We love the DLR. Many years ago when my children were not 20 somethings we did a front seat trip, very exciting for my youngest. We then had to go over to manual control, so Daddy was evicted and the woman driver took over sitting next to youngest. Two stops later and the computer was back on, so she locked up the console and turned to Frederica and shook her hand saying "Thank you for helping me drive the train"! Child thrilled and Dad with slighly moist eyes.
I think a significant part of the DLRs success was the fact that it was a futuristic fully automated railway. That alone attracts attention and goodwill, and makes people feel good about investing in the area on top of more prosaic matters like ease of travel.
The Elizabeth line has been a massive success. Tottenham Court Road is now the third busiest railway station in the whole UK, entirely due to the Lizzie. So I think word of mouth and ease of use have promoted it very effectively. It's always very well used when I am on it.
@@ADAMEDWARDS17I think their point was that it’s clear other schemes are viable (like say HS2/3), but the bean counters don’t believe it even with evidence like Lizzie.
That’s the case for nearly every transport project. The Larkhall branch, Airdrie-Bathgate and the Borders Railway have all attracted multiples more passengers than the best estimates in the planning stages. They have all spurred massive amounts of home building. I live close to the Larkhall branch, and regularly use Chatelherault station (as it’s the easiest connection to the bus to my village). When it was planned, it was a halt in a tiny village that mainly was there to serve a country park (hence the name, as the village is actually called Ferniegair). Ferniegair is now 20x the size it was, has new local shops that didn’t exist before and the country park attracts all sorts of outdoor sporting competitions and even music events now. All because of a handful of miles of railway. If you build it, they will come. (To slightly misquote the film)
I love the fact that when the DLR opened, a lot of it was basically travelling through what looked like a complete and utter building site with almost no reason to alight at many of the stations around West India, Heron Quays, etc, unless you were a construction worker. You can see what I mean if you watch a video from that time.
The 'minitram' approach is generally referred to these days as Personal Rapid Transit. As Jago mentions, it's generally found at airports, but there is a bigger one that's existed since 1975 - the Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit system in West Virginia. It primarily serves a university campus.
Yup. Morgantown, West Virginia is a small college town that's constrained by the steep slopes of river valleys in the Appalachian Mountains. When West Virginia University grew in the 1950s and beyond, there wasn't much room to expand the existing campus, so they built a _second_ campus a ways away. But steep valley slopes meant there couldn't be very many roads connecting to it, and frequent shuttle busses kept getting stuck in big-city-style traffic. In the late '60s and early '70s, as _many_ US cities grappled with increasing traffic and air pollution, the federal government started funding the development of new transit systems, including a few experimental ones like PRTs. And Morgantown was chosen as the first place to build a "real" PRT for actual service, in the early-to-mid '70s. The Morgantown PRT is basically an automated, guided busway with fairly small, specially-built "pod" busses. At peak times it runs more like a regular transit service that stops at every station. And at off-peak times it runs on-demand like a horizontal elevator: push the button for your station, and the next available pod arrives to take you straight there nonstop. It largely _has_ been successful, though its aging systems did lead to more breakdowns in the 2000s-2010s. The pods got some major refurbishments in the late 2010s, and another round of renovation just got funded in 2024. But despite the Morgantown PRT's relative success, few others have been built elsewhere, for the usual reasons a gadgetbahn doesn't catch on. Sure, it works, but it's more expensive than conventional transit, since few of them exist and there aren't multiple companies building them as standard equipment. And it's rarely enough of an improvement over conventional transit to justify the extra cost. So it never _gets_ the kind of mass adoption that _could_ bring the cost down, even for the few situations where it _might_ be better.
2:59 Any proposal from the 70s has to have some sort of weird people mover thing. We got one here in Toronto and we're only now starting to replace it. Funnily enough, its temporary replacement is a busway until the proper subway expansion is completed.
And it went out of service prematurely with a bit of an unintended bang. This was i tended to be a bit of a showcase for that particular technology, which considering how fast population growth occurred in Toronto, it would have been overwhelmed by demand fairly quickly.
To be fair, the initial Vancouver SkyTrain also implemented the same driverless, linear-induction ICTS technology as Scarborough RT/TTC Line 3, and it's been a huge success. It's far more than a "gadgetbahn" people mover. But Toronto never expanded it, or made significant investment in it like Vancouver, so it was bound to fail eventually.
No need to, the online TFL journey planner is good enough. Remember multiple bus journeys are a fixed price within an hour. Some journeys are faster by bus than rail
The London Bus Map is quite easy to follow, note the route numbers serving the stop one wishes to start from and compare with the destination ones, any the same is the bus to get, if none just back track until matches are found. That gives where and onto which bus to change.
@Rohan-iq6zb It's fine, but definitely not the greatest. I've used better apps at least. I used the live tubemap quite a bit on holiday, which was quite useful. I did a lot of the wayfinding by looking at the closest station on Google maps and then tracking my way back from there to my current station. However the journey planning itself wasn't as great, especially compared to the NS app I use at home in The Netherlands, which I think is much more easy to use and clear.
The only real advantage for a "busway service" is that you can bring in a busway service, at the same time as building a railway line and use it as a "railway replacement service" for a route that is not open yet. Back when Tramlink was authorised, the direct railway line between Wimbledon and West Croydon shut down and a special express bus was run, that provided a service somewhere between what the old railway line provided and what the new trams would provide.
DLR is my fav London Train system. Scary to think how the UK economic system would look if we went with the ‘busway’ as the main transit line to Canary Wharf.
If there are people who don't have a favourite railway system, does that mean that there are people who do not have a favourite pantograph design? The horror!!!!!!!
I recall the mockery that greeted the DLR in its early days. It was seen as an expensive yuppy (remember them?) toy which had endless teething pains (trains breaking down and even IIRC bursting into flame). Now it looks like a model of clean, fast, comfortable public transport. And it's nice to see that one of the many schemes that promised to give Lewisham further connections to central London actually come to fruition since we've been snubbed so often. The area around Lewisham station is being extensively redeveloped so maybe one day we'll be able to entice the Bakerloo line down this way.
@@kharmalade544 and how widespread automatic metros have become. at the time, the only ones were the Vancouver Sky Train, Lille Metro and Kobe metro and that was it, but now they exist all over the place
And speaking of favorites, my favorite DLR video of yours is "An Abstract Portrait of the DLR (10,000+ Subscribers!)" It still stands out in my mind, but it is hard to believe you released this when you reached 10,000 subscribers!
Whato Jago, Of course there is a busway between Cambridge and St Ives (Huntingdonshire not the West County one). This is street running and has its own guided concrete paths. I've used it once and it was fun but I can't help thinking an electric tramway would have been better. Too late now.
[01:44] 'Tower Hamlets' has the only pronunciation which comforts my foreign mind, even though it conjures up the wackiest imagery. But the others would definitely shibboleth me to death: New Ham, Louis Ham, Green Witch, South Wark.
The dlr is like a busway because they are both cheap (to introduce), have many unstaffed stops, are slower than trains but faster than convential buses, and are soooo shaky.
