Boris's vanity project has opened. For the princely sum of £3.20 people can travel from a car park in Greenwich to a car park in Newham. What purpose does it serve?
Tourist Atrraction
Simply too far out of central London. Tourists only travel to Greenwich because the visit includes a river trip there and / or back.
The Dome (or O2 as we are told to call it) only attracts serious numbers of people as a music venue. Excel mainly hosts trade exhibitions. It is hard to see any significant numbers from either bothering with the cable car.
Public Transport
Should any body wish to travel from the O2 to Excel they can catch a Jubilee Line train at North Greenwich to Canning Town and change there onto the DLR to Custom House. As can be seen below the average journey time is around 23/24 minutes.
The map above shows the problem that the cable car stations are much further away from either venue so it is not surprising that the journey takes longer by gondola. (In an effort to woo tourists the cable car will be even slower outside peak travel hours.)
Uptake seems a bit slow today, only one in every three gondolas seems occupied. #cablecar
— Matt Clinch (@mattclinch81) June 28, 2012
I just been on the new Emirates Cable Car. Good london Scenery from top. Not great number of people using it yet. No Queues at all.
— Cllr Iqbal (@Jiqbal222) June 28, 2012
Posts
It'll be fun once though, like the Eye well twice probably save walking back.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if they'll take bikes. I did find it very difficult to get my bike between those two points.
ReplyDeleteApparently they do take bikes, and are empty https://www.facebook.com/george.styles/posts/10151094869052578
ReplyDelete