meant that both RiverBus and the services which preceded it were subject not only to weather and nature, but to the waves of market cycles and winds of national events. In essence the Thames was still a toxic free market cesspool for river passenger services.
The floundering of the RiverBus should perhaps be treated as a warning to those who propose that public transport be sponsored by, or even provided by, commercial property developers. The Olympia & York experience provides a clear and timely warning as to how commercial transport services can quickly go pear shaped in an economic downturn.
Lessons for the future
Although RiverBus failed, the underlying idea was still seen by many as sound. Just a year after its collapse London First commissioned a study titled The Business Case for a Passenger Transport Service on the River Thames, which it published in January 1996. This posited that a purely commute service between central London and the Docklands would not generate a profit, but that one which focused on serving London’s visitors as well could. By linking Central London tourist attractions with new, less accessible attractions opening like the Globe Theatre, Tate Gallery Bankside and North Greenwich’s Millennium Exhibition, a break even point, the study predicted, could be reached.
The birth and role of London River Services 1997
In 1997 Secretary of State for Transport John Prescott announced the £21m Thames 2000 project to regenerate the Thames for the Millennium and to provide a legacy of passenger transport services and piers on the River. The centrepiece was the Millennium Dome.
In light of this the Cross-River Partnership, a consortium of local authorities, private sector organisations and voluntary bodies, recommended the creation of a public body to co-ordinate and promote river services. This agency, provisionally titled the Thames Piers Agency, would take control of Thames piers from the Port of London Authority, integrate boat services with other transport modes and commission construction of new piers.
In 1997 the Port of London Authority (PLA) transferred its passenger piers to London Transport. London Regional Transport (soon to be replaced by TfL) then established London River Services (LRS) Ltd in 1998 as a wholly owned subsidiary to maintain and manage the piers, and to create the licensing system for boats, River Buses, river cruises, tours, party services and piers. LRS was also made responsible for promoting river services to TfL’s travellers via the main website, maps, leaflets, campaigns and press releases, as well as integrating such services with the rest of the public transport network. These changes were intended to foster stability in the river passenger transport sector.
With more than 50 operators and 200 boats calling at 33 piers under its remit, LRS was also charged with developing “clear, simple identities” to explain to new passengers which commuter, leisure, tourist or charter boat to board.
LRS and TfL also have an obligation under the 2007 Greater London Authority Act to promote and encourage the use of the River Thames, for transport of passengers and freight. This extends to supporting the river tourist trade as well, even though this sometimes causes congestion that impacts River Bus services.
A brief interlude for the Watermen
Before we look at what happened on the River next, it is perhaps worth pausing briefly to look at the role of the watermen, one of the Thames’ historical features. The Guild of Watermen have enjoyed exclusive rights to carry passengers on the tidal Thames since 1510 when Henry VIII granted them this licence. This was in fact one of the first forms of licensed public transport in London, when Acts of Parliament passed in 1514 and 1555 standardised their fares and protected the public from being taken advantage of.
In 1700 the Watermen combined with their cargo colleagues as the Company of Watermen and Lightermen (CWL), many of whom are qualified in both disciplines of waterage and lighterage. The responsibilities of watermen also include mooring vessels at wharves, whilst lightermen move cargo onto smaller boats to ‘lighten’ the load of sea-faring vessels, delivering them to wharves up and down the Thames. These days lightermen still handle a small amount of rough goods like waste or aggregates, such as on ‘Bovril’ boats that carry liquid waste.
Whilst it is a Tudor era contemporary of many other storied City of London livery companies of trade associations and guilds, the Company of Watermen and Lightermen has never applied for livery status, having been the only City Guild to be formed and governed by Westminster. For this reason the CWL is considered not a ‘Company without Livery’ but simply a ‘Company’.
Historically, knowledge of Thames wharves, piers and the unique character of the river have been handed down through generations of families. Although outsiders could enter the trade, it has been in effect a closed shop for generations. The Watermen, however, lost their exclusive status when European regulations governing the licensing of boatmasters on inland waterways came into force in 2003. Today the CWL regulates people working on the Thames to a marine version of the Knowledge (albeit much less exhaustive and exhausting), operating as a professional association under European rules.
Incidentally the world’s oldest continuously run sporting event is held annually on the Thames in mid July, being the race for Doggett’s Coat and Badge, rowed by newly-qualified Thames watermen since 1715.
“The Annual Sculling Race for Doggett’s Coat and Badge” by Thomas Rowlandson, approx. 1805
Thames Clippers history and growth
Returning to the river buses, Thames Clippers Ltd was founded in 1999 as Collins River Enterprises by Sean Collins (Managing Director) and Alan Woods (Chairman), who were granted a licence and monopoly by LRS to provide river commuter services on the Thames between Savoy Pier and Greenwich Pier. This was noteworthy as an important first for a river commuter service – a protected market environment that provided stability. Conceptually this was no different from the monopoly London buses have enjoyed for over a century, but it has been critical to addressing some of the issues that had plagued river services before.
The service began as a single vessel carrying less than 80 passengers a day. This operated as the Riverline route between Greenland and Savoy Piers. Collins, a former boat captain for Olympia & York’s failed RiverBus company and a third generation Waterman, relates that when they started the service TfL and the PLA “thought it would be just another failed river bus.”
Thanks to increasing riverside jobs, population and attractions, notably at Canary Wharf, the Tate Modern and the O2, and crowded conditions on the Tube and rail networks, Riverline soon proved to be anything but. From the very beginning, ridership grew steadily despite the initial lack of support from TfL.
Collins River Enterprises soon changed its name to Thames Clippers, a deliberate nod to the fast tea clippers of the middle of the 19th century. Developed to serve the growing demand for rapid shipments of Britain’s favourite brew, the clippers possess an image of seafaring adventure and entrepreneurialism in British culture. This association is arguably even stronger in London, where the Cutty Sark towers majestically over the river at Greenwich. From a brand perspective, it was too good an association for the company not to make.
Millennium Celebrations
Initially the Thames Clippers service used existing piers, which were small and basic as few were designed for large crowds. In 2000, five new and upgraded River Bus piers were opened thanks to a grant of £7,177,000 from the Millennium Commission as a key component of its Thames 2000 project to improve previously neglected travel connections on the Thames, and to promote the river as an alternative means of public transport:
- Tower Millennium Pier
- Blackfriars Millennium Pier
- London Eye Pier
- Westminster Millennium Pier
- Millbank Millennium Pier
This, along with TfL placing River Bus icons on the Tube map, greatly helping the service find its target market. This stabilised the service, and LRS and TfL soon realised it was not just another river commuter service waiting to sink financially.
The pier infrastructure upgrade leveraged Thames Clippers’ private investment in purchasing its own boats. The “Millennium” part of these pier names was later dropped.
The Millennium Dome was conceived to house a Festival of Britain type of showcase to celebrate the third millennium, on the isolated peninsula of North Greenwich as a regeneration impetus. In addition to the new Jubilee Line Extension tube station there, it was considered prudent to provide a second transport link to it from central London. Supported by Millennium Commission Lottery money, construction of North Greenwich Pier at the site and investment in new boats by operators allowed River Bus services to bring visitors to and from this new large venue in 2000.
Thames Clippers Operations
Thames Clippers turned over £1.1m in 2002 before financing charges, making an operating margin of 3% or about £35,000, on carrying an average of 1,200 passengers a day.
In 2003 Thames Clippers skipper Sean Collins stated to ThisIsMoney.co.uk “There is no other mode of public transport in central London that does not get financial support”, and that his company still has to pay pier usage fees, even on those owned by LRS, which go directly back to TfL’s coffers.
The Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) purchased the Millennium Dome in May 2005, renamed it the O2 and started converting it into a large capacity entertainment complex. To improve transport options to their venue, AEG purchased Thames Clippers Ltd. and ordered six new fast catamarans. Upon their delivery and service introduction in 2007, these new boats increased Thames Clippers annual ridership by over 1 million passengers in just one year.
Thames Clippers also provides other services such as picking up and dropping off passengers from large cruise ships at Tilbury.
Other River Bus operators – History of the Putney to Blackfriars service
The Putney to Blackfriars river commuter service was originally provided by Thames River Taxi as licenced by London River Services. However Thames Executive Charters (TEC), which operated Thames River Taxi, found that they could not make their operation of this service cover its costs. TEC attempted to refinance and build new boats but were unsuccessful, so they met with London River Services in September 2011 to advise LRS of their decision to stop operating the service.
LRS were unable to assist financially within the structure as it then was, so TEC announced that their Putney – Blackfriars River Bus operation would cease 22nd December 2011. TEC also recognised that they could not compete against the £20m investment that AEG have put into Thames Clippers to date, nor was TEC able to match winning bidder Thames Clippers’ improved Service West between Vauxhall and Blackfriars (of which we will talk more in a future article). The 60 seater Cats that started on the Thames Clippers initial route are earmarked for this river service.
Initial Putney – Blackfriars River Bus route, as operated by Thames River Taxi
As a result of all this, on 22 December 2011 TfL appointed TRT’s sub-contractor, Complete Pleasure Boats as the interim operator for this route on a six-month contract starting from 3 January 2012. TfL also announced that they were continuing negotiations to finalise arrangements with an operator (Thames Clippers Ltd) to award a longer-term contract.
In October 2012, TfL started an Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) operator procurement process for a new and improved Putney to Blackfriars River Bus Service to start on 1 April, 2013.
LRS reserved its rights to change the number and location of the piers along the route during the term of the contract. The RB6 service was to be subsidised by TfL and provide an increased service to commuters: at least 6 eastbound and 6 westbound trips per morning and 3 westbound and 3 eastbound trips per evening. Being a commuter service, it operates Monday to Friday (with the exception of Bank Holidays) at peak hours only.
On 24 May 2012 TfL announced that Thames Clippers would be the new operator of the Putney to Blackfriars route, taking over from Complete Pleasure Boats on 1 April 2013.
Notwithstanding TfL’s Thames disappearing act in 2009, the role and unheralded growth of Thames Clippers’ River Bus services in the last fifteen years has been the result of much coordination behind the drapeaux by TfL and its London River Services (LRS) department, the Port of London Authority (PLA), riverside boroughs, boat operators, amongst others, and the Mayor. As this article has hopefully shown, this successful service also didn’t emerge from nowhere. It stands, as it were, on the shoulders of several drowned giants.
Nonetheless its quiet success is a remarkable achievement. So much so that when, in September 2014, Thames Clippers announced that they would be adding one new boat to their fleet, they can hardly have expected that they would soon have to frantically rethink their plans. For by the end of 2014 passenger numbers had already increased by a further half a million to 3.8 million, and instead, two new catamarans with a capacity of 150 passengers each were ordered instead of one. These were put into service in November 2015 and, according to the company, represent the most technically advanced and energy efficient river and harbour fast ferries in the world, their low draught also allowing them to navigate the Thames’ shallow reaches upstream. The catamarans have a top speed of 30 knots, which is almost 35mph.