I join you in considering the DLR to be the best (modern) railway. Due in part to memories of taking my nephew up to London for a birthday day out (including Hamleys of course), Met Line, tube trains, buses (front of top deck), river buses and the DLR, front seat on an empty unit and a very friendly train captain who "opened the lid" 🙂 which got his vote as well 🙂
London did the smart thing. Over here in Boston, MA they took the lazy route when they set out to redevelop the waterfront in South Boston. The South Boston trolley line was ripped up in the early 1960s and the only service to South Boston that remained was buses. In 1999 the MBTA had the opportunity to build a new light rail line from South Boston and the waterfront and integrate that line into the existing service that remained in operation. The MBTA management being what it is and was, they chose the easy route and went with BRT which utilizes nothing but trouble CNG and electric buses that run from South Boston to a terminus in an existing tunnel where the line would have connected to the light rail system. Since that time, they've expanded the line to Logan International Airport. When the BRT line was forced on the public, it was not well received due to promises being made to the residents in the area about the return of a direct connection to the transit lines in downtown and instead they were stuck with another bus line.
I remember when they closed the "Docklands Lines" before reusing the old Lines to introduce the DLR , just look at the state of Stepney East ,sorry now Limehouse. The route to Stratford via West Ham used to go to Stratford Low Level and then out to Stanstead via Rye House. Ideal for Broxbourne and Rye House Speedway on a Sunday.
It still does go to Stratford (Low Level) at least in 'spirit'. Just the links beyond to the Lea Valley route and the North London line (aka Crosstown Link) have been severed, and it just serves Stratford Int'l now. I find the Stratford route via Poplar and Bow Church more interesting personally - yeah, it's mostly straight and boring but... well that's of the reasons why. :-)
When I heard "busway" I thought of a stretch of road for exclusive use of certain Edinburgh buses. Not only was it bus-only but buses were steered by small side-facing wheels on the bus and not quite tracks at the side. I'm probably not explaining it well but buses seemed to be able to move faster along these stretches. It all later became part of the tram line.
I’d say Docklands Light Railway because you can see the whole view whilst on the DLR. And it’s lot more quieter and convenient when travelling around the Docklands. Plus the new DLR trains are to enter service this year.
Great video as always. Today looking at a railway map of London the following question come to mind. Why didn't the dlr get connected to the waterloo and city line at bank. This would allow dlr trains to terminate at waterloo.
Never actually thought about it in those terms, but definitely the DLR is my favourite! People just like sitting at the front, even people who don't have any other interest in trains. And it generally works properly most of the time which helps
I enjoyed my use of the DLR when I flew into London City Airport on business, despite it always being very busy. It was different in an interesting way, but alas, the Underground network will always be my favourite mode of transport in London.
The bulk of the money produced by public transport is almost always in the form of taxes on businesses which are suddenly having a much easier time getting both workers and customers, and thus making more money. Bonus points if you also own the land/buildings that the businesses are renting to operate out of. Whinging about ticket prices not covering the costs are always a distraction intended to hide other, usually more malicious, motivations for preventing/worsening public transport systems. Yes, this Does mean that private enterprise running public transport is only viable with substantial governmental subsidization of one stripe or another (The bussiest routes may well turn a pretty nice proffit... so long as the less busy, UNprofitable routes, exist to feed passengers into them, and someone has to pay for Those! ... turns out if you get rid of them the routes they were feeding suddenly aren't so profitable anymore, in most cases). Fun part is that planes and cars don't actually dodge the 'government subsidies are necessary for this to be viable' issues, they've just been more thoroughly normalised/hidden and politicians are less prone to deciding that there's benefit to be had from breaking them even more than they already are.
I love the DLR too and who would have thought from those first two routes between Stratford and Tower Gateway to Island Gardens in 1987 that it would have expanded into the vast system it is today, also serving London City Airport and extending to Bank in central London and under the Thames to Lewisham and Woolwich in south-east London? One of the original plans not mentioned was the proposal for a single unit tramcar to run west from Bow along Bow Road to terminate at Mile End station but this was dropped by diverting the line to Stratford along what was then a disused line adjacent to the ex-GER main line. From Mile End, the link to the old North London line at Bow would have been even steeper than the one that now sees trains running to and from Stratford. The line was seriously underbuilt when it opened in 1987 with single units stopping at stations with platforms only long enough to accommodate them, in fact that at Canary Wharf was never opened even though trains stopped there. It would have been hopelessly inadequate for the area that grew up here with all its homes and offices and which eventually led to a complete rebuilding of the original statons on the Tower Gateway/Stratford to Island Gardens corridor. The present Canary Wharf station is quite incredible for what is termed a "light railway". While the original Mudcute and Island Gardens station were re-sited wih the extension to Lewisham in 1999 which, sadly, saw the end of trains running across the old Millwall Extension Railway viaduct in and out of Island Gardens which had closed at the time of the General Strike in 1926 and never reopened until 1987 when it was utilised for 12 years by the DLR. The original Island Gardens station stood on the site of the old North Greenwich station that had also closed in 1926 and is not to be confused with the present North Greenwich station on the south side of the Thames on the LU Jubilee Line Extension that also opened in 1999. David, Crouch End, N8.
A similar outcome occurred here in Brisbane which has several dedicated Busways, the first of which was intended to host a light rail system and bring "trams" back to the city. In the end there wasn't enough left to buy the light rail system after the SE Busway was completed, so it became a dedicated bus way instead. Different traffic dynamics out here make it a very fast journey into the City; although now it is victim of its own success and we have bus jams😀. This is about to be ameliorated by new electric buses with many of the diesel buses removed from the Busway.
As a mere visitor to London, I preferred the DLR over the tube simply because the DLR was above ground. It was faster to enter/exit the stations, and there is plenty of light and fresh air.
Sounds like the busway is the idea of the guided busway that runs parallel to the East Lancs in greater Manchester. The buses run on a concrete ‘track’ and have side mounted guide wheels
0:35 i knew it: Jago is a Time Lord! that’s how he gets accurate facts- just go to the past and see for himself! 🤣 as someone whose city has a busway, what could work is a hybrid between a private, closed right of way and street-running as an emergency alignment. the capacity can be met with frequent buses and if done right it could be converted to light rail or tram(or a hybrid of both)
A busway to me is just what you build when you need to transport a fair bit of people, but can't justify proper rail yet. Gothenburg has a nice busway to one of its former docklands (with a lovely MASSIVE red crane as a landmark) and i feel it's basically the platonic ideal busway: short distance and serves dense housing, but there's only housing on one side so in practice there aren't *that* many passengers.
5:35 What is this bus? One like this is parked in a park at Viktoria Žižkov in Prague, and it serves as a café. It has Spitfires in glass tables and everything.
I think we should have had the fleet line and the jubilee line - one going Charing Cross - Aldwych-Blackfriars - Liverpool St/ Bank - Canary Wharf - Barking Riverside - Rainham, one going Westminster - Southwark - Old Kent Road - Lewisham - Thamesmead. However the connection joining up Stratford was useful, but basically one part of Fleet Line (really needed two - doing part of what Elizabeth Line does in the East and something to take some strain off the Central Line ''s eastern peak route
I have always considered that DLR stands for "Dinky Little Railway" .. for obvious reasons. I watched the Stratford terminus be constructed as I commuted to school (on the Central Line) .. since then the DLR has grown up to a network that could grace many a city ... not just a district of a city! Airconditioned trains next year, now that's proper establishment material!
