As previously reported, the Thames Danglebahn seems to have found a role as
a fairground ride, not public transport:

Day trippers’ delight
February 6, 2013 4:41 pm by Kate Allen

The latest weekly passenger data for London mayor Boris Johnson’s Thames
cable car is out – and it’s not good.

The cable car (sponsored by Emirates, and thus officially known as the
Emirates Air Line) launched last summer and was billed as a new route for
the city’s frazzled commuters, as well as a tourist attraction and a
catalyst for regeneration in the areas it serves. It crosses the Thames
between the Greenwich peninsula and Silvertown, to the north of Canary
Wharf.

The cable car cost £60m to build and will cost Londoners £6m a year to run
(Emirates has contributed £36m in sponsorship, spread over 10 years). It
can carry up to 2,500 people an hour in each direction* – the equivalent of
30 buses. That equates to a maximum capacity of 65,000 people per day, or
455,000 a week (for comparison London’s busiest Tube line, the Northern,
carries nearly a million passengers a day).

But TFL’s passenger figures show that the cable car isn’t getting anywhere
near that level of use. On average our calculations suggest it may be*
running at just 7 per cent of capacity.

TFL points out that the cable car was aiming to achieve 1.3 million
passenger journeys by this March, and it has already carried more than 1.7
million passengers. On this measure, it is officially a success. And the
hope is that passenger numbers will grow; TFL’s Emirates Air Line head
Danny Price said: “The Emirates Air Line has been built to support
regeneration in east London and if it was at full capacity now there would
be serious concerns about how it could carry the future population growth
we expect in that area. As with all new transport links, the number of
regular users builds over time as people become familiar with new journey
possibilities.�

However, passenger numbers are actually falling.
chart

There are some clear spikes in this data – and what’s interesting is that
they appear to correlate closely with London’s school holidays.

An analysis of passenger data by London bloggers The Scoop late last year
found that as few as 16 people regularly use the cable car to commute. Far
from being primarily a commuting route, therefore, the Air Line appears to
be mostly used by Londoners as a way of entertaining the kids when they are
at a loose end.

Mr Johnson’s new economic adviser acknowledged last week that the capital
needs to bolster its competitiveness against its global rivals. Many
visitors and migrants to the city agree that its transport infrastructure
is a bugbear.

In its first months of operation the cable car does not seem to have done
much to change that impression.

* Unlike London’s tube, rail and buses, the cable car opens at 7am and
closes at 8 or 9pm on weekdays, with slightly shorter hours at weekends.
This is reflected in our calculation.

TFL’s own publicity says the cable car can carry up to 2,500 passengers an
hour in each direction – that’s a total of 5,000 passengers. However, it
also says that it carries 20 passengers per minute (one cabin every 30
seconds; 10 passengers per cabin). We make that 1,200 passengers per hour
each way, or 2,400 total. That equates to 218,400 per week, which would be
a 15 per cent occupancy level.

We’re awaiting clarification on this figure from TFL, and will update this
post when we get it.

TFL was unable to provide data for the period June-September 2012.
Passenger numbers were probably considerably higher in this period, due to
the Olympics.
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From dlvr.it/2vpYKB