In our next article we’ll look at just how, and where, Thames Clippers puts its river fleet to use.
This series of articles is very much a group effort. Author credit on this series is thus shared with, and our gratitude offered to, Alan Robinson, Graham Feakins and Jonathan Roberts.
Other articles in Reconnections’ river transport series:
Prequels
Soviet fleet on the Thames (Part 1)
Capitalist hydrofoils strike back! (Part 2)
London’s First Highway series:
Part 1 The Fall and Rise of London’s River Buses
Part 2 – The surprising success of River Buses
Part 3 – Take Me to the River – The Evolution of London’s River Passenger Transport Policy
Part 4 – Pier Pressure and Speed Limits
Part 5 – River Freight
An informative piece on a rarely-covered topic.
Interesting article! I can’t help but feel that the Thames’s river transport problem is down to the different requirements for locals (primarily commuting) and tourists (getting in the way). These also mean that you subsidise the latter at the cost of the former if you put money into the services.
As I read this, it seems that each operator is free to offer / provide the service they feel like, rather than TfL determining the requirements and engaging an operator to provide that service (cf. bus routes). Is there a possible option in the future to make that change, do you believe?
I’m sure I travelled on something my parents told me was a “river bus” down to Greenwich back in the 1960s. There have certainly been scheduled boats serving various piers between Hampton Court, Kingston, Richmond, Westminster, Cahring Cross, Tower and Greenwich. However these were very much geared to the tourist trade rather than commuting – you can do a round trip from Westminster to Hampton Court but not vice versa, and many of the services are seasonal.
The Putney-Blackfriars route looks a very tempting alternative to the landlubber version. However, it would become less competitive time-wise further upstream as the river becomes more wriggly and can be un-navigable at very low tides.
Having previously taken purely tourist boats on the Thames, this year marked marked my first trip on the clipper. It may well have been one of the new boats but it was very nice inside and the refreshments on offer were very well priced and tasty. It was very busy throughout the trip from Embankment to Greenwich. I would use again on another visit.
Minor correction – London Regional Transport set up LRS (TfL not being formed until July 2000). Companies House records give a date of December 1997, with Clive Hodson being appointed a director in January 1998.
The earliest publicity I have to hand is a “Thames River Services Summer 1999” times and fares leaflet, when White Horse Ferries were providing a commuter service broadly between Embankment and Canary Wharf as “Central London Fast Ferry” (sorry if this anticipates part 2).
Interesting article. Certainly fills in a fair few gaps in my knowledge of the river but then it’s not a service I’ve ever used and paid for myself. I have had a trip up and through the Thames Barrier and also down to Hampton Court. Travelling on the Thames certainly gives a different perspective of London compared to using any other mode. Despite this it never routinely crosses my mind that catching a boat is a valid way of getting around the City. Perhaps River Bus services, a bit like the Cycle hire scheme, are not part of my own “mental map” of London’s transport network?
It is perhaps worth noting that there was a fair bit of noisy political lobbying from the relevant Tory Assembly Member in support of the Putney river bus service. I leave it to others to decide if the use of public funding to subsidise a river service from Putney and Chelsea Harbour is a worthwhile use of scarce public funds.
I don’t know if you intend to mention fares and ticketing in a later article but there have been some significant changes along the way. Offering Travelcard and Freedom Pass holders discounted fares on certain services and the more recent introduction of Oyster PAYG payment for some services must have had some effect in growing services. It is possibly too early to say whether the restructured “fare zones” for River Bus services have helped or hindered passenger growth. It is also worth noting that the River often comes to the rescue when there is a tube strike with frequent or even free services running to try to take some pressure off the Central London – Canary Wharf link.
@WW
Yes, the sequel article will look at the development of London river passenger transport policy, and in particular as it applies to the River Bus routes. It will include subsidy and fare analysis, ridership growth and the other factors you mention. Separately from that is the issue of how River Bus maps have represented these services, which varied greatly over the years.
There are a lot of aspects to explore in river transport, which will span several articles. So could everyone please hold off comments on these individual sub-topics as they will be analysed in much more detail in later articles in the series. Thanks. LBM
Is “Mother Thames” a David Aaronovitch reference?
When I travelled on the Putney-Blackfriars route at the beginning of this century it was operated by a boat which had been at Dunkirk in May 1940; and there was an open upper deck, which I enjoyed. It wasn’t cheap or quick but it was a pleasant alternative.
Last summer I decided to get a riverbus from Embankment to London Bridge as a change to the normal commute. It was a nice sunny day and I could enjoy a beer outside from the on-board shop. It was also easy to pay with Oyster PAYG. It’s not the fastest method of travel, but it’s certainly quite relaxing.
Minor point. You refer to AEG as an American brewery. I think you are confusing the company with a completely different business with a slightly similar name (Anheuser-Busch). AEG is a global sports and entertainment business, with no brewing operations at all.
@ LBM and JB / PoP – a small suggestion. If there is going to be a series of articles on a theme it might be good to include a small summary of each “episode” at the end of the first article. This would act as a “taster” but also help avoid “spoiling” future articles by raising comments and questions now that’ll be covered later.
Very interesting; as a regular commuter on RB6 for the last few years I will be following this series with (even more) interest (than usual). You have trailed the issue of balancing commuting v tourist needs and the potential for conflict there, so I look forward to further discussion on that as it’s definitely a challenge.
Personal experience:
Decided to use the Clipper from O2 to Woolwich Arsenal after a concert last year to avoid the scrum at North Greenwich. So much more pleasant that we always do it now if we can get to the pier in time.
Fares observation: All the warnings about ensuring you have enough PAYG credit on your Oyster card could lead to people not realising that auto top-up works for the Clippers too.
I’d always assumed it was a more expensive mode of transport. I hadn’t even considered it as an option, but looked more closely at fares after our last leisure trip. Seasons are very deeply discounted, so adding it to my fares spreadsheet, I found a paper annual season Dartford-Woolwich Arsenal plus an annual eastern section riverboat season is the cheapest option to Canary Wharf !! I can even average 2 Oyster PAYG journeys on the DLR per week and still be ahead against a Dartford – Z2 annual season, for those occasions when working/drinking late. Trialled it last week, and think I’ll go for it as my normal route. A bit worried how crowded it might get come the summer, though.
Massive scope for growth with all the riverside blocks being built, particularly in the east and south east of London.
I do worry though that the more piers that are added (eg some are planned around the Royal Docks and others further into London I believe) that it then becomes too slow for those a bit further east, which means the ability of the service to relieve other forms of transport becomes limited.
It could be a great service for the 70k+ people moving to Greenwich Peninsula and Charlton in the next 20 years, but many more stops added and some of those people may then go back to the Jubilee and Southeastern.
For me, the crucial element in the story came in the C19, when the Thames rapidly threatened to become a vast, foul channel of pullulating filth. Before then, London was integrated with the river, as houses, gardens and streets would reach the very edge of the river. With Victorian urbanism, the river was segregated from the rest of the city by embankments, and by wharves and warehouses dedicated to private commercial use.
The legacy of this shift is the lack of effective intermodal interchange. TfL, in recent years, has clearly recognised this problem, but a lot more needs to be done. Once we have piers that are well integrated with nearby routes – not just stations or bus stops, but adjoining streets – then appropriate services will follow.
Thanks to LBM and his team for assembling an often obscure story. A couple of small general points:
– as many contributors (Adrian,Old Buccaneer) have noted, journey times are often slower than other modes. In part this seems to the result of dwell times at piers. Compared with the rapid exchange of punters at stops in Venice or Stockholm, the Thames timings seem very lengthy – maybe this has something to do with the type of vessel needed on a waterway with a sizeable tidal swing?
– at this risk of inventing crayonaquary, I have often been surprised that the “short cut” across the Isle of Dogs hasn’t been kept open, which would both improve access and speed up many journeys.Maybe there are good technical reasons for this?
@erinoco – both the London Topographical Society maps and Canaletto’s paintings suggest that the Thames was being lost to industry well before the C19, with the south bank pretty well lined continuously with wharves by the mid-C18 and the City riverside having lost any residential access by late mediaeval times (the culmination of a process of extending the City into the reclaimed river to provide warehousing and entrepots that had started with King Alfred at Queenhithe)
My favourite aspect of the London River Services operation is that their operational HQ is underwater! It sits underneath Tower pier and accessed via a steep spiral staircase. Portholes and all.
@erinoco. I’m not sure that your analysis of access to the river is entirely correct. The river banks became commercialised early on. Possibly, merchants who lived over the business may have had domestic direct access to the river, but public access was via fairly narrow steps and slips. The normal way a settlement on sheltered water would develop was for the land by the shore to be built up early on with the businesses that needed access to the water. A street would then be laid out parallel to the shore, with only occasional accesses through the built-up zone.
This can still be seen in a few places. Stromness on Orkney is one. Surprisingly, Cowes on the Isle of Wight is another. The Victorians dramatically improved public access to the river when they built the Embankments plus the first piers for steamships. Until then access had been very limited
@Graham H and @Fandroid. Fair points. Indeed, Fandroid’s description can be seen in the gradual evolution of the Strand and Thames Street over the centuries. I would argue that the extent to which merchants did live ‘over the shop’ until the Victorian era did make some difference.
@GrahamH. Cutting across the IOD not viable.
(1) Main reason. Thames is tidal, almost 8m range. On this section. The West India Docks stay at same level (effectively high tide level). So locking in and out would be a serious time penalty. The Canals and Rivers Trust (who now maintain the WID generally only permit the opening of the operational lock on the east side (known locally as the ‘blue bridge’ an hour either side of high tide.
(2) Secondary reason. The lock on the west side (by the hideous Cascades residential block) is no longer operational. It would need to be rebuilt. Also new construction at Herons Quay has temporarily drained part of that dock.
(3) Outside of commuter rush hours, the main destination is Greenwuch. So cutting op through the IOD to the dome would cut off their main customer destination.
(4) When the ‘blue bridge’ lock is open, it causes traffic mayhem on the IOD. When opening coincides with weekday rush hour, it’s not pretty.
Re slow embarkation / disembarkation. I think this varies by customer type. Weekday commuters (just as they are with trains) get on/off very rapidly. But tourist users (especially at Embankment and Greenwich) can be painfully slow.
At smaller stops (such as Masthouse Pier, my local stop, a commenter/commuter stop), the whole stop / tie up / disembark – embark / untie process is very slick. Almost Grand Prix pit stop quick – OK that’s an exaggeration, but they really are slick.
Aargh, oh for an edit. Apologies for spelling and non matched parentheses above.
Moderators. Hesitant to post at this stage. Have some comments brewing on (1) differential speed limits on different parts of the river and (2) operational maintenance observations with the clipper fleet. Are these better held for subsequent articles?