I too have a favourite railway system….. in the UK it’s the Tube for its ease of use, low cost, high frequency and extensive network (north of the river at least). Outside the UK it’s the NYC Subway because of its mix of express and stopping services in the core, it’s run down feel, it’s slightly haphazard state of repair and I find it quite exhilarating to be going at speed when passing on to a section where the express lines go below the stopping lines especially where that happens as you are passing a station.
I want to add an honourable mention for the Mersey Railway. It’s not particularly extensive and doesn’t always go where you want it to, but I do love the 80s aesthetic that seems to prevail across the network. Other than the trains, it feels like it hasn’t changed much since BR days. It’s remains a bastion of Rail Alphabet signage.
It is quite a cool system. I wonder if it has reached its effective limits - given that the Jubilee line and Elizabeth Line have turned up. If it were to be extended in any direction I surmise that it would need greater capacity at its terminal ends - ie Bank and Tower Gateway. But as its such a cool system and its reused and recycled old infrastructure, I still want to it succeed more...if thats possible.
Maybe it could be extended westwards - beyond bank? How about that branch of the DLR taking over the Lioness line to Watford? - or at least to Queens Park, with the Bakerloo taking over all services thereafter. New under-ground platforms at Euston for the line might help the general capacity issue for main-line trains there.
@@ricktownend9144 It has been suggested that the DLR be extended westward from Bank via Aldwych and to terminate in the now disused platforms of the original section of the Jubilee Line at Charing Cross... the overrun tunnels from there extend almost as far as Aldwych.
@@marcelwiszowaty1751I think it would also get a new stop in the Bank tunnel at Tower Hill to replace Tower Gateway so that all 24 trains per hour can serve all the central London stations instead of the current 18tph at Bank and 6tph at Tower Gateway.
@Alto53 I did vaguely remember that but wasn't sure so didn't feel qualified to comment. Did that proposal utilise the old Piccadilly branch, do you know?
Jago, you know how I love the DLR, and how it was originally built for 77 million pounds, a true bargain that has more than proved its worth to East and South London.
7:17 Hallelujah! Yeah, this is how it should be. Public transport is not (meant to be) a money generator, it's meant to be a public service for the good of the people and places that use them. And yeah that I think is a part of why the DLR is so cool. It's an example of something that was clearly shown to be beneficial to the area at large, being implemented quite successfully, continually nurtured, and clearly being appreciated by those who use it. It's also an example of the accountants often getting it wrong - the supposedly financially undesirable solution turned out to be the optimal one, but also it being built to a budget literally meant much more expensive lines had to be built anyway to supplement it. The 'propaganda' aspect to it you touched upon once, where it was designed to make the Docklands look attractive to developers for regeneration, succeeded. There's a reason that the Docklands has flourished into what it is today, and this funny little railway with station names like 'Pontoon Dock', 'East India' and 'Mudchute' (...) is definitely a reason why. I think it being *such* a futuristic system for the 1980s; being mostly automated and largely driverless, simply drew more eyes to it as well - really drummed up the enthusiasm and support. Despite it being a budget solution, it absolutely gave the impression of a willingness to invest in the area to improve it, which breeds optimism. The DLR sitting in the odd place of being a budget compromise but also high tech is a fascinating one tbh. I think they were right to go with this proposal in the end for all of the above reasons. The busway is interesting but you just know it could not cope with the level of development the Docklands was destined for; hell the DLR itself couldn't hence later additions of the Jubilee and Elizabeth lines. I don't think it would have worked as well as the main transport solution for the Docklands - it wouldn't have connected the Docklands nearly as well. It wouldn't have attracted as much enthusiasm for redevelopment as the DLR did. 'More buses' is definitely not a great solution for what they had in mind, and the 'mini tram' whilst also interesting is definitely not a great solution for this sort of thing either... there's a reason those are found on dedicated shuttle services in airports. The DLR is definitely my favourite system in London to ride. It's so so much fun, as I've been over before. Sitting at the front is one of the great pleasures of living here; sitting at the back is fun too and underrated IMO. I love what the DLR represents too - it's what public transport should be. I'm all for expanding it more; let's see how that pans out eh. 5:32 And my my, what a lovely thing this is! A714 THV, an MCW Metrobus - a common sight in suburbia from days gone by. More suited to these sorts of areas than the hop on hop off Routemasters of further up in the city. Also loving the new footage you use as the outro - DLR and Jubilee Line my beloveds
If you don’t consider the wider economic effects, you’re not doing a cost/benefit analysis - you’re just doing a profit estimate, which is a terrible way to plan any kind of infrastructure.
The busway might only have worked if it ran in a segreated corridor and didn't have to mix in with other vehicles. I don't use the DLR as much since I moved from Lewisham town centre, but I will sometimes change on to it from the tube or train.
Would be great to see a video on the Greenwich peninsula busway - was this part of a larger scheme and how was it all meant to work? It’s an odd piece of infrastructure that feels like it was meant to be more.
Genuinely don't understand why the form of DLR hasnt been emoloyed on rail reopenings around the UK esp with the increasing focus on battery technology and the fact the track gauge is the same as normal rail... the construction unit cost per kilometre must be considerably lower than tram or srandard "heavy" rail... so more DLR type rail around the UK please!
The DLR has more in common with trams than conventional rail, hence the generic term light rail. You can get a tram or DLR train around some very tight corners, not possible with the tube or a train. If you look at the Manchester Metrolink, which has trams with highlevel floors and makes extensive use of old railways, theres quite a lot in common, indeed they famously took a DLR car north, added a pantograph and gave opinion formers trips to encourage them to supprt the trams.
@@ADAMEDWARDS17 there are some metro systems with very sharp turns like the Paris metro (at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette it turns 90° under the road just like that). Light rail is so broadly used that it's borderline meaningless as it can be anything from a tram to something like the DLR, not all that far short of a full metro in comparison
The problem with light rail is, it is slow. This is not a problem for very short lines or lines with stations that are very close together. Nevertheless the speed (or lack of it) of light rail is a severe limit for their applicability.
@@telhudson863 The slowness is more than made up for when there are waterways in the way that you'd have to circumvent via longer routes otherwise. I think a lot of he benefit of the DLR is from the tunnels and bridges that connect short distances that would otherwise be even slower or impossible by bus.
I don't think a Busway would have necessarily been a White Elephant, depending on how they would have built it. Here in NL in the municipality I work for we have the Zuidtangent busway, built in the late nineties. It's was designed in such a way that if the passenger numbers would ever outgrow the capacity of the buses, it would (relatively) easily be rebuilt into a tramline. Eventually a few years ago - now the forecasts indeed expect the passenger numbers to outgrow the system by 2030 - they did a new social cost-benefit analysis. Unfortunately the authorities came to the conclusion that a tramway would not be viable as BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) would be much cheaper with roughly the same capacity. So the idea now is to grow from the current 10 articulated buses an hour each direction towards somewhere near 15 (possibly double articulated) buses an hour each direction. To be honest, it might look better on paper, but I have doubts whether this BRT-concept would really function better than a Tram or Light Rail.
Funny how things turn out - Thatcher's great success needed trains to work - the mode of transport she most disliked. Ditto the Channel Tunnel. There's a message in their somewhere...
And the other thing is the DLR though designed in the 1980s, it still looks modern even futuristic. It’s still radical, it’s still looks new , very different from the tired old “train” network.
Unfortunately Cambridge went down the Busway route instead of adopting light rail. It's not even just a dedicated road for express buses. They decided to make a guided busway, so basically just a railway but worse!
