tomscott.com - @tomscott - Ninety metres above the river is really tall for a cable car. Why build it so high, and spend so much? Well, other than the Mayor of London being a bumbling buffoon, there's a reason it's got to be that high.
Tbf, TomSka uses it occasionally, it appeared in his last week series. On the other hand, that’s probably because his old office was in the worst part of town.
I used to work on the ticket machines for the cable car. They were a pile of cr*p as well! Almost nobody uses it to commute because, as you say, it goes from nowhere in particular to nowhere in particular, and it costs a fortune to park either end. It was, however, very popular with tourists (and people who liked breaking ticket machines).
Fun fact: If you travel alone, you get one for your self. Because I was getting in one, where it was one unknown person. I was then ordered to get out by security and then I got into another one, alone. It is a good thing, but a bit strange.
Google User You clearly have no grasp of the separation of responsibilities. It's most definitely not the job of the mayor to keep track of returned jihadists - that's the job of MI5.
What? I've been to London several times now, have done all the sightseeing, have walked along the Thames until my feet were sore but I have never seen or heard of a cable car in London o.O
was added for the 2012 olympics, is not very practical and is quite expensive, but you do get a view but I recommend going up the shard that is awesome,
Thomas Foster Niki Herl And the best way to go up The Shard isn't to go to the viewing gallery, but actually just to have a meal on one of the higher up restaurants, since it's something like £25 just to go up, and most meals can be got for around £30.
Thomas Foster What? The cable car is expensive but the shard isn't? You must be out of your mind...But I do agree with you, it certainly isn't practical at all and is significantly steep in price compared to the DLR which can take you to the same destination. If you do live in the Greenwich borough you get a nice discount though so yay me!
I've recently discovered your channel trough Computerphile, and I must say, your videos are the most interesting and/or entertaining ones I've ever seen on youtube. Good job sir!
Tom Scott has garnered a lot of respect for never putting anything non-factual in his videos, and when he does, making very clear that it is a matter of opinion. He even presents multiple points of view when a piece of infrastructure he's presenting has caused contention. So I respect him all the more when he states the fact that Boris Johnson isn't fit to lead a sensible horse, let alone a capital city or country
Tom, just a couple of years ago, I stumbled on a video from you about pedestrian crossings. I knew about the change of paving, etc, but had no idea of the fact there was a device under the 'Wait' device that turned. I've been fascinated by your videos ever since and hope after lock down is over you can get out and do more. My favorite one is the RU-vid one, because 1. I made the mistake of using incremental numbers in a URL (20 years ago) and 2. it is the "one take" bit at the end that showed you were a real fun person. I wish you all the best. Keep it up, I'm loving being educated in this way.
From an engineering perspective and given the number of times such a tall ship would need to pass under the wires, this sounds like a well finessed design to meet the minimum height requirement at the minimum cost. And to be fair to Boris, the original plan for the cable car was approved in 1997 before there even was a Mayor of London.
The tallest supports are 90m high. Over the middle of the river it is only around 60 meters above high tide or a bit less. Elsewhere in these comments I have seen a few sources linked and they vary from 54 meters above high tide to 61 meters above high tide. To put that into perspective, those great big cruise ships you see on Royal Carribean commercials stand 72 meters above the waterline and panamax ships (maximum size that fits through the panama canal, a common standard in shipping) have a height above the water line of 57.9 meters.
I used to work next to the QE2 bridge. I've seen them fit an aircraft carrier under that bridge. The deck was higher up than the office building I was working in.
Das KillerKaninchen Sorry but that wasnt really my question. It was a reference to the monty python joke "What is the flight speed of an unlaiden swallow"
"This is a customer announcement. The Emirates Air Line is currently suspended due to a large ship passing under it. Tickets will be accepted on reasonable alternative routes, or you could just swim across. Sorry for the inconvenience."
If only construction and demolition worked like they do in video games. Messed up a project? Old piece of infrastructure now just getting in the way? Wreck it and recoup half the money it took to build it!
I wouldn't be surprised if there was some serious embezzlement going on. Why does a city of 9 million people need a $77 million cable car system that looks like it can move maybe a few hundred people an hour at best.
That was my question. So the answer is it's way worse wow. So for ships to pass through it has to be low tide and they have to take the gondolas off, that's just really poor planning.
