Oyster, contactless and zipcard users can tap in/out normally, but there are no ticket machines to top up. If you need to top up, you need to go to the closest station, top up and line up again, buy a ticket or use contactless.
I think even if you aren't that close to all the famous sights. It is still very interresting for tourists, because flying that high above a river is also a very unique experience. Was it worth it building that cable car? Propapelly not. But now that we have it, I think it makes a great tourist attraction. I want to visit London one day, and the cable car is on my bucket list. Great and very interresting video, as always.
I worked on the silvertown tunnel construction projected. they had 2 site one at greenwich and one in silvertown, when i was required to work on the silver town side i would park my car at the greenwich site (im traveling from kent and hate the blackwall tunnel) and then take the cable car. i was taking the cable car around 7am in the morning and its worth noting that it actual travels faster when its not in tourist hours.
I have to say, I like this video but what let's it down is not timing the queue for the Cable Car. For me regardless of cost I would just tap in and go which would probably make this a quicker route than the DLR/Tube. Also I would have thought they would do a season ticket which would also mean only queueing once a week/month for commuters...
Just so you are aware I kept my stopwatch running while I was queuing for the cable car. The cable car normally takes around 10 minutes to cross but I added in the time it took me to walk and the time for qeueing
You still have to queue for the pods once you've paid. It's not like a tube where 100 people can get on and off in a minute. When I went it took about 15 minutes of queing
I found riding the cable car quite fun, but I definitely can’t see the benefit for commuters! Interesting what you said about paying more with oyster. On the TfL website it seems like it’s £1 more to pay at the ticket office (£6) and only £5 when paying with oyster. Maybe they’ve changed something and haven’t updated the website.
@@HillierHugh I know before 2020, did not need to queue at ticket office, when using an Oyster Card. You could just tap on at the gate and pay the lower fare. I only saw details for the fast track ticket when booking online. Are sure the £20 fare would be changed if you just tap on the barrier with Oyster or Contectless? Did you ask at the ticket office about it?
Sorry what I meant was you can just pay £5 with oyster and contactless no problem but you have to queue to go through the barrier. You pay £20 extra if you want to skip the queue altogether. So you can simply just pay £5 with an oyster or contactless and not be charged any further.
Nice video and very well made! Living not very far from the 02, I find that the cable car is only really busy on Weekends, meaning the day that commuters would usually use it the line would not be a problem. Either way, definitely not worth the standard £5 each way ticket and most certainly not £20 to skip the queue.
It's really useful if you are riding a bicycle and cannot use the Jubilee Line to cross the river. The cable car is halfway between the Greenwich Tunnel and the Woolwich Ferry, the next two crossings.
The cable car is great if there is no queue usually in the winter and there is no 15 pounds extra pay for using a bank contactless card or oyster card its just the standard cable car fare, so when its not busy at all it's actually very good, a lot of times when I went there was no queue and made it straight up to the cable car pod
You can tap in with your Oyster Card, also the visitor Oyster Card and have a reduction of 25% and certainly on calm hours there is nobody there, so you can directly go to the cabins. So in that case the cable car would be faster. Also in the advent of combining ExceL! and O2 on a day or night it would come in handy. It feels like a futuristic way to travel, having London festooned with these ropeways everywhere in the city, Camden would be awesome (don't know if the locals would agree though). In a movie you can make it look like the metro station nearby that the lift is getting directly to the cabins of the cable car, or use the pink passage way over Custom House as a so called route entering the cabins platform. It was awseome at night, with the cranes.
That's a well made video, explaining some things for us outsiders. I knew that many Londoners regarded the cable car 🚡 with scorn, but I wasn't clear on why.
i think i remember an article which specified the extremely low number of regular users of the cable car it is almost entirely used for Leisure if tfl wanted a cable car link across the thames in east london to be used regularly by commuters it probably would of made sense to go further east where there is not allready crossings but it really is not a cost effective and efficient way to transport people across the thames so it is clear tfl made it for tourism which also bodes with the high ticket prices and also if you choose the right time you don't need to queue for very long at all like early not in public holiday seasons it is empty
Does it have a use? Yes. Tourists, joy rides. I took my friend on it on a day out in London. We had lunch at the o2, then took the cabke car back across the river. No other reason to use it for locals daily. I mean why would you pay such a high price to cross the river (slowly) that way when the tube station is just 200 meters away!