Re Island dweller
Yes covered in later articles…
And pier dwell times too
@IslandDweller
Yes, we shall address the River’s speed limits and Clippers catamarans in the follow on article, as well as analysing the restrictions that Thames operations impose which has determined the design of the Thames Clippers fleet.
We are endeavouring to publish the follow on article soon.
The fascinating part of writing such articles is the breadth and depth of knowledge provided by commentators, shining a light on hitherto unknown (to us and many readers) aspects of the articles. Keep them coming! LBM
I used to travel on the service from London Bridge to Canary Wharf when it was free and the alternative was the D3 ? bus or the DLR from Tower Gateway. One of the challenges was that the boat arrival times and the journey times were very dependant on which way the tide was running ! It may be better now with with the catamarans that I think are faster.
Also if you travel longer distances I get the impression the average speed is a lot lower after Tower Bridge – not only are there more piers to call at I think the speed limit on the river may be lower above tower Bridge.
Great way to travel but it can’t compete on Journey times with the Jubilee line
@C21 Ry
What year(s) were you traveling on the free river bus?
@21C Rly
I recall from the Top Gear Commuter Challenge, (Kew Green to London City Airport, pushbike v Chelsea Tractor v Tube/DLR v speedboat: there is no speed limit downstream of Wandsworth Bridge.
(confirmed here) http://www.rib.net/forum/f40/whats-the-speed-limit-on-the-thames-and-where-can-i-launch-8971.html
One Tube strike I did use the free boat from Blackfriars to Waterloo, but it did not save much time over my usual walk, mainly because there was only one gangplank to board by, and of course Jubilee Gardens Pier is itself a fair step from Waterloo Station. Dwell time is obviously much more of an issue on such a short hop.
@timbeau. The mods have confirmed that speed limits are in the subsequent article. So I’ll limit my comment to this link. There definitely are speed limits east of Wandsworth Bridge, though they are differential depending on vessel / licence ….
http://www.pla.co.uk/assets/NEW_Inner_PRINT_FINAL.pdf
A fascinating read, thanks!
[Thanks for the correxions. I’d not realized how often I’d used “indeed”… LBM]
Superb piece of work and very interesting too.
Well if they still need to tie up, then no wonder if they are slow. Ferry service in Hamburg (also a mixture of commuting and leisure on a busy tidal river) don’t.
The timetables are a bit inconsistent, on the Putney service missing stops reduces journey times by about 2 minutes, on the RB1 it is one minute, or none in the case of Blackfriars (so why miss it).
Personally I find the fares far to steep and not-integrated to consider the service as a proper public transport.
Just a thought, but if you kept the Thames Barrier up (ie. blocked) would the water level in the city stay constant, thus making piers easier to use?
@IslandDweller – thanks for that info – I’d suspected it had something to do with the tides.
Alison W: no, because there’s an inflow at Teddington Lock, where the river meets to Tideway. So the outflow over the barrier would need to match that. Try it with your bath at home (if available )
Or you could do a thought experiment – crayons optional.
@mods. And will the subsequent article also cover the irony of a service part sponsored by MBNA (a credit card company) not accepting contactless payments….
[Oh the irony. TfL/LRS has announced that contactless payment will be extended to River Buses sometime in 2016, I can’t recall the month at the moment. I have lots of revising to do I see… LBM]
I have been travelling between Hammersmith and Greenwich for over 30 years. In the beginning was the car; then as parking became more difficult the District Line and then the train from Charing Cross; then the District Line to Tower Hill and the DLR; then the Central Line to Bank and the DLR. Always a combination of what was quickest or cheapest or available or most interesting.
Since the arrival of the Thames Clipper Services (and particularly at the moment with all the London Bridge issues) I am opting for District Line to Embankment and then the boat. In particular booming back up the river in the evening with a Wyllie-esque sunset behind Tower Bridge is worth every penny of the (small) extra cost.
It’s great to hear from a good number of “real” users of river buses. (Tourists are really real users too, of course, but lower down my mental hierarchy, for some reason).
I’m interested to know what proportion of Thames Clipper passengers are tourists. My guess is about 50%, but I could be way out.
Of course, defining a “tourist user” is a bit tricky, but it might be something like someone who, if the river bus was not operating, would go somewhere else or do something else, rather than use another mode for the same journey.
Old Buccaneer @ 0419
I think you mean Ben Aaronovitch 🙂
One of the major issues with the river boat services is efficiency. At a fundamental level you’ve got a 220 capacity vehicle that requires four onboard crew. That’s an awful lot when you compare the capacity of 10-12 car DOO (or even Driver + Guard) suburban train, or an OPO tube train, or even a (full length) DLR train with just a single PSA.
Then there’s hideous energy efficiency of even the best designed of powered boats. Especially when fighting the tide.
These are fundamental problems when it comes to trying to use boats as part of an integrated transport system- so much more expensive.
I’ll add to the comments on the idea of going straight through the Isle of Dogs. As far as I can find out that operational lock is simply a single set of gates operating- which is why it’s only usable at high tide. The dock end gates are long out of commission, whilst on the west side the lock has been out of use so long there’s a red brick warehouse on top of it.
Even if that lock weren’t fundamentally stopped up, instead with South Dock having locks at both ends useable at all states of tide, by the time you’ve transited the locks, coupled with the low speed through the narrow and not-straight docks, a boat heading round the peninsula would be ahead.
I’ve occasionally seen suggestions of extending the services downstream to Gravesend and Tilbury, which always me laugh. The current fleet can do 28knots in good conditions -32 mph for landlubbers/52km/h for the progressive. Even commercial hydrofoils barely top 50mph in open sea- the lower Thames is still not every wide and has heavy traffic, as well as being rather winding.
@ Malcolm 2058 – unfortunately there are no TfL statistics that break down the users of river services by “type”. The data currently available is fairly basic – totals by period. TfL changed the counting methodology last year and there was a significant uplift in demand to more than 10m pass jnys. [ source – Travel in London Report 8, section 3.14 ]
Looking at the graphs per year / period you can see that demand strongly peaks in the Summer months and, of course, more service is run then than in the Winter as there are seasonal timetables on some of the services. Demand in July 2014 was 4 times higher than in January 2014 and Jan 2015.
@Al sure do?
Gents – here’s the thing – a few Putney dads getting the boat to Embankment or Blackfriars will always be a rounding error in the heavy rail stats. Fine. But a bit of fun, a bit of history & the ability to have a “wow” moment on the way to and or from the wage slave desk raises the spirits. So, “worth having”. Trade-off between ~7mn on piers vs saving libraries (insert your chosen iconic public good here)? Pfft, above my pay grade, that’s why I go to the polls every four years. Being a citizen of “no mean city” gives me the twin privileges of delegating and ‘moaning rights’. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
@AlisonW: In the 1930s and 40s there was a Thames Barrage Association who campaigned for a permanent barrage to be built roughly where the Thames Barrier is now, so as to make the Thames in central London non-tidal. Conceptually you could think of it as moving Teddington Weir downstream. A side-effect would have been a new road and rail crossing of the river. One downside would obviously have been slowing down river traffic through the locks that would have been needed and it would have killed off any prospect of a riverbus service through the locks.
The proposal seems to have been promoted as early as 1907, but it never got the support of the Port of London Authority.
In 1937 there was a debate in the House of Lords on the topic. The proponent conceded rather alarmingly that “we do not claim that this is a water-tight scheme”. The head of the PLA pointed out that such proposals weren’t compatible shipping or with the use of the Thames for sewage disposal, and said “Every one of these proposals has either been killed or has died of neglect, and I hope one of these fates awaits this proposal”, which is the kind of to-the-point response that TfL could apply to a few other perennial schemes.
re Al__S
Economics and limitations covered in subsequent parts
re 21st Century Railway + timbeau + IslandDweller
The history and changes to speed limits is covered in later parts
re old buccaneer
“a few Putney dads getting the boat to Embankment or Blackfriars will always be a rounding error in the heavy rail stats.”
Indeed the annual increase in commuter usage at Putney (NR) station is equivalent to adding 10 extra River Boats a year…
Re Alison W / Old buccaneer / Ian J
The Thames up stream of the barrier with it closed is effectively a 30million tonne bath tub with between 1 – 20 million tonnes* typically entering the bath tub per tidal cycle (12.5 hours) at Teddington so it needs emptying at the barrier. (there is a partial weir at Richmond Lock so tides upstream of Richmond are even more interesting.)
The reliable structural life of the gates would be less than 1 year in the mode Alison suggests with most closed and those remaining open would be unnavigable because of the flow.
* Ignoring the estimated 36.5MT of 1880s record…
PS
emptying at the barrier at lower tide heights.
The super sewer adds about 750K tonnes to flood defence capacity.
@Al_S
The much lower infrastructure cost of river services definitely helps their case versus rail in cost efficiency.
Also the malfunctioning WID gates have been/are being refurbished by CRT so there should be three working sets by summer.
https://mobile.twitter.com/CanalRiverTrust/status/707900581659197441
Just a couple of points in the arcane (and IMHO meaningless) debate between “commuters” and “tourists” – whom we might more accurately describe as business and leisure users.
It is quite wrong to describe “tourists” as “getting in the way” as AlisonW suggests. For the record, the River Tours operators – leisure users – account for about half the total passenger journeys reported by LRS.
Do those who denigrate these services mean also want to dig up the parks to build flats, or demolish theatres to make way for offices? Make the Underground off-limits to non-residents? No right-minded person would suggest such a thing – so why deny the use of the river to one particular group of people.?
The river is the capital’s largest open space, a treasure trove of history, art and architecture which Londoners and visitors alike have enjoyed for hundreds of years. We should encourage everyone to share it.
@Ken W – “whom we might more accurately describe as business and leisure users.” Not really, a professional market analyst would draw a distinction between regular commuters and irregular business travel for a start and then again between leisure passengers who were making the trip for its own sake, and those who make a leisure journey as part of something else. This matters because the arguments for pricing and subsidy are very different for each category. It’s not a matter of denying a service to any particular group, but really a matter of how much of it is provided and at what fare.
As for the “Wonder of London” argument, that doesn’t tell us much about the price and volume questions.
Ken W, Graham H:
I cannot see any grounds for disputing Ken’s argument that the river should be shared, as far as possible, between its different users. Whether and how precisely to split up the market does not matter, at least until it is known for what purpose and at whose behest the “market” is being “analysed”.
When it comes to “arguments for pricing and subsidy”, who is benefitting will start to matter. My reading of the current article, however, suggests that there is very little subsidy to argue about, at least compared to other forms of transport in London.
Yes, there is infrastructure to look after, and someone must pay for that, but my impression is that all users are reasonably satisfied with the current state of the piers, and their numbers.