@@Yossarian921 all around the world there are various bridges and things that are too low for ships. Some of them are designed to spin or go completely vertical to allow ships to go past. That's not poor planning that's good planning. Poor planning would be to either make the bridge much much higher (spending ridiculous amounts of money usually) or to stop ships completely.
To be fair, that is the sort of bodge job you can describe of Tower Bridge, or any other lifting or swing bridge. When a boat wants to go under, we will lift the road up to make enough space.
I uh...didn't even know that London had a cable car system. It does sound like Sydney's monorail system though. Expensive, badly designed and not useful as public transport.
This just typifies the attitude of the Tories, spending obscene amounts on pointless tourist attractions and vanity projects in London whilst the rest of the country is crippled by unnecessarily cruel budget cuts and in some cases is literally starving. This country is fast becoming the 'United Kingdom of London'.
While I agree with you mainly, tourist attractions are rarely pointless. They're either massively beneficial to our economy, or they just flop. But they're not pointless, anything that might bring those foreigners in is worth it.
Labour is also guilty of this. I believe the project to get trams back in Edinburgh was started by Labour, and there came a point where it was evidently a waste of money, but it would've cost more to cancel the project.
Sounds a lot like the "Portland Aerial Tram" - a similarly expensive, really high up cable car. But ours doesn't cross the river, so we don't have that problem at least...
Plus, the Portland one goes over the interstate highway, so it looks really cool when out-of-towners like myself drive in and realize we forgot that Portland has a cable car.
Boris is the best Mayor there has ever been. He has done so much good for London. Simple. Plus the cable car is not only popular with Londoners and tourists alike it did play an important link in 2012 for certain.
Sam Monson Urm... there has only been two Mayors of London so far, and the other one was Ken Livingstone. So he may well be best best but the bar is hardly set very high.
I know this and of course this is true but none the less of the many years of London's existence I would argue as an individual he has done a lot. As a mayor, ok he is only the second, but he has still done a lot.
I think its a fair solution. No point in building it higher if its only needed once per year. Same reason why you don't build streets big enough for random oversized trucks, but for average sized cars. If you have something unusual, well, they'll need special treatment.
They would, but that would increase the required height of the towers even further. If a tall ship wants to pass, it has to wait for low tide so there's enough clearance.
London's got a cable car? Where does it go? Aren't they usually used for getting up mountains? I know I haven't been to London for a while, but I don't remember it being the hilliest of cities.
its called unchecked spending. They spend millions on things that people dont want or need instead of spending that money on infrastructure or thing that the city needs.
I knew they had a height clearance because after London built one, I started thinking how great they would be here in the SF Bay area. Lots of people live on Alameda island and commute to the city, often driving over to the nearest BART (subway) station. The way the island is positioned would make an ideal 2 mile flight to a platform level at BART stations north and south of Oakland city center. It would be brilliant. But the US Coast Guard has a base in the estuary that the gondolas would fly over. And No, we would NOT be pulling the stunt of clearing the whole line each time a cutter leaves or comes home.
Interesting. Not a bodge job though, a compromise. Either pay £xM more to increase the tower height, or just shut down the cable car for a few hours when needed. If tall vessels are only using the river a few times a year then it makes sense to build it lower and save money. Plus building higher may be an eye sore, harder to maintain, risk to aircraft, etc. I’ve worked on a few opening bridges where we made similar decisions.
In DC, there is a proposal for using a cable car to go from Rosslyn (in Virginia) to Georgetown (in DC), because Georgetown doesn't have any metro access. $60 million shown here is a lot cheaper than the $2 billion quoted for rail.
Though I agree with everything said, I do find it a bit harsh to say it a bodge job. I'm sure there are other place where it is engineered in, that the load on a cable is changed to alter the clearance under it.
About ship clearance. At 1:01 you state vessels "coming in at low tide" . . . . surely the clearance twixt ship and car at low tide is greater than at high tide?
Seeing how long we've had quality "Something you might not have know" makes me sad to think it'll be ending this year. I'm glad that Tom will continue to make new and interesting videos (maybe something else, who knows?). Either way I'm glad he does what he does.
Doesn't sound like the biggest bodge job in the world. It would be a rare event that a ship that big needs to pass through and it would probably involve a lot of other preparations if it did happen. Considering it is hardly a vital piece of infrastructure it is not like it will inconvenience many people like lifting tower bridge.
I found it to be kinda useful… me and my brother we’re on the dlr and we wanted to get to the O2, we hopped on the cable car and off we went for a pizza at Franky and bennies