Surly the question is not how quickly people can travel between the two locations but how many people want to. If the cable car and trains are full regularly the cable car has a use. The Sydney Monorail was probably the quickest way to travel the Sydney Monorail Route, but the Sydney Monorail Route managed to avoid going anywhere that would attract very many passengers, even the ever spendthrift cash cow tourist. It came down.
I'm confused by the prices quoted. On the TfL website, it says that a PAYG fare on contactless is £5, but £6 single if purchased from the ticket office. I therefore don't understand why anyone would bother to queue at the ticket office or where the extra £15 mentioned in the captions to skip the queue has come from. In any case - enjoyed the video and agree the cable car is overpriced (however much one pays) and DLR/Tube is better :-)
Came here from the tfl three 1k subs video. Interesting. I pretty much agree with the views here and there. Its basically an overpriced novelty imo The cheap way for tourists to see views of London isnt really that much of a draw either. I believe you can actually book a place at the Sky garden for free if you give about a weeks notice and apparently you could book a table in a restaurant at the Shard but not right at the top to get reasonable views. I nearly forgot that you can get a pretty decent view of the city at the top of the Tate Modern. Plus im not really seeing why tourists would be over that part of London
3:03 Its weird for me to say this because I don’t commute at Canning Town (in fact i don’t commute at all) but it isn’t actually that hard. For Stratford International, use the lower level. Anywhere else, use the upper level. Woolwich Arsenal trains can depart from the lower level, but for simplicity, I just said upper level. Lower level Woolwich trainscome from Stratford Int, while upper level Woolwich trains come from Bank or Tower Gateway. Any confusion, send a reply and I’ll answer soon. Thankd for reading this!
Was was the time for the cable car if you subtract the queue for the ticket? You don't need to buy a ticket, you can just tap on with contactless payment cards.
No, it doesn't sadly. It's great to look at, but it was just a tourist attraction while the London 2012 Olympics were going on. No one really expected it to still be in operation more than a decade later. Only perhaps Boris Johnson did. The trouble with it is that it goes from 'nowhere to nowhere'. Its sole purpose is transporting people between the O2 and ExCel. It's no use to you if you don't wish to or aren't planning on going to either. I say take it down. Maybe it could be repurposed for another city somewhere else in the world that is on a hill. It would be more use in such a city, and at the top, people could disembark from the cable cars and look down at the views across the city. But tbh it's not really appropriate anymore for London. It feels like a relic from a more prosperous and decadent age. It just doesn't feel right anymore. The footfall is quite low in the summer months - but in winter..... practically no one is using it. They should build a high level pedestrian bridge or covered walkway linking the O2 with ExCel. In all honesty it would be cheaper to maintain than the Air Line Cable Car.
The ironic thing about the cable car is that it's not that high but feels far more unstable than cars that go much higher. I'm not keen on heights (not phobic but you know wary) and have been in the Saleve cable car in France...even though I believe it goes from ground level to about 900m height it never really felt unsafe.
@@keithparker1346 ....the thing is, these are lightweight cable cars, as opposed to the ones used in say, the Alps. Those ones will obviously be more durable and weatherproof. The London ones, are not that big as cable cars go. As I said, because they're lightweight cable cars, they need to be in a city that is hilly - more hilly than London. Like, Lisbon or SF....or perhaps even somewhere like Edinburgh? - Offering people an alternative way of getting to the top of Arthur's Seat, than just walking up it. Honestly, it serves no value or purpose to London anymore, and I wonder how it's still going? Who's paying for it? It's partly us, but it must have a sponsor aswell? Agree, it's not the most pressing issue right now, but even so it must be haemorrhaging money.
Think the point about the view is harsh. Most people I know think it’s pretty fantastic even if some of central London is out of sight. As for the cable car itself yeah it doesn’t really have a good use. But the question isn’t really interesting or relevant unless it’s related to questions of whether it should continue to be funded/exist.