It was only the “getting in the way” phrase which gave a slight hint of some tension between “River Buses” and “River Tours”. It was that slight hint that prompted me to wonder how much, in practice, Thames Clippers is (maybe without even intending to) operating on both sides of the tourist/transport divide.
@Anonymous – 3 May 2016 at 10:09
@Al_S
Also the malfunctioning WID gates have been/are being refurbished by CRT so there should be three working sets by summer.
https://mobile.twitter.com/CanalRiverTrust/status/707900581659197441
https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/news-and-views/blogs/london-boating-bulletin/london-boating-bulletin-march
makes clear that it is only the existing single set of entry gates to WI dock that are being re-furbished (at a cost of £920,000!) so am not sure where the other two sets of working gates would be??
https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/notice/6705/west-india-dock-entrance-london-docklands
says the renovated gates are due to be re-instated 6th-9th May.
@JohnUK. Re the locks at the entrance to the West India Docks.
Look at this photo.
http://www.movablebridges.org.uk/BridgePage.asp?BridgeNumber=786
This is how the lock normally looks. An outer lock gate (adjacent to, and almost underneath the lifting ‘blue bridge’) and a secondary lock gate at the point where the lock enters the dock ‘proper’.
Eagle eyed viewers will realise this photo is a few years old (industry and cranes on N Greenwich peninsular rather than dome and Intercontinental hotel …..), but the lock arrangement will look like this again later this year once the inner lock gate (currently removed for refurbishment) is put back into use.
@Mods. This photo may be relevant to the next article. This is the lock which Clipper use when they do engine swaps on the catamarans.
@Malcolm – the pricing and volume/service arguments matter if the river bus service joins the Oyster system and is intended as a commuter service. I don’t think anyone was suggesting that the use of the river should be restricted in some way.
Ian J: Thankyou, interesting that I’m not the only one to believe there are options. Considering all the dates you mention were whilst the Port of London was still very active it isn’t surprising that they never came to fruition. I’d suspect the business case now though would be markedly different. And improved.
Ken W’s poser “Make the Underground off-limits to non-residents?” actually bears thinking about. Personally I’d be all for a price differential given that tourists do not pay rates (and their hotels only pay a differential rate) and therefore receive a transport service effectively subsidised by Londoners. As do commuters.
As regards the inflow from upstream, surely the way to control it is to just let out a similar volume down-stream, via a weir or other control facility.
IanJ / AlisonW. A new cruise ship terminal has been approved (though there may be challenges to that on air pollution grounds) at Enderby Wharf, Greenwich. (That’s almost opposite the ‘blue bridge’ mentioned earlier). Given that PLA seems to be chasing the cruise ship visitors, I can’t see them supporting the barrage proposal.
@ Alison W – you appear to be taking a very one sided view of the tourist trade. I am not suggesting that tourism doesn’t impact upon London and its residents – it clearly does. However where’s the evidence to suggest that masses of tourists are crowding commuters off the transport system? I’ve never seen any. If you’re going to try those arguments then we should stop other generous concessions that allow peak travel to those who don’t really need it. A share of tourists end up buying premium products so pay more than Londoners do anyway. How many tourists buy a season ticket that attracts a discount? What they do do is pay £25 or £30 for an open top bus day ticket when they could pay a little more than that and get a week’s travel in Zones 1 and 2.
I am sure you also understand that the tourist trade brings in vast earnings to the Capital and sustains an awful lot of employment of London residents. Those businesses and residents hopefully *do* pay their taxes, rates and in turn sustain other businesses in London too. As a “World City” with a tremendous reputation and centuries of history we’re always going to have a tourist trade just as much as we are going to have a considerable volume of business related travel and visiting. I really don’t see the point in trying to price tourists off any element of the transport network, river services included, without there being demonstrable, strong and long term evidence of the negative impact they are “allegedly” causing.
Re Alison,
Except there aren’t any real options when you start taking real issues such as flood defence needs into account. The PLA are still very active and now the Environment Agency too so anything is less likely than ever as increased flooding risk (or mitigation measures) would kill the BCR.
“As regards the inflow from upstream, surely the way to control it is to just let out a similar volume down-stream, via a weir or other control facility.”
Yes we have one already – it is called the Thames Barrier!
Would be very difficult when the water level down stream is higher than up stream to let water out…
Hence very very big pumps.
Raising the default lowest level of the river with a barrage will reduce the space the in the tidal Thames between Teddington and the Barrier reducing the size of bath tub to absorb land water coming down the Thames radically increasing flood risk. Raising the level (even just 1 or 1.5m not even anything like the full 7m max tidal height) as you suggest with a barrage would have resulted in extensive flooding in West London in 2014 and 2012 (As opposed to just the Surrey CC area and further west which the EA is looking at spending circa £700m to reduce the potential for it to recoccur so water enters the tidal Thames faster in high stream conditions (above circa 200tonnes/s at Teddington)).
Current thinking is that a new bigger barrier further downstream (also appears as part of one of the estuary airport proposals) to create an even bigger bath tub when needed is where the agenda is heading.
Barge movements are timed (Upstream on rising/flood tide and downstream on a falling /ebb tide) to use the the tide to reduce energy usage and a barrage would make them less efficient than at present!
@ Ngh 0759 – “The reliable structural life of the gates would be less than 1 year in the mode Alison suggests with most closed and those remaining open would be unnavigable because of the flow.”
Dimbo question from a non engineer / non physicist – why would the structural life be so short? Just the sheer unrelenting water pressure on the gates or something else?
Concerning the barrier. One very serious problem with a permanently raised barrier up to now has been that issue raised in 1937, ie sewage disposal. The Tideway Tunnel sewer, now under construction, should eliminate just about all of that problem. The current barrier is not designed to be permanently closed, as has already been pointed out. However, it is recognised that its life as an effective barrier is now fairly limited. It is now raised rather more times per year than anyone originally forecast. That is due to higher sea levels and storm surges, not due to river flows from upstream.
There is no reason why a new barrier , further downstream, could not now be designed to be a permanent barrier, keeping water levels constant through London. It would have to have some mighty great locks to let Cruise Ships plus the odd aircraft carrier through, but there is no problem with letting flood flows through. After all, there are already dozens of wiers, from Teddington upwards, which already do that job quite happily. If an example is needed, think of Cardiff Bay.
As an irrelevant aside, but still on topic, my career touched for a very short time on river traffic and London’s piers. For a while, I think it was immediately after the GLC was abolished, Thames Water (TW) had responsibility for the piers. For an even shorter time, I was ‘Project Manager – Piers’ (with no nautical qualifications whatsoever). They had been somewhat neglected, and needed investment, so grandiose plans were prepared for the most commercial ones such as Charing Cross and Greenwich. However, TW saw that any likelihood of getting a return on any investment was close to zero, so the piers were swiftly passed on to the PLA, and my short nautical career came to an end.
Constant water levels throughout London. The effect on all the plants and animals (which have evolved to use tidal, brackish water) would be quite drastic. Admittedly the Thames is very different nowadays from how it would have been without human intervention, it is also very different nowadays from the filthy river of the fifties, but do we really want go to great expense to turn it into a canal?
@ Christian Schmidt 18:22 I too have used the Hamburg ferries and can confirm that mooring, embarking and disembarking seems faster than on Thames Clippers. I think this is for 3 reasons. Firstly, they have much wider gangplanks. Secondly, they have much fewer seats per sq m. Both of these allow passengers on and off faster (and many to take bikes on them). The third reason, and possibly the explanation for why the Hamburg ferries don’t feel the need to tie up, is that the boats there are conventional monohulls rather than catamarans. Catamarans can travel forward (and backwards) very efficiently but are not necessarily so good at crabbing (moving sideways), especially if they don’t have bow thrusters, which the Hamburg ferries almost certainly do have if they can maintain position against the pier/quay without tying up.
What do you know. Should have googled this before I commented
“A 75kw Aquamaster bow thruster further enhances dockside manoeuvrability while negating the need for mooring lines and line handlers”.
http://www.maritimejournal.com/news101/power-and-propulsion/hamburg_embraces_river_ferry_innovation#sthash.9ngQ9Vuj.dpuf“
Re WW
Gates and turning mechanisms designed for a limited number of uses. More use = reach design limit quicker.
Re Fandroid,
Except the super super doesn’t eliminate all the sewage problems in the Thames as sisgnificant number of smaller overflows are going to be connected and though Mogden is being enlarged it won’t eliminate the possibilities there.
The Thames gets a bit smelly when there isn’t enough land water to give it good flush at the moment.
“It is now raised rather more times per year than anyone originally forecast. That is due to higher sea levels and storm surges, not due to river flows from upstream. ”
Err – except the majority of the 40 closures early in 2014 to create extra space in the Tidal Thames to reduce flooding further up stream, this is newer role not envisaged in the original design spec.
See this telegraph article from 2014:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/weather/10646439/The-Thames-Barrier-has-saved-London-but-is-it-time-for-TB2.html
The EA Thames Barrier team are usually quite happy to talk about this recent adjustment of role.
The time that would be saved by not tying up is a matter of seconds, negligible in comparison with the time for streams of people to walk the plank. Or so it seems to me, anyway.
Re Stewart,
LBM will be covering those issues in later articles…
Even if the EA have to look upstream when considering barrier operation, it’s still the high sea levels that are restricting the capacity of the Thames in London to absorb floods from upstream. I cannot really believe that no-one in the original design team considered the scenario of a predicted high surge tide combined with a high flows over Teddington weir. I do acknowledge that the 2014 floods, all over the country, went on for a seriously long time, but my understanding is that the barrier operation frequency was on the up anyway, even without that rather nasty winter.
@ Malcolm 17:28 You may well be right. I think more time is lost through slow speed manoeuvring than the actual tying up. The first stop on this vid involves a stationary time of only ~0:20 but a total time not at high speed of around 1:30.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFIU_s-lCd0
IIRC, the Hamburg ferries also get away with fewer crew as none are needed to tie up and the doors are automatic.
@ngh Understood. I’ll keep my thoughts to myself for now then 😉
Re Fandroid,
41 fluvial closures in circa 1 month in early 2014 was more than an average decade worth of (high) tidal closures (only circa 90 tidal closures since opening in the early ’80s).
Re Stewart,
PS Not all the cats have the same type of equipment 😉
@ ngh
Interesting. I look forward to learning more.
There are three gates at the entrance to West India Docks. There are two outer gates (one pretty much beneath the blue bridge and one not far from it) and an inner gate which gives the longer penning length. Each gate consists of a pair of leaves. Two leaves are being repaired, each from a different gate.
Slightly off topic!