Driverless metro systems are the future. It's just the future arrives at different times for different places. Thankfully this part of London is near the Prime Meridian so the future arrives first there, right? ;-)
The Lille metro opened in 1983, 4 years before the DLR and is actually fully unattended and has platform edge doors. There was also one in Kobe in 1981
@grassytramtracks not only that, but because Paris is east of the Prime Meridian it's day starts earlier than London's, so the original commenter's premise is in error. 😊
So we built this kinda affordable, automated light metro system they could've been replicated everywhere and decided to never do it again. And now everything costs would be exorbitant if we tried this today.
Mini trams= upscaled, cheesy 70s fairground ride made out of fibreglass, hopelessly unreliable, due to people regularly getting their flares caught in the doors😊
CBA is not a great way to evaluate a transport project because it tends to not take into account induced demand and the future potential growth that the project could create around it. I'm glad that the LDDC had the foresight and business mind to understand that. I am hoping that the DLR and Elizabeth Line's success will show current and future governments what better transport links can do, and will help them make better evaluations of other proposals.
A mini-tram or mono-rail would have been ideal for the Docklands. Before the Docklands Light Railway were built that the DLR today serves the whole area of the Docklands in East London and Southeast London. And the Jubilee Line could have extended to London City Airport and Thamesmead.
wouldn't have done anything the DLR doesn't, and would have been propriatary tech on top of that (which just massively increases the upkeep costs and creates potential legal headaches and supply bottlenecks if the company signed up to do the job turns out to be rubbish). Here's a quick hint: if the word 'pod' comes up, it will have major deficiencies, and by the time you've finished Fixing the deficiencies you will have arrived at either 'regular train' or 'bicycle'. (you may have passed through 'car' to get there, but 'car' is basically what you get when you make a 'pod' version of a bus... though cars, at least, do have viable use cases (situations where mass transit is legitimately non-viable), only becoming gadgetbahn equivalent when used outside of those usecases... ... ... which is something like 99% of the time, mind you, due to mostly being used to move individual people around cities).
I’m going to guess that the footage of that DML is old as it features a number of things that are no longer in London: * Tower Transit (which became part of RATP London, since recently acquired by FirstGroup), * Anything other than straight-up LT red on a London bus, and * The DML itself, along with anything built by Marshall (which would have long since been sold or cascaded to the provinces).
I live in Bristol and what happened to london docklands is what should of happened to our own disused "floating harbour" as it had a perfectly functional railway (the harbour railway) that could of easily been repurposed the same way that the DLR used it former railways. But alas Bristol instead thought cars were the future... so a simple car journey from portishead to Bristol temple mead can now take a hour and half. While it used to take only half a hour. Alot of the railway got lifted thanks to beeching. And today our solution to the traffic problems was a "guided bus" which hardly works most of the time. So these bus ways basically is what we have now in bristol.
The UK seems to have pioneered the guided busway over the last 2 decades but I hope they can still be converted to light rail like the one in Edinburgh.
It wouldn't have gone to the right places, just Temple Meads > Wapping Wharf > Ashton Gate > Parson Street. I suppose there could have been a station at Canons Marsh, but that would have been a round-the-houses route. Then there's the North Somerset line from Whitchurch and Brislington to Temple Meads. Connecting this to the docks railway would require the construction of new platforms alongside the Midland Shed. This would prevent access from Temple Meads side entrance to Friary and the two footbridges. All in all, potential would be limited. Comments welcome!
Like me, I reckon that anyone who’s had the pleasure of travelling on the DLR have gone to the front and pretended to be the driver? The DLR will always be the best!!
It should be compulsory to consider the wider economic benefits of any transport proposal. After all, if you take things in the other direction, doing nothing costs nothing. But it doesn't meet anyone's needs either.
We love the DLR. Many years ago when my children were not 20 somethings we did a front seat trip, very exciting for my youngest. We then had to go over to manual control, so Daddy was evicted and the woman driver took over sitting next to youngest. Two stops later and the computer was back on, so she locked up the console and turned to Frederica and shook her hand saying "Thank you for helping me drive the train"! Child thrilled and Dad with slighly moist eyes.
Sounds like a lovely special moment. Cost nothing but made their day and then some!
Yay, my favourite railway too! Who doesn't like trying to grab the front seat...
I think a significant part of the DLRs success was the fact that it was a futuristic fully automated railway. That alone attracts attention and goodwill, and makes people feel good about investing in the area on top of more prosaic matters like ease of travel.
The DLR and Elizabeth line really need to be promoted more to show how the bean counters don't know everything
Indeed - tho, strictly speaking, it was creative bean counters who counted other beans that enabled the DLR 🙂
And the elizabeth line
The Elizabeth line has been a massive success. Tottenham Court Road is now the third busiest railway station in the whole UK, entirely due to the Lizzie. So I think word of mouth and ease of use have promoted it very effectively. It's always very well used when I am on it.
@@ADAMEDWARDS17I think their point was that it’s clear other schemes are viable (like say HS2/3), but the bean counters don’t believe it even with evidence like Lizzie.
That’s the case for nearly every transport project. The Larkhall branch, Airdrie-Bathgate and the Borders Railway have all attracted multiples more passengers than the best estimates in the planning stages. They have all spurred massive amounts of home building. I live close to the Larkhall branch, and regularly use Chatelherault station (as it’s the easiest connection to the bus to my village). When it was planned, it was a halt in a tiny village that mainly was there to serve a country park (hence the name, as the village is actually called Ferniegair). Ferniegair is now 20x the size it was, has new local shops that didn’t exist before and the country park attracts all sorts of outdoor sporting competitions and even music events now. All because of a handful of miles of railway.
If you build it, they will come. (To slightly misquote the film)
I love the fact that when the DLR opened, a lot of it was basically travelling through what looked like a complete and utter building site with almost no reason to alight at many of the stations around West India, Heron Quays, etc, unless you were a construction worker. You can see what I mean if you watch a video from that time.
The 'minitram' approach is generally referred to these days as Personal Rapid Transit. As Jago mentions, it's generally found at airports, but there is a bigger one that's existed since 1975 - the Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit system in West Virginia. It primarily serves a university campus.
Yup. Morgantown, West Virginia is a small college town that's constrained by the steep slopes of river valleys in the Appalachian Mountains. When West Virginia University grew in the 1950s and beyond, there wasn't much room to expand the existing campus, so they built a _second_ campus a ways away. But steep valley slopes meant there couldn't be very many roads connecting to it, and frequent shuttle busses kept getting stuck in big-city-style traffic.
In the late '60s and early '70s, as _many_ US cities grappled with increasing traffic and air pollution, the federal government started funding the development of new transit systems, including a few experimental ones like PRTs. And Morgantown was chosen as the first place to build a "real" PRT for actual service, in the early-to-mid '70s.
The Morgantown PRT is basically an automated, guided busway with fairly small, specially-built "pod" busses. At peak times it runs more like a regular transit service that stops at every station. And at off-peak times it runs on-demand like a horizontal elevator: push the button for your station, and the next available pod arrives to take you straight there nonstop. It largely _has_ been successful, though its aging systems did lead to more breakdowns in the 2000s-2010s. The pods got some major refurbishments in the late 2010s, and another round of renovation just got funded in 2024.