I think the criticism of the view is perfectly valid. The trouble is tourists would probably only be aware of the Shard London Eye and this cable car. They would be totally oblivious to cheaper or even free options - sky garden, Tate modern and some lower floor Shard restaurant/s. It's also in the wrong part of London for tourists. Yes a fiver is cheaper than the shard or eye but they have far better views
This is a biassed comparison. Given that they depend on when you're travelling, queue lengths vary enormously. The cable car is a far faster and more straightforward way of getting from the o2 to the Excel.
Now Im curious about a race between the Cable Car and the bus once Silvertown Tunnel opens, I believe the 129 bus will serve that part of Silvertown. But as of right now, Boris Johnson has done nothing to solve East London's river crossing issue. If he wasnt such an foolish, incompotent moron or if Livingstone still had his way, We wouldve had a new bridge in Gallions Reach linking Beckton and Thamesmead with pedestrian and cycling routes and a DLR extension to mirror the route. More cross river buses wouldve have been implemented and improved East London transportation.
As a tourist I quite enjoyed it - certainly enough to justify £5. Seems silly that you can’t just tap in to ride it though.
you can! provided you ensure to tap out at the end it'll charge you the standard adult fare of 5 quid
Oyster, contactless and zipcard users can tap in/out normally, but there are no ticket machines to top up. If you need to top up, you need to go to the closest station, top up and line up again, buy a ticket or use contactless.
You can
It’s 7 quid now
@@Ron_TTEomg...I thought a fiver was too much
I think even if you aren't that close to all the famous sights. It is still very interresting for tourists, because flying that high above a river is also a very unique experience. Was it worth it building that cable car? Propapelly not. But now that we have it, I think it makes a great tourist attraction.
I want to visit London one day, and the cable car is on my bucket list.
Great and very interresting video, as always.
I worked on the silvertown tunnel construction projected. they had 2 site one at greenwich and one in silvertown, when i was required to work on the silver town side i would park my car at the greenwich site (im traveling from kent and hate the blackwall tunnel) and then take the cable car. i was taking the cable car around 7am in the morning and its worth noting that it actual travels faster when its not in tourist hours.
I have to say, I like this video but what let's it down is not timing the queue for the Cable Car. For me regardless of cost I would just tap in and go which would probably make this a quicker route than the DLR/Tube. Also I would have thought they would do a season ticket which would also mean only queueing once a week/month for commuters...
Just so you are aware I kept my stopwatch running while I was queuing for the cable car. The cable car normally takes around 10 minutes to cross but I added in the time it took me to walk and the time for qeueing
You still have to queue for the pods once you've paid. It's not like a tube where 100 people can get on and off in a minute. When I went it took about 15 minutes of queing
I found riding the cable car quite fun, but I definitely can’t see the benefit for commuters!
Interesting what you said about paying more with oyster. On the TfL website it seems like it’s £1 more to pay at the ticket office (£6) and only £5 when paying with oyster. Maybe they’ve changed something and haven’t updated the website.
You pay £5 regardless weather its card or oyster. You pay £20 to skip the queue with any payment method
@@HillierHugh I know before 2020, did not need to queue at ticket office, when using an Oyster Card. You could just tap on at the gate and pay the lower fare. I only saw details for the fast track ticket when booking online. Are sure the £20 fare would be changed if you just tap on the barrier with Oyster or Contectless? Did you ask at the ticket office about it?
Sorry what I meant was you can just pay £5 with oyster and contactless no problem but you have to queue to go through the barrier. You pay £20 extra if you want to skip the queue altogether. So you can simply just pay £5 with an oyster or contactless and not be charged any further.
Nice video and very well made! Living not very far from the 02, I find that the cable car is only really busy on Weekends, meaning the day that commuters would usually use it the line would not be a problem. Either way, definitely not worth the standard £5 each way ticket and most certainly not £20 to skip the queue.
Boris Johnson has a lot to answer for. Great video
Tower Bridge is still the cheapest way to see the sights, even though you're not as high up, but it's only £12.30p on most days.
great video, Hugh!
It's really useful if you are riding a bicycle and cannot use the Jubilee Line to cross the river.