Having been a river user on and off from the perspective of coxing 4’s and 8’s and piloting a small motor launch, to business trips and taking visitors on Greenwich and Hampton Court services, I very much appreciate the river as fascinating mixture of transport potential, sport and leisure venue, nature reserve, ‘open space’ and architectural theatre. I see room for all of these to co-exist and develop. It’s been good to see how the Thames Clipper services have developed alongside the huge increase in numbers of people walking along the extended South Bank and I feel that we are still only seeing the beginnings of future potential as the Boats get better integrated, more missing links along the Thames Path get opened up and the like.
As a transport resource, it may never shift the numbers of people and as speedily as the railways and Tube do (after all, it is only one linear route, and a windy one at that), but hopefully, one day there will be recognition that it will have attained ‘indispensable’ status nevertheless. The lack of mental mapping that Walthamstow Writer refers to above or ‘turn up and go’ service characteristic continues to suppress demand, so I look forward to what the future articles have to say on such issues and future developments.
@Malcolm: My reading of the current article, however, suggests that there is very little subsidy to argue about, at least compared to other forms of transport in London.
I agree, although Sean Collins’ comment that “There is no other mode of public transport in central London that does not get financial support” seems a little disingenuous given that the Tube is expected to break even on operating costs.
The Tube gets capital funding but as you say, public money has been spent on piers, although interestingly many were built with lottery money via the Millennium Commission’s Thames 2000 project (lottery money was presumably the answer to the business-case-for-repairs condundrum Fandroid faced earlier in the 1990s).
Since the new piers were mainly at very tourist-oriented places like the Tower of London and the London Eye, it seems reasonable that they were paid for out of a fund that was specifically intended to fund things that wouldn’t (shouldn’t?) get funded out of general taxation. I think there would be less objection to certain other Thames-based transport projects if they used lottery money rather than coming straight out of TfL’s budget.
@AlisonW, WW: Go to Venice if you want to see somewhere where tourists really do get in the way of the locals on river buses (and charging tourists 5 times as much doesn’t seem to dent demand). Also if you want to see how to tie up at each wharf without any effect on dwell times.
On the more general issue of whether riverbuses can make a significant difference to London’s transport: I think it is approaching it the wrong way to see them as a competitor to the Tube, as they will never be fast or high capacity enough. But if you see them as a bus, focused on more local journeys (especially ones where the river itself forms a barrier to actual buses), then they are potentially time-competitive and useful.
@IanJ. Local cross river journeys. An interesting thought, but current services don’t much support these. The only local connector services are the ‘Hilton shuttle’ at Canary Wharf (which is now wrongly named as the hotel on the Rotherhithe riverbank has been rebranded) and the Woolwich ferry (mostly road traffic, but also carries a small but steady pedestrian flow, linking into bus 473).
Fandroid
That is due to higher sea levels and storm surges, not due to river flows from upstream.
Most of the time…
And see also ngh’s post, & then get a really wet Winter with lots of floods & the story changes, as we’ve seen in recent years….
Nick Bxn
more missing links along the Thames Path get opened up
Really? I was under the impression that many/some riparian landowners are doing their best to make sure said Thames Path is never opened properly for either locals or tourists. Is the Thames Path (in London) a subject for a suitable future article, I wonder?
@IanJ, Island Dweller
With local cross river journeys it might be better to see ferries as an extension of walking or cycling. A detour of 250m to get to a bridge is nothing for a car or a bus, but is a mild inconvenience for a cyclists and a serious deterrent for a pedestrian, especially if you have to make a reverse 250m on the other bank. A fleet of small, pedestrian and cycle friendly boats making numerous short cross river trips might be more useful than longer distance ferries. It would be replicating, in some senses, the multitude of small boats that used to ply for hire to make cross river journeys in the 17th and 18th centuries.
@Ian J:
In fairness to the Thames, tides are less of a problem in Venice as the Mediterranean has nowhere near the tidal range of the Atlantic. Venice is more prone to flooding, due to most of it being barely above mean sea level, but for most of the day, the canals really don’t see a lot of change. The upshot of which is that river buses don’t have to contend with the kinds of fast currents found on the Thames.
@Quinlet:
At the risk of repeating a common topic, you’ll have to walk a heck of a lot further than “250 metres” to get to the next bridge if you’re in east or south-east London!
I therefore wouldn’t have a problem with a couple more Woolwich-style ferries, but as this is the subject of a forthcoming article, I won’t expound any further on it here.
On a related note, there is a less well-known cross-river ferry east of that at Woolwich: the Gravesend-Tilbury ferry.
There used to be a lot more leisure boats along the Thames between London and Gravesend, but I think there are only a handful of cruises during the high season today. (The main attraction was Rosherville Gardens, which closed for the last time in 1913.)
@Greg
“Is the Thames Path (in London) a subject for a suitable future article, I wonder?”
Methinks it would. LBM
@Christian Schmidt is right, the fares are not very integrated….
… but imagine how volumes could take off if every time somebody went to a TfL ticket machine to renew their weekly/monthly/annual ticket, an option flashed up, for river services to be included for a few % extra. Boom! (In the short term there would not be enough capacity).
As another detail, still more could be done to make the piers and access to piers more comfortable, weather-protected, welcoming, and safer feeling. Imagine a long wait on a cold winter night etc.
Re Greg and LBM,
The Thames Path is being opened up and improved where possible as a condition of redevelopment being allowed. H&F, K&C, Wandsworth have been fairly good at doing this over the last decade or 2 in West London, The City has on going improvement works a the moment with improved access from London Bridge to the path on the north-side. And Southwark has been progressive too but aided bu lots of redevelopment opportunities. The PLA own 8km in total of tow path west of Putney which made life easy there (at least on the south side). Hounslow seem less effective but comparatively little redevelopment to force issues.
One thing that I’ve noticed, anecdotally from walking by the Bankside Pier on an almost daily basis, is that the loading / unloading time is regularly extended and, I assume, schedule disrupted by the piers being
a) effectively bi-directional – seems to be quite a big problem.
b) shared with leisure craft
It is quite common to see more than one riverbus boat waiting to dock (often waiting for a City Cruises tourist boat to shift) – and not unknown for some “river rage” hooting
Interesting that the east-west “Thames 2000” happened when named, yet the North-South “Thames-link 2000” is still to be fully completed.
At the risk of pre-empting part 2, I was recently pleasantly surprised to discover (1) that (most) Sydney Harbour ferries are fully integrated into the Opal (= Oyster) ticketing system, with only a small premium over buses; (2) the dwell times at intermediate pontoons were rarely more than a minute (… despite being operated by large catamarans in tidal water); and (3) pedestrian access routes to pontoons were well signposted and real-time, solar-powered ‘next ferry’ indicators were available at even the most remote locations. Time for some international best-practice benchmarking?
@ Ian J – sadly I’ve not been to Venice. I’ve only seen it on telly a few times. I think the fundamental difference is that I understand Venice’s “street” pattern is immensely complicated to understand. While I am sure tourists do wander and stroll around I’d hazard a guess that the water buses are a more reliable option if you have to get to a specific place or want to avoid getting lost. London’s river is simplicity in comparison. Clearly the road network in London is complex but the main streets are fairly easy to get used to. Happy to be corrected if I’ve got Venice “wrong”.
@ Quinlet – I rather like that idea of shuttle ferries. Reminds me of the Cross Tyne Ferry between North and South Shields which is a very long standing link and is fully integrated into the local Tyne & Wear public transport system.
@ Belsize Parker – having been lucky enough to use ferries in Sydney and Hong Kong then both places show the value of really efficient, well run integrated services. In both places ferries are, of course, essential in linking key places in the wider area with central areas of commerce and employment.
@ Putters
At the major TfL piers shared by River Bus and River Tours services (aka Clippers and City Cruises) – Westminster, Tower and Greenwich – each operator has its own designated berth or berths.
This aids pier-side passenger flows for embarkation and disembarkation (avoiding queue confusion) and also helps to reduce on-water congestion and mooring time for berthing. Delays because of obstruction do sometimes occur, mainly when tidal or traffic conditions require either a Clipper or the much larger CC Riverliners to adopt specific approach or exit manoeuvres to and from the berth.
As a general point, all operators pay pier fees to London River Services (and other pier owners) for the use of piers. These are calculated in various ways:
• per “touch” – ie every time your boat comes alongside, you pay the owner a set amount, which can vary according to time/day or size of vessel. Typicall £50–£100.
• per passenger boarding or landing
• as a percentage of ticket sales derived from services to or from the pier
Charter / party boat operators whose pier calls vary to meet client needs generally adopt the first method; over the past 10+ years LRS has generally moved scheduled service operators on to percentage terms.
Apart from the fare box river services do not generally receive any financial subsidy. Past exceptions to the rule have ranged from the former Pool of London service some 15 years ago to more recent short-term launch aid from TfL, boroughs and developers to open up new piers and services (for example the Clippers route to Woolwich, initially supported both by Greenwich and Berkeley Homes).
I’ve put a few photos (only a camera phone so not super high quality) of piers onto the photo pool. I’ve included a photo of Greenwich pier which shows the segregation by operator, as described in KenW’s comment above.
Re: dwell times at piers. I seem to recall a proposal some years back for a new type of pier where, once alongside, the boat would be ‘clamped’ to the pier to avoid it moving with the swell and to allow level-access boarding.
Interesting idea, but possibly impractical. I can’t find a link, sadly.
@Frankie roberto – difficult to see how that would work without leaving the vessel in the air when there was a down swell. (Of course,you could have the vessel secured to a pontoon- but isn’t that what happens now?)
Regarding opening up riverside areas and paths – there’s a fair bit of this happening around Greenwich Peninsula and the area over the Thames by the Royal Docks. Also Charlton riverside in coming years. 2 or 3 more piers are planned along there I believe, to the detriment of journey times to Woolwich.
@WW: You are right about Venice, but I would also add that the ferries there, like buses in London, are faster than walking, especially for getting from one end of the city to the other. Notably there is a two tier express/local service on some of the main routes (eg. the Grand Canal), which helps resolve the issue Eddie alludes to that adding stops slows down end-to-end journey times.
Also the main frontage of many of the buildings is onto a canal rather than the pedestrian streets. An example of a building that used to work that way in London would be Somerset House, which has a ‘water gate’ that is now below the level of the Embankment.
My main reason for mentioning Venice though was just to emphasise that, like Sydney, short dwell times are possible with well experienced deckhands (is that the right term?) looping ropes round bollards on the piers while the boat is still moving and then tightening them as the boat stops. It is inherently labour intensive, though.
@Belsize Parker: The other thing Sydney does well is integration of ferries and bus routes, with buses coming right down to the water’s edge at many piers to connect with ferries. Opal is directly derived from Oyster, by the way.
Incidentally the buses used to be trams until Sydney’s extensive tramway system was abandoned in the 1950s on the advice of consultants from, err, London Transport.