But despite the Morgantown PRT's relative success, few others have been built elsewhere, for the usual reasons a gadgetbahn doesn't catch on. Sure, it works, but it's more expensive than conventional transit, since few of them exist and there aren't multiple companies building them as standard equipment. And it's rarely enough of an improvement over conventional transit to justify the extra cost. So it never _gets_ the kind of mass adoption that _could_ bring the cost down, even for the few situations where it _might_ be better.
@@AaronOfMpls See also parry people mover - Stourbridge in the West Midlands in UK
"We're going to go back in time to the 70's". Brilliant. 👏
And happy 2025, Jago!
What! No Tardis FX? (0:35)
I was hoping for a pic of Jago in flares...
@@camenbert5837 Since the heyday of flares (aka bell-bottoms) was 1969-79 perhaps that's an impossibility.
2:59 Any proposal from the 70s has to have some sort of weird people mover thing. We got one here in Toronto and we're only now starting to replace it. Funnily enough, its temporary replacement is a busway until the proper subway expansion is completed.
And it went out of service prematurely with a bit of an unintended bang. This was i tended to be a bit of a showcase for that particular technology, which considering how fast population growth occurred in Toronto, it would have been overwhelmed by demand fairly quickly.
To be fair, the initial Vancouver SkyTrain also implemented the same driverless, linear-induction ICTS technology as Scarborough RT/TTC Line 3, and it's been a huge success. It's far more than a "gadgetbahn" people mover. But Toronto never expanded it, or made significant investment in it like Vancouver, so it was bound to fail eventually.
But … we have to move weird people!
Haha Stephen, there certainly are a lot of weird people to move in Toronto.
As a tourst I'm very glad the DLR is there (and on the Tube map) to be honest. Saves me from having to figure out London's busnetwork!
No need to, the online TFL journey planner is good enough. Remember multiple bus journeys are a fixed price within an hour. Some journeys are faster by bus than rail
The London Bus Map is quite easy to follow, note the route numbers serving the stop one wishes to start from and compare with the destination ones, any the same is the bus to get, if none just back track until matches are found. That gives where and onto which bus to change.
@@hairyairey Overall the TfL journey planner is pretty rubbish tbh.
@Rohan-iq6zb It's fine, but definitely not the greatest. I've used better apps at least.
I used the live tubemap quite a bit on holiday, which was quite useful. I did a lot of the wayfinding by looking at the closest station on Google maps and then tracking my way back from there to my current station.
However the journey planning itself wasn't as great, especially compared to the NS app I use at home in The Netherlands, which I think is much more easy to use and clear.
@Rohan-iq6zb There is a setting to search for bus only journey - I use it a lot
I love the DLR too. I wish more UK cities had this kind of thing.
The only real advantage for a "busway service" is that you can bring in a busway service, at the same time as building a railway line and use it as a "railway replacement service" for a route that is not open yet.
Back when Tramlink was authorised, the direct railway line between Wimbledon and West Croydon shut down and a special express bus was run, that provided a service somewhere between what the old railway line provided and what the new trams would provide.
DLR is my fav London Train system.
Scary to think how the UK economic system would look if we went with the ‘busway’ as the main transit line to Canary Wharf.
The DLR and the Lizzie Line are 2 of my favourite railways
you must love stratford, canary wharf, custom house, and woolwich then!
Wait, you mean there are people who _don't_ have a favourite railway system? 🤯
If there are people who don't have a favourite railway system, does that mean that there are people who do not have a favourite pantograph design? The horror!!!!!!!
I have to confess, I'm one of them. In my defence I just like railways.
@@InevitableMe You mean there are people who's favourite pantograph design is NOT the classic Brecknell, Willis Highreach pantograph???
@@iandixon2201 My favourites are the really spindly, delicate-looking diamond pantographs from around the 1910s-9150s, so yes.
I recall the mockery that greeted the DLR in its early days. It was seen as an expensive yuppy (remember them?) toy which had endless teething pains (trains breaking down and even IIRC bursting into flame). Now it looks like a model of clean, fast, comfortable public transport. And it's nice to see that one of the many schemes that promised to give Lewisham further connections to central London actually come to fruition since we've been snubbed so often. The area around Lewisham station is being extensively redeveloped so maybe one day we'll be able to entice the Bakerloo line down this way.
Yes, it's forgotten now just how much popular derision was heaped on the DLR when it opened.
@@kharmalade544 and how widespread automatic metros have become. at the time, the only ones were the Vancouver Sky Train, Lille Metro and Kobe metro and that was it, but now they exist all over the place
0:39 Tardis failed to fade back in. I am so confused, I was already hearing it wheeze in my head.
And speaking of favorites, my favorite DLR video of yours is "An Abstract Portrait of the DLR (10,000+ Subscribers!)" It still stands out in my mind, but it is hard to believe you released this when you reached 10,000 subscribers!
Busways were used in Runcorn, they were featured in the Channel 4 series ‘Losing Track’ in 1984.
Be honest. You only like it so much for the same reasons that I do. You can sit at the front and pretend to drive it!
Love doing that.
Whato Jago,
Of course there is a busway between Cambridge and St Ives (Huntingdonshire not the West County one). This is street running and has its own guided concrete paths. I've used it once and it was fun but I can't help thinking an electric tramway would have been better. Too late now.
@@Mark.Andrew.Pardoe It's awful! All the disadvantages of a bus and none of the advantages of a train. And they want to build another one!
[01:44] 'Tower Hamlets' has the only pronunciation which comforts my foreign mind, even though it conjures up the wackiest imagery. But the others would definitely shibboleth me to death: New Ham, Louis Ham, Green Witch, South Wark.
🤣
The dlr is like a busway because they are both cheap (to introduce), have many unstaffed stops, are slower than trains but faster than convential buses, and are soooo shaky.
I believe a busway would be shakier and slower
@hairyairey similar, but not the same then
@NinjaSurferTrainspotting I wouldn't know, I have no intention of travelling on a guided busway.
@@hairyairey oh ok
@@hairyairey Unguided buses are so much more exciting!
I join you in considering the DLR to be the best (modern) railway. Due in part to memories of taking my nephew up to London for a birthday day out (including Hamleys of course), Met Line, tube trains, buses (front of top deck), river buses and the DLR, front seat on an empty unit and a very friendly train captain who "opened the lid" 🙂 which got his vote as well 🙂
London did the smart thing. Over here in Boston, MA they took the lazy route when they set out to redevelop the waterfront in South Boston. The South Boston trolley line was ripped up in the early 1960s and the only service to South Boston that remained was buses. In 1999 the MBTA had the opportunity to build a new light rail line from South Boston and the waterfront and integrate that line into the existing service that remained in operation. The MBTA management being what it is and was, they chose the easy route and went with BRT which utilizes nothing but trouble CNG and electric buses that run from South Boston to a terminus in an existing tunnel where the line would have connected to the light rail system. Since that time, they've expanded the line to Logan International Airport. When the BRT line was forced on the public, it was not well received due to promises being made to the residents in the area about the return of a direct connection to the transit lines in downtown and instead they were stuck with another bus line.
League of Gentlemen reference was very well done
This is a local perspective for local people. There's nothing for you here.
Completely missed that.
What was it?
@@VictorianDad 2:00
@caw25sha Thank you!