The cable car is halfway between the Greenwich Tunnel and the Woolwich Ferry, the next two crossings.
The cable car is great if there is no queue usually in the winter and there is no 15 pounds extra pay for using a bank contactless card or oyster card its just the standard cable car fare, so when its not busy at all it's actually very good, a lot of times when I went there was no queue and made it straight up to the cable car pod
You can tap in with your Oyster Card, also the visitor Oyster Card and have a reduction of 25% and certainly on calm hours there is nobody there, so you can directly go to the cabins. So in that case the cable car would be faster. Also in the advent of combining ExceL! and O2 on a day or night it would come in handy.
It feels like a futuristic way to travel, having London festooned with these ropeways everywhere in the city, Camden would be awesome (don't know if the locals would agree though). In a movie you can make it look like the metro station nearby that the lift is getting directly to the cabins of the cable car, or use the pink passage way over Custom House as a so called route entering the cabins platform. It was awseome at night, with the cranes.
I love the cable car
That's a well made video, explaining some things for us outsiders. I knew that many Londoners regarded the cable car 🚡 with scorn, but I wasn't clear on why.
i think i remember an article which specified the extremely low number of regular users of the cable car it is almost entirely used for Leisure if tfl wanted a cable car link across the thames in east london to be used regularly by commuters it probably would of made sense to go further east where there is not allready crossings but it really is not a cost effective and efficient way to transport people across the thames so it is clear tfl made it for tourism which also bodes with the high ticket prices and also if you choose the right time you don't need to queue for very long at all like early not in public holiday seasons it is empty
Nice video fella
The cable car and Blackwell tunnel are hardly in competition
"From nowhere to nowhere"
Jay Foreman! :D
ive always just tapped in to the cable car, can you not do this anymore? havent been on it since it changed from Emirates to IFS however.
I made a mistake in the video their is a footnote in the description. but you can still tap in
Does it have a use? Yes. Tourists, joy rides. I took my friend on it on a day out in London. We had lunch at the o2, then took the cabke car back across the river. No other reason to use it for locals daily. I mean why would you pay such a high price to cross the river (slowly) that way when the tube station is just 200 meters away!
Surly the question is not how quickly people can travel between the two locations but how many people want to. If the cable car and trains are full regularly the cable car has a use. The Sydney Monorail was probably the quickest way to travel the Sydney Monorail Route, but the Sydney Monorail Route managed to avoid going anywhere that would attract very many passengers, even the ever spendthrift cash cow tourist. It came down.
I'm confused by the prices quoted. On the TfL website, it says that a PAYG fare on contactless is £5, but £6 single if purchased from the ticket office.
I therefore don't understand why anyone would bother to queue at the ticket office or where the extra £15 mentioned in the captions to skip the queue has come from.
In any case - enjoyed the video and agree the cable car is overpriced (however much one pays) and DLR/Tube is better :-)
Their is a footnote in the description to correct that
Imagine if someone asks you if you travel by train or bus and then you look them straight in the eye and tell them:
*Cable Car.*
Cable cars are legitimate travel in some places. The London one isn't really
Came here from the tfl three 1k subs video. Interesting. I pretty much agree with the views here and there. Its basically an overpriced novelty imo
The cheap way for tourists to see views of London isnt really that much of a draw either. I believe you can actually book a place at the Sky garden for free if you give about a weeks notice and apparently you could book a table in a restaurant at the Shard but not right at the top to get reasonable views. I nearly forgot that you can get a pretty decent view of the city at the top of the Tate Modern. Plus im not really seeing why tourists would be over that part of London
Very good quality video bro. Keep it up :)
3:03 Its weird for me to say this because I don’t commute at Canning Town (in fact i don’t commute at all) but it isn’t actually that hard. For Stratford International, use the lower level. Anywhere else, use the upper level. Woolwich Arsenal trains can depart from the lower level, but for simplicity, I just said upper level. Lower level Woolwich trainscome from Stratford Int, while upper level Woolwich trains come from Bank or Tower Gateway. Any confusion, send a reply and I’ll answer soon. Thankd for reading this!
