On Wed, 23 Mar 2005, Dave Arquati wrote:

Here comes the other issue with Thames boat services - the Thames is
tidal, and the tides don't neatly coincide with rush hour. So at one
point a boat might be able to float merrily (and cheaply) into the
centre of town, but at a later time it might be struggling against the
tide.

They're quite capable of doing it, though. There's only a few knots of
tide.

This can wreak havoc with scheduling of a high-frequency service and
puts the costs up too.

Not sure about the scheduling - the tides are fairly predictable, after
all.

The boat only offers a better service if it actually goes where people
want to go.

Yes, but that's also true of a railway!

Can a boat service carry ~25,000 people per hour per direction?

No, and that's the real reason boats can never be a part of London
transport in the way that trains are.

Although now you've got me thinking about it, maybe long, thin boats,
rather like tube trains, served by multiple quay faces ...

A cheaper (or fully integrated) system, with 10 min frequencies, would
probably pull in more people ...

The system could only be cheaper with a massive subsidy,

Play fair - the boats have rather lower capital costs than the tubes,
since the track's already there.

Perhaps the biggest boon would be to put the current approx. 20min at
peak frequency services from Thames Clippers on the tube/London
connections map. It's a great service and most people simply don't
know about it and hence don't consider it when planning journeys.

Hear hear. Surely nobody can disagree with that? Costs nothing, and adds a
line to the map - like the ELLX on water!

tom

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