There are automatic ferry mooring systems such as the vacuum-based MoorMaster http://www.cavotec.com/en/ports-maritime/automated-mooring-systems_36/, but their usage seems to be limited to ships and larger ferries (eg vehicular) with long dwell times, I suspect installation costs would be too high for small ferries, and they need largeish flat areas on the hull. The units allow vertical movement when engaged, so no vessels dangling in the air!
IanJ “short dwell times are possible with well experienced deckhands (is that the right term?) looping ropes round bollards on the piers while the boat is still moving ”
That’s exactly how the Clipper boats operate.
@Islanddweller – or even Swiss lake paddlesteamers – Victorian steam traction,no fancy locking of boat to pontoon, 2 deckhands and a quayside assistant, typical dwell time 2 -3 minutesand that includes getting a ramp into position. I suspect the biggest factor in dwell times is not so much the management of the boarding but the time taken to slow for a stop and accelerate away again.
@GrahamH. Fear I’m close to getting wrists slapped for heading into territory to be covered in next instalment…. Just to note that acceleration from stop of Clipper boats is very impressive, better than most nautical craft short of a speedboat.
Be interesting to know how much of their cost base is fuel, because under full acceleration those things must guzzle fuel.
Re Island Dweller,
1900bhp and a 3,000litre fuel tank capacity probably gives a clue!
(A rail equivalent for the same installed diesel power would be a 4.5car DMU which could carry 3 times the number of passengers…)
I travelled on the Hamburg river bus in 2012, and was most impressed by the automated mechanical docking system (don’t know what the system is called). This was a mechanical arm that locked into a docking point on the landing stage. A gangway then automatically descended. By this means, dwell time at terminal was almost as brief as a tram, and with no staff present at all, In addition, the fares were that of the Hamburg transport authority tariff. I had a Landerkart (22 Euros for two) which includes Hamburg urban transport in its validity, which we used to travel from Stralsund, about 300km.
Adoption of this technology would transform the business performance of the Thames Clipper (unless there is some reason as to why it is impractical for London which I haven’t spotted).
@AR – is the Hamburg waterbus confined to the non-tidal Binnen Alster?
Graham H
Nein mein Herr
@GH
I am referring to the services on the ELBE (tidal). There are five regular routes, 61,52,64,72 and 75, plus summer evening service to the
port of Blankenese, on the mouth of the Elbe, almost “deep sea”.
The river operation is regarded as just another mode in the Greater
Hamburg fare system, i.e. I was able to enjoy the trip out to Blankenese (recommended, lots of small seafood restaurants) on a
Lander Kart. not only that, as the Lander Kart is (was) valid for up to
five persons, I was able to invite two other friends to join us at no
additional cost. As I said, two adults travelling 300km from Stralsund
to Hamburg, then four adults swanning around on Hamburg river
buses (and eventually back to my friend’s house) all for 22 Euros!!
Sadiq Khan, Are you reading this?
Have a look for yourself on http://www.hadag.de
@AR – thanks ! [Note to self – add Hamburg to bucket list]. My only experience of Elbe travel is on the Weisses Flotte of paddlesteamers based in Dresden, where the mooring arrangements are less mechanised – v impressive ability, tho’, to spin the entire vessel on its axis at low water to turn back.
@Graham H
Yes! Hamburg is a “vaut le voyage” destination in Michelin-speak.
BUT. On further examination, there have been significant changes to the riverbus network. I travelled out to Blankenese and Wedel in 2004 when this was a regular scheduled service as part of the HVV network.
It’s now been pared down to a scheduled hop on hop off “cruise” weekends and holidays only, and in day time. and sadly at special fares! (E 30 adult return alas).
My main point was to draw attention to the effective automated docking system, which might save up to about 50 posts if adopted for the Thames Clipper (with very significant effect on bottom line).
i.e. £2m – 3m on working expenses.
Hamburg has much of transport interest. Almost a parallel universe to Liverpool, The landingsbruck is equivalent to the Pier Head, with an elevated U Bahn (reminiscent of the late lamented
Overhead in Scouseland). The city museum has a superb model railway, and for a really special transport experience, there is the Reeperbahn.
@AR – thank you again for the further heads-up. The history of the scheduled service integrated with the rest of the HVV operation becoming a tourist hop-on/hop-off route at , err, extraordinary fares is an interesting precedent for the Thames activities.
But in tourist terms, E30 return is not particularly extraordinary.
There are two ways a city can treat tourists. One is to consider them as people who (among other needs) wish to move around, and fit them in with the arrangements you are already making to move people around, at normal prices. The other is to consider them as a cash-cow, to be milked for as much money as you can get (when you’re not complaining about them getting in the way).
We should probably be unsurprised, with the increasing importance being attributed to attracting tourist yen and renminbi, that European cities in general are moving from the nice to the nasty side of the scale.
@Graham H
It’s only the “long haul” Blankenese and Wedel service that has been de-integrated (i.e. special fares). The numbered routes as I listed remain
very much part of the Hamburg HVV system, and run frequently.
Rather like the Mersey Ferries (in days of yore) their “raison’d’etre”
transport wise is to connect various parts of the very extensive Hamburg port with the U bahn at Landingsbruck, there being no
bridges across the Elbe on this stretch (although there is a fascinating tunnel, rather like those at Greenwich and Woolwich which conveys motor vehicles as well as pedestrians, by means of a 1900ish vintage lift).
To whet your appetite, I recommend the following U tube video;-
Hamburg – Mit der HADAG – Linie nach Finkenwerder – (Linie 62)
Auf der Elbe.
This shows the “hi tech” docking procedures. (and scenes of Blankenese and Wedel where the restaurants etc are located).
Another Liverpool connection;- The “gastronomic delicacy” of Hamburg is SCAUS. (you got it, it’s where Liverpool’s SCOUSE comes
from, same thing). No wonder the Beatles felt totally at home in
Hamburg in 1961 !!!
Unfortunately, Hamburg is the only large German city without trams,
but there have been recent attempts to re-instate a tramway. (on corridors not served by U Bahn).
Indeed, one can imagine that The Greenwich Thames Clipper service might eventually succumb to a similar fate.
@Malcolm
Yes you are correct. The Price Hike in respect of the “down the Elbe service” in Hamburg is very steep. In 2004, it was included on the normal HVV tariff.
Current prices are as follows;- (for 3 tariff zones)
Off peak day ticket for One adult plus three children E 10.20
Off peak day ticket up to five adults E 18.00.
(and it was “thrown in” to Lander Kart, one of the all time travel bargains anywhere).
The next instalment of Thames Clipper will deal with fares and finances, so I don’t wish to anticipate too much. Just to say that I did
identify this tensions between the market price of a commuting and general purpose transport facility, and the much higher tourist orientated price that can be commanded.
With apologies to future installments…
I travel on Thames Clippers fairly regularly and find the calls generally quite smartly handled, though it depends very much on numbers to board/disembark.
One exception is when held off a pier because a late-running Clipper going in the other direction is still on it, this happens quite often.
@JimS
I have had three trips on Thames Clippers now, and also report that the dwell time at piers is very smartly handled. It’s just that manual docking procedures for river bus operations results in a labour intensive operation, greater than that for buses, and this is a major drawback for “ordinary” commuter services. Not so for tourist type operations whereby the fare is sufficient to pay for labour, hence the tension. There are other questions, i.e. safety. Boats tend to sink , therefore there has to be sufficient staff to ensure that passengers may be directed to lifeboats etc in event of catastrophe. The Hamburg riverbus (HADAG) which I have drawn attention to as a comparison, seemed to manage with a lower on board staffing level.
This might be impossible in UK regulatory conditions. Does anyone
know?
Tried to go on Thames clippers today. Got to O2 pier to find a queue and was told it was a 40 minute wait. There didn’t seem to be that many people that 2 boats would be filled. Suffice to say we got the Jubilee line and they didn’t get our 15 quid.
@Malcolm: European cities in general are moving from the nice to the nasty side of the scale
Increasingly European cities (including Hamburg, but not, yet, London) levy tourist taxes on hotel stays. In some cities, like Basle, they throw in a free public transport pass in return – effectively a forced purchase.
I too would commend a trip to Hamburg. I have only been twice for overnight stays, but was pleasantly surprised at how attractive it is, with very interesting local transport and an impressive port. As AR states, the Landungsbrucke is the easily accessible point for viewing and indulging in all that nautical activity.
Ian J: I think Basel is being kind. They give you something for your money; it’s up to you whether you use it. Compare eg (off topic alert) vouchers for money off Florida atrractions; see, eg, the Occasional Stevie’s blog.
Incidentally, his descriptions of a New York commute made me count my London blessings).
OB
the Occasional Stevie’s blog
Err, PLEASE could you be more specific?
I googled that & got some, err .. VERY inappropriate pages & images
Sorry Greg
http://theoccasionalstevie.blogspot.co.uk/
He lives on Long Island despite the .co.uk address.
@ Old Buccaneer
” I think Basel is being kind. They give you something for your money; it’s up to you whether you use it.”
When I last visited Geneva there was a machine in the baggage hall that would dispense free single train tickets into town to help the environment. Slightly ironic for me as I only took the trip as a certain low cost carrier charged me less to go and carry some of my daughter’s luggage (she had spent part of her gap year working in the Savoy region) than it was for her to pay for excess baggage on the same aircraft back to Gatwick.
James Bunting: ‘a father’s work is never done’. Somewhat of an edge case for transport policy formulation though. 😉
Just received an email to announce that contactless cards are finally accepted on clipper.
I think that just leaves the heritage routemaster 15H service as the only place where oyster can be used but contactless cannot.
There is a new Londonist video shewing the river buses in action, specifically the rapid boat manoeuvring, plus interior shots, signage and piers. http://londonist.com/2016/05/video-what-s-it-like-taking-a-thames-clipper?utm_content=bufferf2a35&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer#disqus_thread
(Note that in general I subscribe to Lord Dawlish’s English of the mid 19th century.)
Re LBM,
That is one of the 2 new cats with jets rather than props, the old ones can’t manoeuvre like that!
@ngh
Thanks for pointing that out. Very impressive indeed!
@IslandDweller
Thames Clippers just clarified that contactless payment doesn’t apply for the RB4 Rotherhithe – Canary Wharf shuttle “as it’s not an official service” but for usual changes (eg from RB6 to Rb1) users need to touch out & back in.
LBM. Thanks for that little detail about the Hilton shuttle. but what do on earth do they mean by “not an official service”? No doubt all will be explained in the next installment.
Re the video – that “spinning on it’s own axis” feature is a cool trick with the new boat. Impressive.
@IslandfDweller
I don’t know! I read their tweet clarification 40 minutes ago, and quoted that bit verbatim, and now that tweet is gone. I shall endeavour to follow up with them to clarify.
