Why Is London's Cable Car So Damn High?
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- Опубліковано 19 жов 2024
- 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.
I love the fact that, after watching him for many years, I still stumble across Tom Scott videos I haven’t yet seen.
same here
love the seemingly endless supply!
There are always more things that you might not know
Reportedly, only 4 people use this in their regular commute - mainly because it goes between two places that no one wants to go.
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.
Let me guess, the two blokes on the day shift and the two blokes on the night shift for the terminal the other side?
@@daredemontriple6 I see the algorithm brought you here today!
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).
@@christopherdean1326 Visited London, can confirm I used the cable car. (It'd be a crime not to, wouldn't it?)
BOdge JOb
BOris JOhnson... Coincidence?
omg it's Larry Bundy!
Bo Jo
Yes
MaJOnn BOu
Who would win toms jokes or one smart boi
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.
You know what else is a vital part of London's infrastructure? The Springfield Monorail, of course!
The ring came off my pudding can
+Kingseeker Frampt Take my pen knife, my good man.
I swear, it's Springfield's only choice!
Throw up your hands and raise your voice!
It's more of a Shelbyville idea...
There's nothing like a genuine, bonafide, electrified, six-car monorail!
Actually, I DID know that the mayor of London is a bodge job.
Mandolinic the current one can't keep track of returned ISIS fighters in his own city. 400 'untrackable' returned jihadists
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.
Look where we are now, a bodged parliament ffs
Google User What now?
Damn this comment has not aged well
Cable cars are nice and all, but I think I'll hike up Mt. London the old fashioned way.
Giraffes pulling trailer taxis are what we need. Alpacas are way too mainstream as pack animals
>Not British or from London
>How can he say that about the Mayor?
>Looks up who the Mayor of London was at that time
Oh, carry on.
Good news: no longer mayor,
Bad news: now foreign secretary
He is british
Matt H. means he isn't British, so he doesn't understand why it's politically correct for Tom Scott to say something like that about Boris Johnson.
the new one isn't much better
So is the Labour party. They both need to be replaced
By a lot of the comments, the thing a lot of us didn't know is, London had cable cars
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,
Ah du auch hier^^
Sebastian Merkl Hi :D
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!
Watching this in October 2019 - One the few times I did not need Tom to deduce facts about the one time mayor.
December 2020 is like ten times worse
@harry hound y-u-p but hope ye are all enjoying the amazing sovereignty! I'm across the water (ire) now looking left or right is depressing.
Remember when B⛎llsh¡t Boris just bothered London?
Miss those days.
Ain't that the truth.
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!
Hey mate. Just wondering if you still hold that opinion?
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 UA-cam 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.
It’s not too late for the name “Bodge Job Johnson” to stick!
This video has aged well.. Boris is still the same 😂
Yes, but everyone in the UK gets to worry about his bodgyness now.
@@Thermalions ...and it's getting worse
That is like saying "then it was like a traffic accident, now it is like a gigantic pileup - well done."
Sounds a little bit harsh, doesn't it?
I was on a school trip and then when I was on the cable car somebody had their... arse showing deliberately to the teachers and everybody :/
So it's ninety metres high... and that's STILL not high enough?
Goosnargh.
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.
Goose being hit by a cable car?
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.
I was like who is the Mayor, and searched it and was like oh, I see
I typed this exact question into google. Thank you for the explanation.
What is the flight speed of an unlaiden cable car?
African or European?
Macho Man Shark I dont know that!
The speed of a detchable cable car of this type is 5-7m/s
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"
megaTHE909
only watched them in german so didn't understand :/
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.
Everytime I see the thumbnail for this video I think it says "Why London's cable car is so damn useless"
And it wouldn't be wrong
Bodgeis Jobson
Bodgit Jobsagoodun
With the cable cars and giant ferris wheel it kinda seems like London is modelled after a carnival
*Tom's comments about London's mayor Doris prove massively prophetic five years after.*
Ah Tom, by now we all know what a bodged job Bodgis Johnson is.
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
I had to see who was Mayor when this video was released. I get it now.
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!
The Dartford Crossing - Britain's most hated section of road.
You have clearly never travelled on the A303 past Stonehenge on the Friday of a bank holiday weekend.
Thanks Tom!
Said mayor is now trying to lead the country through a pandemic and it is not going well.
"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."
I just realised I made an unintentional: The Emirates Air Line is suspended - well duh, at about 90m above the river.
Radu Cristescu thats amazing
I actually did not know London had this.
One end is in North Greenwich by the O2 and the other is near the London Excel if you decide to visit.
Fast forward five years and now the mayor is the Prime Minister
Boris Johnson - a mayor so bad even Tom Scott took a stand
Yet another one in a series of Boris’ Bodged Jobs.
Little did you then know that you got to enjoy this mayor as your prime minister a few years later.
Rare video where Tom expresses an opinion
Tom has stated opinions in his videos plenty of times.
But this is one of very few times when he is directly mocking a politician.
@@EightThreeEight Rightfully so.
That 60 million pounds could have gone to helping fix and modernize more of the Tube
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.
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.
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?
Low tide? I would have thought high tide would make the vessel taller.
I think the point is that the only time the vessel can get through is when it is both low tide and the gondolas are removed.
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 Actually this is perfect planning. The lowest bidder gets the job and someone presented a solution that just scrapes by.
@@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.
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.
As someone who doesn't live in the UK, I'm just assuming that said mayor was Boris Johnson?
That is correct.
London got a new Mayor, but it's not like anything got any better.
That's because the old Mayor became Prime Minister, so of course nothing was going to get better.