I remember when they closed the "Docklands Lines" before reusing the old Lines to introduce the DLR , just look at the state of Stepney East ,sorry now Limehouse. The route to Stratford via West Ham used to go to Stratford Low Level and then out to Stanstead via Rye House. Ideal for Broxbourne and Rye House Speedway on a Sunday.
It still does go to Stratford (Low Level) at least in 'spirit'. Just the links beyond to the Lea Valley route and the North London line (aka Crosstown Link) have been severed, and it just serves Stratford Int'l now. I find the Stratford route via Poplar and Bow Church more interesting personally - yeah, it's mostly straight and boring but... well that's of the reasons why. :-)
When I heard "busway" I thought of a stretch of road for exclusive use of certain Edinburgh buses. Not only was it bus-only but buses were steered by small side-facing wheels on the bus and not quite tracks at the side. I'm probably not explaining it well but buses seemed to be able to move faster along these stretches. It all later became part of the tram line.
I’d say Docklands Light Railway because you can see the whole view whilst on the DLR. And it’s lot more quieter and convenient when travelling around the Docklands. Plus the new DLR trains are to enter service this year.
Great video as always. Today looking at a railway map of London the following question come to mind. Why didn't the dlr get connected to the waterloo and city line at bank. This would allow dlr trains to terminate at waterloo.
Waterloo and city was owned by BR at the time. And I suspect for capacity was an order of magnitude less than w&c.
Yes, it’s my favourite railway too. Along with the trams. I really think they could both have been extended, or used elsewhere. Fabulous system.
This is the first time I'm hearing the term QUANGO since I first heard it watching "Yes, Minister".
My economics teacher made the same mistake of confusing Milton and Maynard Keynes.
Quasi Autonomous Non Governmental Organisation.
I thought Quango Hazzard was Jago's brother...
Never actually thought about it in those terms, but definitely the DLR is my favourite! People just like sitting at the front, even people who don't have any other interest in trains. And it generally works properly most of the time which helps
Ah, yes. Cost-to-Benefit Analysis.
Or CBA, as it's known in some parts of the project management trade.
0:58 The Gun, my favourite pub on the Isle of Dogs.
I enjoyed my use of the DLR when I flew into London City Airport on business, despite it always being very busy. It was different in an interesting way, but alas, the Underground network will always be my favourite mode of transport in London.
The bulk of the money produced by public transport is almost always in the form of taxes on businesses which are suddenly having a much easier time getting both workers and customers, and thus making more money. Bonus points if you also own the land/buildings that the businesses are renting to operate out of. Whinging about ticket prices not covering the costs are always a distraction intended to hide other, usually more malicious, motivations for preventing/worsening public transport systems.
Yes, this Does mean that private enterprise running public transport is only viable with substantial governmental subsidization of one stripe or another (The bussiest routes may well turn a pretty nice proffit... so long as the less busy, UNprofitable routes, exist to feed passengers into them, and someone has to pay for Those! ... turns out if you get rid of them the routes they were feeding suddenly aren't so profitable anymore, in most cases).
Fun part is that planes and cars don't actually dodge the 'government subsidies are necessary for this to be viable' issues, they've just been more thoroughly normalised/hidden and politicians are less prone to deciding that there's benefit to be had from breaking them even more than they already are.
I love the DLR too and who would have thought from those first two routes between Stratford and Tower Gateway to Island Gardens in 1987 that it would have expanded into the vast system it is today, also serving London City Airport and extending to Bank in central London and under the Thames to Lewisham and Woolwich in south-east London? One of the original plans not mentioned was the proposal for a single unit tramcar to run west from Bow along Bow Road to terminate at Mile End station but this was dropped by diverting the line to Stratford along what was then a disused line adjacent to the ex-GER main line. From Mile End, the link to the old North London line at Bow would have been even steeper than the one that now sees trains running to and from Stratford. The line was seriously underbuilt when it opened in 1987 with single units stopping at stations with platforms only long enough to accommodate them, in fact that at Canary Wharf was never opened even though trains stopped there. It would have been hopelessly inadequate for the area that grew up here with all its homes and offices and which eventually led to a complete rebuilding of the original statons on the Tower Gateway/Stratford to Island Gardens corridor. The present Canary Wharf station is quite incredible for what is termed a "light railway". While the original Mudcute and Island Gardens station were re-sited wih the extension to Lewisham in 1999 which, sadly, saw the end of trains running across the old Millwall Extension Railway viaduct in and out of Island Gardens which had closed at the time of the General Strike in 1926 and never reopened until 1987 when it was utilised for 12 years by the DLR. The original Island Gardens station stood on the site of the old North Greenwich station that had also closed in 1926 and is not to be confused with the present North Greenwich station on the south side of the Thames on the LU Jubilee Line Extension that also opened in 1999. David, Crouch End, N8.
A similar outcome occurred here in Brisbane which has several dedicated Busways, the first of which was intended to host a light rail system and bring "trams" back to the city. In the end there wasn't enough left to buy the light rail system after the SE Busway was completed, so it became a dedicated bus way instead. Different traffic dynamics out here make it a very fast journey into the City; although now it is victim of its own success and we have bus jams😀. This is about to be ameliorated by new electric buses with many of the diesel buses removed from the Busway.
I'm reminded of when they ran the Docklands Sprinter Buses to supplement the DLR.
As a mere visitor to London, I preferred the DLR over the tube simply because the DLR was above ground. It was faster to enter/exit the stations, and there is plenty of light and fresh air.
The rate at which the DLR has grown is truly spectacular. I often wonder whether any similar networks could be built in any other city.
Sounds like the busway is the idea of the guided busway that runs parallel to the East Lancs in greater Manchester. The buses run on a concrete ‘track’ and have side mounted guide wheels
0:35 i knew it: Jago is a Time Lord! that’s how he gets accurate facts- just go to the past and see for himself! 🤣
as someone whose city has a busway, what could work is a hybrid between a private, closed right of way and street-running as an emergency alignment. the capacity can be met with frequent buses and if done right it could be converted to light rail or tram(or a hybrid of both)
100% he's a Timelord, I've always thought he was. Just a shame he doesn't film his film his travels.
@ can’t upset the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey balance
A busway to me is just what you build when you need to transport a fair bit of people, but can't justify proper rail yet. Gothenburg has a nice busway to one of its former docklands (with a lovely MASSIVE red crane as a landmark) and i feel it's basically the platonic ideal busway: short distance and serves dense housing, but there's only housing on one side so in practice there aren't *that* many passengers.
Your videos are the Mexican hot sauce to my fried eggs on toast.
5:35 What is this bus? One like this is parked in a park at Viktoria Žižkov in Prague, and it serves as a café. It has Spitfires in glass tables and everything.
The reg comes back as an MCW Metrobus. I think they were fairly common in the UK in the 70s and 80s (this one is registered in early 1984)
@@Mikeb1001 Thanks!
Known in the trade as a “Metro”.
sure I’m one hour late. but that won’t stop me from watching another masterpiece from Jago Hazzard :)
I think we should have had the fleet line and the jubilee line - one going Charing Cross - Aldwych-Blackfriars - Liverpool St/ Bank - Canary Wharf - Barking Riverside - Rainham, one going Westminster - Southwark - Old Kent Road - Lewisham - Thamesmead. However the connection joining up Stratford was useful, but basically one part of Fleet Line (really needed two - doing part of what Elizabeth Line does in the East and something to take some strain off the Central Line ''s eastern peak route
I have always considered that DLR stands for "Dinky Little Railway" .. for obvious reasons. I watched the Stratford terminus be constructed as I commuted to school (on the Central Line) .. since then the DLR has grown up to a network that could grace many a city ... not just a district of a city! Airconditioned trains next year, now that's proper establishment material!