@ LBM – it is just worth pointing out that Mr Marshall’s damascene conversion to all things Boaty, rather than Tubey, is because that video clip is actually a sponsored advertorial for Thames Clippers. No wonder it so glowing and positive. Such is the commercial pressure on blogs these days to accept the capitalist ten quid note. 😉
@WW – I did recognize the overt commissioned aspect of this video. It is not our intention at all to promote this company, merely to explore the role that River Buses have in London’s transport network. There are of course questions of subsidies (on just one River Bus) route now, which we shall investigate in the next article installment. Plus we will include more analysis and criticism of the service, the maps and the corporate sponsorship arrangements. So expect an independent analysis in the true LR style. Part 1 was merely setting the stage, Act 1 as it were.
I noticed from the video that the Thames Clipper had been built by Incat of Hobart, Tasmania.
Does that mean the boat has been sailed all the way from there to London?
Re Reynolds 953,
All of the Australian made ones have been craned onto a cargo ship for the journey. (Usually several at time.)
@ LBM – rest assured I was not suggesting LR had taken the money and run. It is the Londonist site (originally a blog I believe) that I was referring to. It’s clear they have had to “compromise” in order to pull in advertising money to keep their venture going.
@WW No problem. I took the opportunity to emphatically declare that we are not turning into BoatyMcBoatFaceReconnections, supported by advertorials.
LBM/WW
“Londonist” often have “advertorials”, but they do have the honesty to say “sponsored” if you look closely.
Given that caveat, I see no problem.
At least you know it’s been “paid for”
@ Greg – *yes* I did see that. All I was pointing out (not very well seemingly) is that the commentary was uncritical. Other (non sponsored) Londonist videos on transport matters tend to express more pointed opinions and are, IMO, better for it.
I have been sent a copy of the latest “Passenger Transport” magazine. On the back cover this article is summarised under the title “Best of the Blogs”. Interesting to see wider recognition in print as well as via social media. 🙂
@WW Thanks for mentioning this! Very satisfying for all of us writers and commentators on LR.
Possibly jumping the gun in anticipation of a follow up article on operations….
Here’s a blog post showing how engines are quick-changed on the Clipper craft. The change is impressively swift (four hours total), but I’m really surprised that the boats apparently need an engine change every 1,200 hours. Unless that’s a typo / misunderstanding.
https://docklockandriver.wordpress.com/2016/06/17/cyclone-clipper-gets-an-new-engine/
@IslandDweller, @AJBC_1
Thank you both, very interesting. Thames Clippers has their engines remanufactured (called reman).
Oops – my mistake, the engine life of the Clippers is targeted to be 12,000 operating hours. I’ve updated the post accordingly.
The mayor announced today various initiatives on east London river crossings. One proposal is a new ferry crossing from N Greenwich to the eastern side of the Isle of Dogs. The Mayor’s announcement seems vague on any definitive plans as to where this would actually run to / from.
The map in the mayor’s document (which is not at detailed scale) appears to shows the position of the new ferry as running from near the “blue bridge” on the Isle of Dogs to a point approximately outside the new Intercontinental hotel at N Greenwich (close to where buses drop off for N Greenwich Jubilee line). This part of the river is known as Blackwall Reach on nautical charts. There are no suitable facilities for a ferry at either of these locations at the moment.
So far as I know (having lived in this area for 30 years), this ferry proposal is brand new. The other announcements (Rotherhithe cycle bridge / Thames Gateway crossing) already have some outline design plans in the public domain. I’m not aware of any existing background studies for this new ferry.
Potential issues.
(1) Pier site on the Isle of Dogs. The mayor’s map suggests a site near the “blue bridge” – this is the only entrance to the West India Docks. This lifting road bridge is opened a number of times each week. Canary Wharf brings in construction materials by river (and construction will continue for a number of years yet) as well as other river traffic into the docks.
Although the map in the Mayor’s document calls this a link into Canary Wharf, the CW Group (who own the commercial zone) don’t own any of the riverside land on the east side of the Isle of Dogs. Riverside access in this area is somewhat restricted. To the north of the dock entrance, there are established residential buildings right up to the riverbank, and beyond those a Council refuse transfer facility that generates river barge movements. To the south of the dock entrance, there is a pedestrian walkway but no vehicle access. Getting permission to construct a pier anywhere here will be a challenge as the existing residential landowners have the riparian rights and responsibilities for the riverside wall outside their respective properties. Furthermore, bringing in construction vehicles / creating a landside worksite is likely to generate opposition from residential landowners.
(2) Potential conflict with large vessels. Any large vessel (cruise ship / navy / etc) – whether destined for the West India Docks or further upriver (Greenwich Reach / Pool of London) – is turned in Blackwall Reach. Vessels then continue up river backwards. Almost inevitably this manoeuvre is performed with the assistance of a tug at each end of the large vessel. This manoeuvre is performed on a full tide and can easily use almost the entire width of the river. Assuming that the Greenwich Cruise Terminal goes ahead (and it appears that it is), we can expect an increase in large vessels on this part of the river – at least in summer.
It will be interesting if the Port of London Authority will agree to the creation of piers in this locality, given the potential intrusion of such piers into the manoeuvring area. Who has the final word on this I wonder – is it PLA?
(Blackwall Reach is the only suitably wide point to turn large vessels – it’s not as if turning could be done somewhere else).
(3) Does this ferry solve a problem? The “pressure point” on the Jubilee Line is for passengers boarding at North Greenwich heading for the commercial area of Canary Wharf. A pier on the east of the Isle of Dogs near the Blue Bridge isn’t particularly handy for the commercial area of the Wharf. At the moment, because of the layout of the West India Docks, pedestrians from the Blue Bridge area have to a walk to the sole pedestrian bridge into the Wharf which is adjacent to Herons Quays DLR station – this is actually nearer the west bank of the Isle of Dogs than the east bank.
Wood Wharf (new residential zone) will be open in a few years and will create additional walking routes into the Wharf from the east side of the island but it will still be a ten minute walk into the heart of the Wharf. Bus connection isn’t an option as existing buses through this area go right around the perimeter of the island before heading to the Wharf. Re-routing buses is not an option as there is no road route into the Wharf from here. (Not clear if Wood Wharf will create a new road route).
Would this ferry link actually near be enough to C Wharf to attract many people away from the Jubilee – especially if a river crossing has a premium fare (as Clipper journeys currently do).
Some interesting points from Island Dweller. Regarding turning large cruise ships, is it possible for that to be done a long way down river? I would have naively thought that such modern vessels could proceed for 10 or 20 miles or so as safely and economically stern first as bow first, but maybe I am wrong. (The disgraceful and polluting decision not to require such ships to take power from onshore at the Greenwich terminal needs revisiting, though).
@IslandDweller: Wood Wharf is mentioned as a “potential future pier” (as is “North Greenwich West”) in the 2013 River Action Plan, so there seems to have been some prior planning work done. See also slides 10 and 19 from this presentation from 2009 (where a North Greenwich-Canary Wharf ferry is listed as one of the “short term” actions!).
If I were a cynic I would say that TfL in about 2009 had been poised to introduce ferry links westward and northward from North Greenwich, only to have their plans overtaken by a certain dangly novelty, promoted by a think-tank*, that caught the then Mayor’s attention.
Would this ferry link actually near be enough to C Wharf to attract many people away from the Jubilee
If the Jubilee becomes completely full, then I would think so (many people would prefer 10 minutes extra walk to having to wait for say 3 trains to pass in the morning peak before being able to board).
* The Policy Exchange report proposing the cable car from around this time, which I think had the involvement of a certain Zac Goldsmith, seems to have fallen off the internet…
Malcolm. Re turning large vessels further downstream. We need a shipping expert here, but at a guess it’s a lot easier to pilot a large vessel through the barrier “the right way round” than in reverse. But I’d welcome the view of a ship’s pilot on that.
IanJ. Thanks for those useful links. The photo/diagram at slide 10 in the presentation is useful as it’s a reasonably hi def photo. The proposed jetty site on the Isle of Dogs – shown in that slide – is the site of the refuse transfer station. I can’t see how you can create a jetty there – the river frontage is needed for the daily barge movements to/from the waste station. Closing the waste transfer station would mean more lorry traffic down to the landfill site near Rainham (Essex) – surely not what anyone would propose.
That diagram also nicely illustrates my earlier point about riparian rights. The Wood Wharf development (red shading in that diagram) is alongside (and fills in part of) the West India Docks – but it does not include any frontage onto the Thames. Of course, CW Group may have deep pockets and might want to buy the existing riverside residential properties. This part of the riverside is made up of individual houses and small flats here – so they would need to negotiate with multiple landowners.
A further point – which I forgot in my post last night. Just south of the “Blue Bridge” is the pumping station – the “futuristic” building designed by Outram. This keeps the Isle of Dogs dry (virtually all the land area of the island is below high water) and can pump huge volumes of water out of the storm drains into the Thames. At a guess – Thames Water won’t want a jetty right next to a high volume pump outlet.
I get updates from the local planning forum – who seem very “on the ball” with local planning matters. Although tfl have obviously floated the jetty proposal in some documents, I don’t think this proposal has ever made it onto the LB Tower hamlets planning horizon.
This ferry proposal sounds like it should be in the “quick win” category. I’m not so sure….
@Island Dweller
There is a reason ships have a pointy end and a blunt end.
I am no expert, but having had to drive a six berth cabin cruiser in reverse under a narrow bridge I can assure you that any vessel that relies for its steering control on water flowing past a rudder is much less manoeuvrable if the water is flowing the wrong way. I don’t think the problem reduces with scale, and would be amazed if the manouevre were any less difficult in a cruise liner. The idea of sailing one backwards up the Thames for any distance is actually rather comical.
Imagine how much easier it would be to operate the Channel ferries if they could face the same way all the time, instead of having to turn round each time.
(There are some small river ferries which are the same at both ends like punts, but they are usually chain operated and held in the correct alignment by the chains themselves)
@IslandDweller
Thanks for your observations. We will be addressing most of these issues in more detail in the upcoming installments of the River Bus series.
Regarding your question on who has the final word on construction of piers and possible intrusion into manoeuvring and navigable areas – yes, it is the Port of London Authority (PLA).
My impression from the PLA documents I’ve read, some of which IanJ cited, is that the North Greenwich – Canary Wharf river ferry would add green capacity to the Isle of Dogs for pedestrians and cyclists, as well as allowing more residential development in North Greenwich.
@timbeau
I think you may be missing the salient point that these large ships on the river would have a tug at each end. All the examples you give – while I am sure are very salient – are all operating under their own power. The tugs make a major difference
There is a second turning point: Shadwell basin entrance, that is used for ships that have been to the Inner Pool.
@timbeau: Many Dutch ferries have two pointy ends, as in fact do the Woolwich ferries… They are not restricted to cable ferries either, most are completely independent.