The Art of the Bodge...
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.
I had to take the cable car during a transit strike. Definitely high. Definitely not recommended if you have to be somewhere on time.
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.
At least he didn't let those anti-gay ads go on the London buses.
Awoo Wan Wolfe III Thats a minus in my books.
He's prime minister now. Look how far we have come.
It's evolving, just backwards
Brings tears to my eyes
aww poor Norris, he only wants to tackle small Asian children while representing the UK...
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
Daaamn, shots fired!
Fantastic view from there:)
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.
Christ, if Boris was bodging things then, no wonder he's done such a sterling job with Brexit and Covid...
Whenever I take the kids to London we usually get the Northern line down to bank, sit at the front of the DLR , round to the cable car, over then Jubilee line to Westminster, houses of parliament, No 10, trafalgar square over to covent garden and then back up on a bus to the station (kings cross/euston)
It takes a few hours, is interesting and can be done on a travel card (except the cable car) - cheap sightseeing.
tbh, i enjoyed the ride and the view. it's just nothing around the both end. (was O2 and excel nearby?)
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.
Now this, this is the greatest bodge job.
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.
I don’t get the low tide part. Wouldn’t the boats be highest at high tide?
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.
Bodge Johnson
Bloody Stupid Johnson, you mean.
+Michael Sommers That made my day. :)
Hasn't he gone on to bigger and bodgier things these days?
I thought he was very keen on Breakfast, I mean Brexit?
I thought i herd one existed before this & went all the way to Crystal Palace?
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.
I wonder if it will last as long as Sydney's monorail did.
I didn't really know that cable cars or gondolas were used anywhere for transportation for anything other than touristy stuff. The only gondolas I've been on were to get up a ski hill and to the top of a Sulfur mountain by Banff.
There are few Swiss villages (eg Bettmeralp and Murren) for which cable cars are the primary means of access, and the new cable car from Testa Grigia to Klein Matterhorn, which is primally motivates by skiing and tourism will take many hours off local journeys between Italy and Switzerland.
the cable car has a good view though, and given that the london eye cost 70 million, I think it has some benefit.
Perfect if you ever want to go from the O2 to ExCeL.
Other than that?
Surely a more practical river crossing would have been to invest in the foot tunnels?
Or have the cable car trip act like a tube journey on Oyster? Still more expensive than a bus fare but absorbed into the daily Travelcard cap and not being an insane additional cost.
There are foot tunnels further up the river near the Cutty Sark, and there's a free(?) ferry service further down the river in Woolwich.
Also, if you're a Greenwich Borough resident you get a discount.
Tommy Thai Woolwich Ferry is free.
It's been a while since I've used them, but my memory of the foot tunnels is that they are not that nice. That's what I meant by investing in them: Improving the existing ones, rather than boring any additional ones.
Hampshire Brony
Right, it's just the way you put it made it seem like you was unaware of the alternative options for crossing the river.
The train service (Jubilee Line + DLR) is 3 minutes quicker (including
walking time) from the O2 to west end of ExCel, but one may be waiting
10 minutes for a train.
To/from anywhere further away on the north side, including the east end of ExCel, the trains are always faster!
Tom came swinging with this one
extending it would make it more useful.
When did London have a cable car?!
Boris Johnson got the EU to pay for the cablecars then 4 years later convinced the country to leave the eu.
Lifetime politicians are no different here in the United States.
And that sums up the prime minister's covid response...
Queen Elizabeth II Bridge. has a clearance underneath of 58m, so why does the cable car have to be 30m higher than that?
You're comparing the bottom of a bridge with the top of a tower (with gondolas hanging below it)
That sums up, more or less, any major of any big city in the world.
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.
Why the height of the Emirates Air Line needed to be 90 meters when the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge is 58 meters??!
Kestutis Rusas Cables dip in the middle.
Bodge Job BoJo. Thank goodness he’s not Prime Minister during a constitutional crisis and a pandemic…oh wait
Cable car? In London? Wonder when they will have cable tv..
So cutting corners ended up being more costly in the long run by having them down during tidal periods.
Ships of that size only come as far down the Thames as London once in a blue moon these days.
At least it isn't a monorail !
And now he's our prime minister...
The thing is so damn high, I'm afraid to ride it! I've gone to look at it twice or three times, and always "chicken out".
Ok yes it's 6 years late but I immediately thought height for the Tall Ships to pass under.
I didn’t even know london had a cable car 🚠
That thing looks scary to go on
Why? It's great! Excellent views.
Watching this at the end of 2020 and your last sentences can not be said without more relevance today than 6 years ago
Pretty much sums up what? I couldn't make it out.
Is that the Mayor of London or the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor of the City of London?
Its the mayor of london boris johnson. The city of london actually has no proper important duties
+ieatyou1 you say that but you might wanna watch CGPGrey's videos on the City of London
Cgp Grey
Jamie Bliss the Mayor of London
That you can see in tube map or sometime transport project
There's also the royal borough of Kingston in London which has a Lord Mayor but Mr Khan is still Mayor.
Oooooooh Tom swore in the title of one of his video I’m telling UA-cam!
Tom stood up that morning and chose violence. 😂
It did make quite a fun tourist attraction when I went on it, but it hardly seems useful for people who live in London
I went in it. It's great. Really more of a tourist thing though. They try to make it for commuters but failed really
Imagine telling this Tom that that Mayor would go on to become the Prime Minister
Spiting straight facts about the (at the time) mayor of London
Why at low tide in particular? Shouldn't high tide make it harder to clear the cables?