I too have a favourite railway system….. in the UK it’s the Tube for its ease of use, low cost, high frequency and extensive network (north of the river at least). Outside the UK it’s the NYC Subway because of its mix of express and stopping services in the core, it’s run down feel, it’s slightly haphazard state of repair and I find it quite exhilarating to be going at speed when passing on to a section where the express lines go below the stopping lines especially where that happens as you are passing a station.
I want to add an honourable mention for the Mersey Railway. It’s not particularly extensive and doesn’t always go where you want it to, but I do love the 80s aesthetic that seems to prevail across the network. Other than the trains, it feels like it hasn’t changed much since BR days. It’s remains a bastion of Rail Alphabet signage.
It is quite a cool system. I wonder if it has reached its effective limits - given that the Jubilee line and Elizabeth Line have turned up. If it were to be extended in any direction I surmise that it would need greater capacity at its terminal ends - ie Bank and Tower Gateway. But as its such a cool system and its reused and recycled old infrastructure, I still want to it succeed more...if thats possible.
Maybe it could be extended westwards - beyond bank? How about that branch of the DLR taking over the Lioness line to Watford? - or at least to Queens Park, with the Bakerloo taking over all services thereafter. New under-ground platforms at Euston for the line might help the general capacity issue for main-line trains there.
@@ricktownend9144 It has been suggested that the DLR be extended westward from Bank via Aldwych and to terminate in the now disused platforms of the original section of the Jubilee Line at Charing Cross... the overrun tunnels from there extend almost as far as Aldwych.
@@marcelwiszowaty1751I think it would also get a new stop in the Bank tunnel at Tower Hill to replace Tower Gateway so that all 24 trains per hour can serve all the central London stations instead of the current 18tph at Bank and 6tph at Tower Gateway.
@marcelwiszowaty1751 there was also the other idea of extending the DLR from bank to Euston/St. Pancras via City Thameslink and Holborn.
@Alto53 I did vaguely remember that but wasn't sure so didn't feel qualified to comment. Did that proposal utilise the old Piccadilly branch, do you know?
Love the Earls Court Tardis
Jago, you know how I love the DLR, and how it was originally built for 77 million pounds, a true bargain that has more than proved its worth to East and South London.
The North Greenwich busway is probably a could indicator of how a docklands busway would have turned out
James Alexander Gordon: "DL Rovers 1, DB Wanderers nil" 🤗
The dlr beats the busway easily
Agreed. It’s great that the DLR got built and it’s nice to actually have more elevated rail in London
7:10 Look, it's the 2024 Ferrari formula 1 livery "mustard and cream"!
Thank you to Mr. Robinson, and his Quango.
I liked your time traveling method! Also, you’re indeed cool for having a favourite railway.
7:17 Hallelujah! Yeah, this is how it should be. Public transport is not (meant to be) a money generator, it's meant to be a public service for the good of the people and places that use them.
And yeah that I think is a part of why the DLR is so cool. It's an example of something that was clearly shown to be beneficial to the area at large, being implemented quite successfully, continually nurtured, and clearly being appreciated by those who use it. It's also an example of the accountants often getting it wrong - the supposedly financially undesirable solution turned out to be the optimal one, but also it being built to a budget literally meant much more expensive lines had to be built anyway to supplement it.
The 'propaganda' aspect to it you touched upon once, where it was designed to make the Docklands look attractive to developers for regeneration, succeeded. There's a reason that the Docklands has flourished into what it is today, and this funny little railway with station names like 'Pontoon Dock', 'East India' and 'Mudchute' (...) is definitely a reason why. I think it being *such* a futuristic system for the 1980s; being mostly automated and largely driverless, simply drew more eyes to it as well - really drummed up the enthusiasm and support. Despite it being a budget solution, it absolutely gave the impression of a willingness to invest in the area to improve it, which breeds optimism. The DLR sitting in the odd place of being a budget compromise but also high tech is a fascinating one tbh.
I think they were right to go with this proposal in the end for all of the above reasons. The busway is interesting but you just know it could not cope with the level of development the Docklands was destined for; hell the DLR itself couldn't hence later additions of the Jubilee and Elizabeth lines. I don't think it would have worked as well as the main transport solution for the Docklands - it wouldn't have connected the Docklands nearly as well. It wouldn't have attracted as much enthusiasm for redevelopment as the DLR did. 'More buses' is definitely not a great solution for what they had in mind, and the 'mini tram' whilst also interesting is definitely not a great solution for this sort of thing either... there's a reason those are found on dedicated shuttle services in airports.
The DLR is definitely my favourite system in London to ride. It's so so much fun, as I've been over before. Sitting at the front is one of the great pleasures of living here; sitting at the back is fun too and underrated IMO. I love what the DLR represents too - it's what public transport should be. I'm all for expanding it more; let's see how that pans out eh.
5:32 And my my, what a lovely thing this is! A714 THV, an MCW Metrobus - a common sight in suburbia from days gone by. More suited to these sorts of areas than the hop on hop off Routemasters of further up in the city.
Also loving the new footage you use as the outro - DLR and Jubilee Line my beloveds
If you don’t consider the wider economic effects, you’re not doing a cost/benefit analysis - you’re just doing a profit estimate, which is a terrible way to plan any kind of infrastructure.
The busway might only have worked if it ran in a segreated corridor and didn't have to mix in with other vehicles. I don't use the DLR as much since I moved from Lewisham town centre, but I will sometimes change on to it from the tube or train.
@@eattherich9215 Too slow and too limited on passenger numbers.
The problem with a Local Perspective for Local People is of course that once you get to where you're going you'll never leave.
There were, however, the old Docklands Express buses into central.
Would be great to see a video on the Greenwich peninsula busway - was this part of a larger scheme and how was it all meant to work? It’s an odd piece of infrastructure that feels like it was meant to be more.
2:01 who else went to 'League of gentlemen' when they heard "Local People"
❤ the DLR ! I do like a good busway though - I grew up in Birmingham and I was fascinated by the pioneering but sadly short-lived Tracline 65 !
Genuinely don't understand why the form of DLR hasnt been emoloyed on rail reopenings around the UK esp with the increasing focus on battery technology and the fact the track gauge is the same as normal rail... the construction unit cost per kilometre must be considerably lower than tram or srandard "heavy" rail... so more DLR type rail around the UK please!
The DLR has more in common with trams than conventional rail, hence the generic term light rail. You can get a tram or DLR train around some very tight corners, not possible with the tube or a train. If you look at the Manchester Metrolink, which has trams with highlevel floors and makes extensive use of old railways, theres quite a lot in common, indeed they famously took a DLR car north, added a pantograph and gave opinion formers trips to encourage them to supprt the trams.
@@ADAMEDWARDS17 there are some metro systems with very sharp turns like the Paris metro (at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette it turns 90° under the road just like that). Light rail is so broadly used that it's borderline meaningless as it can be anything from a tram to something like the DLR, not all that far short of a full metro in comparison
It would of been great in Cambridge though we would of lost direct access to the city centre.