Beckton trains can depart from the lower level platforms, but most Beckton trains go upper level
Was was the time for the cable car if you subtract the queue for the ticket? You don't need to buy a ticket, you can just tap on with contactless payment cards.
I like it
I have been on it years ago as a tourist and I quite liked it but I does seem a little out of the way. It give me something to do for about 20 mins.
4:49 what you came here to find out
Thx
I rode this with a few friends, it was pretty fun but not really something I'd bother riding again
Kind of sums it up
i still realy wnat to go on the cable car
Do it. It's kind of a novelty experience
i want on it last saturday! it was really fun but there was a wheelchair user so they all stopped suddenly
No, it doesn't sadly. It's great to look at, but it was just a tourist attraction while the London 2012 Olympics were going on. No one really expected it to still be in operation more than a decade later. Only perhaps Boris Johnson did.
The trouble with it is that it goes from 'nowhere to nowhere'. Its sole purpose is transporting people between the O2 and ExCel. It's no use to you if you don't wish to or aren't planning on going to either.
I say take it down. Maybe it could be repurposed for another city somewhere else in the world that is on a hill. It would be more use in such a city, and at the top, people could disembark from the cable cars and look down at the views across the city. But tbh it's not really appropriate anymore for London. It feels like a relic from a more prosperous and decadent age. It just doesn't feel right anymore. The footfall is quite low in the summer months - but in winter..... practically no one is using it.
They should build a high level pedestrian bridge or covered walkway linking the O2 with ExCel. In all honesty it would be cheaper to maintain than the Air Line Cable Car.
The ironic thing about the cable car is that it's not that high but feels far more unstable than cars that go much higher. I'm not keen on heights (not phobic but you know wary) and have been in the Saleve cable car in France...even though I believe it goes from ground level to about 900m height it never really felt unsafe.
@@keithparker1346 ....the thing is, these are lightweight cable cars, as opposed to the ones used in say, the Alps. Those ones will obviously be more durable and weatherproof. The London ones, are not that big as cable cars go.
As I said, because they're lightweight cable cars, they need to be in a city that is hilly - more hilly than London. Like, Lisbon or SF....or perhaps even somewhere like Edinburgh? - Offering people an alternative way of getting to the top of Arthur's Seat, than just walking up it.
Honestly, it serves no value or purpose to London anymore, and I wonder how it's still going? Who's paying for it? It's partly us, but it must have a sponsor aswell?
Agree, it's not the most pressing issue right now, but even so it must be haemorrhaging money.
@@robtyman4281 oh I agree with the stuff bring reused elsewhere
They should just raise the price, if it is a tourist attraction then treat it like one.
I went on it last year and iirc it was £5 for a single crossing...over priced for what it is. Imo it's a gimmicky tourist thing.
Think the point about the view is harsh. Most people I know think it’s pretty fantastic even if some of central London is out of sight.
As for the cable car itself yeah it doesn’t really have a good use. But the question isn’t really interesting or relevant unless it’s related to questions of whether it should continue to be funded/exist.
I think the criticism of the view is perfectly valid. The trouble is tourists would probably only be aware of the Shard London Eye and this cable car. They would be totally oblivious to cheaper or even free options - sky garden, Tate modern and some lower floor Shard restaurant/s. It's also in the wrong part of London for tourists. Yes a fiver is cheaper than the shard or eye but they have far better views
Paul Lucas's Lovechild? :D
Absolutely terrifying my wife is good use for it.
It's a tourist attraction. Simples!
This is a biassed comparison. Given that they depend on when you're travelling, queue lengths vary enormously. The cable car is a far faster and more straightforward way of getting from the o2 to the Excel.
Now Im curious about a race between the Cable Car and the bus once Silvertown Tunnel opens, I believe the 129 bus will serve that part of Silvertown. But as of right now, Boris Johnson has done nothing to solve East London's river crossing issue. If he wasnt such an foolish, incompotent moron or if Livingstone still had his way, We wouldve had a new bridge in Gallions Reach linking Beckton and Thamesmead with pedestrian and cycling routes and a DLR extension to mirror the route. More cross river buses wouldve have been implemented and improved East London transportation.