Chain ferries are useless on busy waterways, as the chain needs to be raised, so blocking all shipping. Better is a Gyroferry (? In Dutch a: Gierpont), which uses a single cable anchored in the middle of the river and the current to propel the ferry (by angling the ferry in the current). Very eco friendly, but unfortunately useless on the tidal Thames… 😉
timbeau: in addition to the points others have mentioned, most large modern ships have thrusters (often at each end, I think) which assist docking by applying a sideways force (without requiring water to flow past a rudder). I quite agree that “conventional” ship propulsion is indeed ludicrously unfeasible over any distance in reverse. So it’s not that the problem reduces with scale, more that it reduces with additional specialised equipment (which I believe the cruise liners may have).
Many small ferries in Norway (and probably many other places) are double-ended without being chain ferries. I am sure it would be quite feasible to design the Channel ferries to work that way (they are already double-ended as regards loading ramps, of course). Making them able to travel at full speed in either direction is presumably not done because it would cost more. But my suggestion would not require full speed, or anything like it, because of the necessarily reduced speed that such enormous ships will anyway be limited to, to prevent damage to shoreside items and other nearby vessels.
@ Island Dweller – thanks for all the amazing detail. I’ve learnt a lot of new stuff from this recent exchange of posts. 🙂
I’ve added a photo into the Flickr pool. It shows a large cruise ship turning in Blackwall Reach, where the new ferry service is proposed. Hopefully this photo illustrates how much of the river width is taken up by the turning manoeuver.
I second WW’s remarks- not least because I hadn’t realised just how far up stream from Tilbury large ships strayed.
BTW, I thinkMalcolm would enjoy the Kettenschiff concept – a steel chain was laid continuously along the bed of the river (Main,Neckar, Saale) and picked up and returned to the riverbed by the Kettenschiff which wound its way along the river so, towing a string of barges. Definitely reversible. The Kettenschiffe had to carry a permanently manned forge to repair breaks in the chain…
Graham H
Don’t know if it’s still the same now,but the King Harry Ferry in Cornwall used to have the same system,more-or-less.
@Slugabed
The King Harry Ferry, like I think the Sandbanks ferry any many others is a chain ferry – much like GH describes, but going across the river rather than along it.
@IslandDweller: This ferry proposal sounds like it should be in the “quick win” category. I’m not so sure….
Notably the Mayoral press release seems to divide projects into committed projects that the Mayor has directed TfL to make happen within 5-10 years (DLR Thamesmead, Silvertown Tunnel, Canary-Rotherhithe bridge), and those that he has only directed TfL to “look at” (the Overground extension and the North Greenwich ferry).
@timbeau, Malcolm: Many of the world’s more frequent urban ferry routes use double ended ferries (the Manly Ferry in Sydney, Star Ferry in Hong Kong, the Staten Island Ferry) – the time saving is worth the extra cost of two sets of propellors. But for cruise ships saving time isn’t really the point.
The reasonably large international train ferries between Rodby and Puttgarten on the Germay-Denmark Vogelfluglinie have two sharp ends with double-ended superstructure.
From memory a previous generation had double-ended hulls, as now, but single-ended superstructure, so it looked as if they were going backwards for the entire voyage one way – Germany bound, I think.
@timbeau and others – the remarkable thing about the Kettenschiffe is that their range of travel was hundreds of miles rather than the few hundred metres that the usual cross-river ferries managed. BTW I still have somewhere a disc of “sea shanties” recorded on the Cowes-East Cowes chain ferry.
Perhaps,whilst we are in whimsy territory, Malcom might like the seagoing tramway constructed at Rottingdean by Magnus Volk; contemporary photos show what looks like a tramway saloon balanced on a piece of mobile pier, with the waves breaking over it… Certainly double ended but the wires would get in the way on a river crossing. [S Malo had a rope worked version which might be more acceptable].
I see from this morning’s Beeb website a video of a man crossing the Thames on (in?) a jetpack; now, combine that with a Bozza bike leasing deal for common user packs, and we can eliminate the need for a bridge (ahem).
Also whimsical but real (and even more off topic!), the overhead electrified canals of Kidderminster http://www.britishpathe.com/video/electric-canals and elsewhere http://www.resilience.org/stories/2009-12-22/trolley-canal-boats.
Now, back to the Thames…
Wonderful – but be careful if you are angling in that canal!
In hyper pedant mode. That man with the jetpack wasn’t on the Thames. He’s hovering over the Royal Docks by the Siemens “crystal” centre. He’s hovering directly under the City airport flightpath less than a mile from the runway threshold…… Wouldn’t be my choice of a location to test that thing!
@islandDweller – I was resting on the Beeb’s sense of geography. Agree with you about the choice of location…
Just to add to the discussion: Clippers today serve a lot of people commuting into Canary Wharf from the East. When I used to live just next to Greenland Pier and sometimes commuted by Clipper (on days when I was too lazy to get on my bike), there would typically be 20 or so people waiting to board at Greenland Pier. The boats that would come were reasonably full, with a good 3/4 or more seats taken on departure from Greenland. About half of the passengers – including most of those who boarded at Greenland – would then disembark at Canary Wharf. The boat was then a good 1/2 to 2/3 full at least on departure from Canary Wharf.
This shows that the service is well patronised by commuters, and is also well used as a short-distance river crossing in bridgeless East London – aided by the zig-zag alignment of piers (Canary Wharf – Greenland – Masthouse Terrace – Greenwich).
I made some comments (4 Oct 16) about a proposed new ferry from somewhere near the O2 to somewhere on the east side of the Isle of Dogs.
The proposal has reappeared in the Mayor’s consultation document (link below – look at page 116). However, the proposed ferry pier on the Isle of Dogs is now shown in a different location – now shown near the Radisson hotel (or whatever it is called this week – this is a hotel that seems to rebrand every month). Can also be located by looking for the northern ventilation shaft for the “new” Blackwall tunnel. It’s not clear whether this proposal means a new build pier or using the existing pier attached to the Reuters data centre (adjacent to the Radisson hotel) – this is currently on part of the river path which is permanently locked and inaccessible to the public.
This new ferry seems an even more bizarre idea – putting the link here does not provide any useful connectivity into the Canary Wharf business area. It’ll be about as useful for commuting as the Emirates dangleway – ie, not useful at all.
This map (on page 116) also suggests that the existing pier at Masthouse Terrace (lower west of IoD) will be removed – that’s news to those of us who live nearby.
The local (local to the IoD) planning forum have seen nothing concrete on the ferry proposal.
https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/policy/mayors-transport-strategy/user_uploads/mts_main.pdf
@Island Dweller
Apologies for the delay responding to your comment, I had to dig up my notes and references on new ferry pier plans.
TfL’s Connecting the Capital Our plan for new river crossings for London plan from December 2015 shows a diagram of proposed River Bus on document page 22. Whilst not a geographic map, this diagram shows a proposed pier at North Greenwich West, which corresponds with your description of a location near the O2.
The north bank actual location, ‘somewhere on the east side of the Isle of Dogs’ as you put it, could be either the proposed Canary Wharf East pier near Blackwall DLR station, or the Trinity Bouy Wharf pier near East India DLR station. The best map is on page 230-231 (PDF page 116) of the Mayor’s Transport Strategy (MTS) draft document you linked to – which appears to indicate the north bank location is Trinity Bouy Wharf pier near East India DLR.
LBM, thanks for that. I’m sticking with my opinion that this ferry suggestion is vaguely bonkers. It could only be useful if it served Canary Wharf, and these suggested pier locations are nowhere near close enough to fulfill that purpose.
@IslandDweller
I’m not disagreeing with you, but to expand my comment, a better Isle of Dog connexion would seem better than Blackwall or East India DLR served areas on the north bank. I don’t know if . At North Greenwich I believe that a housing development is planned for west of the O2.
It’s the lack of the usual clarity and rationale for this and other proposed piers that is frustrating. Are these two piers meant mostly as a cross Thames pedestrian and cycling connexion, as part of the existing River Bus routes, or both?
Further follow up on the piers.
This tfl consultation document shows a map of river piers. It’s marked as page 231 on the print document but (confusing to me), in the pdf you need page 116.
Link to consultation:
https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/policy/mayors-transport-strategy/user_uploads/pub16_001_mts_online-2.pdf
Points:
(1) The new ferry from the O2 is shown. The proposed pier site on the north bank is shown as near the Reuters building – there is an existing (unused) pier there. As observed in comments above, in terms of serving likely passenger flow, this is useless, it is not an easy walk to Canary Wharf from here, and likely to be as pointless (in transport terms) as the dangleway.
(2) A new pier is shown at Deptford, at Convoys Wharf. (This site is one of the last remaining large parcels of undeveloped riverside land – formerly a commercial wharf, used until about 2000 by News International to import paper by RoRo vessels). This is approximately opposite Masthouse Pier.
(3) Masthouse pier has mysteriously vanished on this diagram.
My local (Isle of Dogs) Councillor has distributed a leaflet to residents about this consultation, suggesting that this might be an attempt by tfl to get rid of Masthouse pier by stealth. (Of course, it might also be simply poor proofing of the document)
My Councillor also asserts that Lewisham Council have publicly stated that Convoys Wharf redevelopment will have a pier, but I don’t have any link to back that up.
Another river, somewhat tangential, but hopefully OK as it relates to (1) the Thames as a highway and (2) possible impact on traffic levels in London.
There are still some wharves within London which are safeguarded for freight use. One of these is Peruvian Wharf, immediately east of where the River Lee joins the Thames (ie – opposite the O2). PLA have been busy this week doing remedial work at this wharf, to enable it to come back into use for freight handling (pictures are on the PLA twitter feed). The plan is that construction materials for projects in London will be brought up river then offloaded and onward shipped from here, reducing the overall volume of lorry movements within London.
Canary Wharf Group have already adopted this model – much heavy material for building projects on their estate comes in by barge into the West India Docks.
Another river, somewhat tangential…
The Lea/Lee isn’t tangential to the Thames, it’s perpendicular to it! 😉
Leaving geometry jokes aside, that is quite an interesting bit of information about construction materials being brought in by boat. It’s good to know that people are looking for ways to avoid excessive lorries on the roads.
According to the marketing blurb for Goodluck Hope, “Thames Clippers depart from the jetty at Goodluck Hope right into the heart of London, and all stops in between.” No suggestion there that this isn’t the current situation. The Thames Clippers timetable says otherwise (and recent journeys, for that matter).
Now, which one to believe ??
Regarding ISLANDDWELLER’s comment “The proposed pier site on the north bank is shown as near the Reuters building – there is an existing (unused) pier there.”
FYI there was a pier at the Reuters Building until a couple of months ago. The pier was removed by barge. The supporting piles were also completely removed from the river bed.
@MikeP
“Now, which one to believe ??”
Well, developers are not often known for the accuracy of their statements, or their renders…
@Orsman. Thanks for that update. Embarrassed to have failed to spot that change….
Makes the choice of location for the proposed ferry even more odd.