The problem with light rail is, it is slow. This is not a problem for very short lines or lines with stations that are very close together. Nevertheless the speed (or lack of it) of light rail is a severe limit for their applicability.
@@telhudson863 The slowness is more than made up for when there are waterways in the way that you'd have to circumvent via longer routes otherwise. I think a lot of he benefit of the DLR is from the tunnels and bridges that connect short distances that would otherwise be even slower or impossible by bus.
I don't think a Busway would have necessarily been a White Elephant, depending on how they would have built it.
Here in NL in the municipality I work for we have the Zuidtangent busway, built in the late nineties. It's was designed in such a way that if the passenger numbers would ever outgrow the capacity of the buses, it would (relatively) easily be rebuilt into a tramline.
Eventually a few years ago - now the forecasts indeed expect the passenger numbers to outgrow the system by 2030 - they did a new social cost-benefit analysis.
Unfortunately the authorities came to the conclusion that a tramway would not be viable as BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) would be much cheaper with roughly the same capacity.
So the idea now is to grow from the current 10 articulated buses an hour each direction towards somewhere near 15 (possibly double articulated) buses an hour each direction.
To be honest, it might look better on paper, but I have doubts whether this BRT-concept would really function better than a Tram or Light Rail.
Due to overrunning road works .A Bus replacement Train is operating to day
Last time I rode on the DLR I got my coat stuck in the folding doors. (It’s been a while).
Funny how things turn out - Thatcher's great success needed trains to work - the mode of transport she most disliked.
Ditto the Channel Tunnel.
There's a message in their somewhere...
You are my DLR to my Bussin Line
And the other thing is the DLR though designed in the 1980s, it still looks modern even futuristic. It’s still radical, it’s still looks new , very different from the tired old “train” network.
Unfortunately Cambridge went down the Busway route instead of adopting light rail. It's not even just a dedicated road for express buses. They decided to make a guided busway, so basically just a railway but worse!
I always think of the jubilee being constructed between Baker Street and Charing cross.( Rather than Stanmore) . Always catches me out.
Fantastic video sir, award yourself some points.
Red Elephant....I really liked tha.
I once took the Luton/Dunstable busway, an odd experience.
Driverless metro systems are the future. It's just the future arrives at different times for different places. Thankfully this part of London is near the Prime Meridian so the future arrives first there, right? ;-)
The Lille metro opened in 1983, 4 years before the DLR and is actually fully unattended and has platform edge doors. There was also one in Kobe in 1981
Try convincing any union friendly authority of that
@grassytramtracks not only that, but because Paris is east of the Prime Meridian it's day starts earlier than London's, so the original commenter's premise is in error. 😊
Technically we have a dockland busway already: the D3, 6, 7 and 8 (there were more before)
So we built this kinda affordable, automated light metro system they could've been replicated everywhere and decided to never do it again. And now everything costs would be exorbitant if we tried this today.
Mini trams= upscaled, cheesy 70s fairground ride made out of fibreglass, hopelessly unreliable, due to people regularly getting their flares caught in the doors😊
So were they proposing a guided busway like the one in Cambridge?
Very good info Jago 🙂🚂🚂🚂
Jacko?
@@AtheistOrphan Opps that was suppose to be Jago - that was me typing to fast - I've changed it now!!! - Sorry Jago 😉🚂🚂🚂
Would love to see somone make a video on the Sheffield Mini tram that never happens
CBA is not a great way to evaluate a transport project because it tends to not take into account induced demand and the future potential growth that the project could create around it. I'm glad that the LDDC had the foresight and business mind to understand that. I am hoping that the DLR and Elizabeth Line's success will show current and future governments what better transport links can do, and will help them make better evaluations of other proposals.
Another top-notch video. Do you know where I can get The Docklands Spine report from? I’d like to read it myself but can’t find it anywhere. Cheers.
I really don't like buses, but I have to say the busway network in Brisbane, Australia is quite good. As good as it can get with buses, anyway 🙂
Maybe they could do a similar thing with Kingston/Richmond it’s about time South West London was modernised in transport terms.
Just an observation. Three rail routes in one city. How much could the North have benefited from this investment. We got the guided buses!
So when do we get the video about the minitram/cabtrack PRT development/failure?
A mini-tram or mono-rail would have been ideal for the Docklands. Before the Docklands Light Railway were built that the DLR today serves the whole area of the Docklands in East London and Southeast London. And the Jubilee Line could have extended to London City Airport and Thamesmead.
wouldn't have done anything the DLR doesn't, and would have been propriatary tech on top of that (which just massively increases the upkeep costs and creates potential legal headaches and supply bottlenecks if the company signed up to do the job turns out to be rubbish).
Here's a quick hint: if the word 'pod' comes up, it will have major deficiencies, and by the time you've finished Fixing the deficiencies you will have arrived at either 'regular train' or 'bicycle'. (you may have passed through 'car' to get there, but 'car' is basically what you get when you make a 'pod' version of a bus... though cars, at least, do have viable use cases (situations where mass transit is legitimately non-viable), only becoming gadgetbahn equivalent when used outside of those usecases... ... ... which is something like 99% of the time, mind you, due to mostly being used to move individual people around cities).
Couldn’t agree more
07:20 "Maggy's Slots" sounds AWFUL 😂 Also just before, that faded trampy bus! Did Tower Transit dig it out the back of the garage or a museum? 😮
I’m going to guess that the footage of that DML is old as it features a number of things that are no longer in London:
* Tower Transit (which became part of RATP London, since recently acquired by FirstGroup),
* Anything other than straight-up LT red on a London bus, and
* The DML itself, along with anything built by Marshall (which would have long since been sold or cascaded to the provinces).
The Marshall is privately owned now (preserved), but a member of the Bromley Bus Preservation Group
Maybe it’s me but I’m drawing parallels between the OG ‘Tuppeny Tube’ and the DLR.
I live in Bristol and what happened to london docklands is what should of happened to our own disused "floating harbour" as it had a perfectly functional railway (the harbour railway) that could of easily been repurposed the same way that the DLR used it former railways.
But alas Bristol instead thought cars were the future... so a simple car journey from portishead to Bristol temple mead can now take a hour and half. While it used to take only half a hour.
Alot of the railway got lifted thanks to beeching. And today our solution to the traffic problems was a "guided bus" which hardly works most of the time. So these bus ways basically is what we have now in bristol.
The UK seems to have pioneered the guided busway over the last 2 decades but I hope they can still be converted to light rail like the one in Edinburgh.
It wouldn't have gone to the right places, just Temple Meads > Wapping Wharf > Ashton Gate > Parson Street. I suppose there could have been a station at Canons Marsh, but that would have been a round-the-houses route. Then there's the North Somerset line from Whitchurch and Brislington to Temple Meads. Connecting this to the docks railway would require the construction of new platforms alongside the Midland Shed. This would prevent access from Temple Meads side entrance to Friary and the two footbridges. All in all, potential would be limited. Comments welcome!
You are the busway to my under-developed areas.
Like me, I reckon that anyone who’s had the pleasure of travelling on the DLR have gone to the front and pretended to be the driver? The DLR will always be the best!!
0:36 Of course, the British means of time travel.
All we’ve got is a DeLorean that cannot even be started proper.
It should be compulsory to consider the wider economic benefits of any transport proposal. After all, if you take things in the other direction, doing nothing costs nothing. But it doesn't meet anyone's needs either.